I haven't kept or bred S. granulosus but I've bred several synodontis species. It goes without saying that while you need a male & female to breed, you will greatly increase your chances of success with 6 or 10 or 16 broodstock over a single pair. And what ever that percentage of success that ma...

Wow!! You are good, Milton!!! I think you are right - mine looks exactly like those photos. I was wrecking my brain looking at all the Pims and not finding anything close. You think this fish has a lot of common names (Americas: Bagre, Andean: Barbilla, Andean: Barbudo, Bagre de arroyo (Canyon Catf...

Eggs are the perfect food for all fish. Even ancistrus will happily eat ancistrus eggs.

Everyone is different. I love my dogs but they are NOT family members and live outside the house. Just like my fish, if it becomes too expensive or difficult to save due to illness or accident, I put it down (euthanasia). Sadly I've had to put down 2 dogs and don't keep one now. I have car & hou...

You can use almost any tile if you can't find slate. Some of the outdoor or non slip ceramic tiles (they have several classes of roughness) are good.

If you soak the slate tile in water overnight then hit it edgewise with a bolster (chisel like tool) & hammer it will split along the natural layers. That's the best way to remove the unnatural smooth slate surfaces too.

I've used hydor inline heaters extensively (have at least 40) as well as countless other brands of heaters since I've got several hundred tanks. The hydor heaters have a digital guage and been extremely reliable as well as accurate in turning off/on.

You can get stand alone temperature sensors that send alerts to your smart phone if your worried about heater malfunctions. This would not prevent the heater(s)from malfunctions but let you know when tank temperatures shift from your desired range. One of the inkbird controllers has inbuilt phone no...

Could be white spot (ich). It's hard to see on armoured fish because it's under the plates

What do you do with all your photos? Hopefully they are date stamped?

And what happens when you notice the "same species" starts to look different from photos taken years earlier?

I don't know if Australia is similar to your part of the world but sick pets with insurance are referred from general vets to "specialists" that charge a lot more. This cost is covered by insurance companies minus the insurance premium and generally customers agree. They like to get their ...

Some of the books I have on big catfish are: EMPEROR OF THE AMAZON THE HANDBOOK OF THE RED TAILED CATFISH by David Sands The Catfish Connection: Ecology, Migration, and Conservation of Amazon Giants Baensch Catfish Atlas, Volume 1 Atlas of Freshwater and Marine Catfishes : A Preliminary Survey of th...

Great to see you haven't given up.
Let us know if anyone/overseas members can help in some small way.

I've been breeding these periodically for many years. Hormone induced and dry fertilised (hand stripped) so I may not be able to offer you much insight. The fish still need to be kept in favourable conditions and well conditioned and like all fish production, the spawning/fertilising of eggs is the ...

I find these online for approximately £150.00 on https://www.nhbs.com & Book Depository etc. Are these the junk 1972 editions or the higher quality version you are enjoying? What is the website for the Ray Society? Cost of joining and amount of members discount ? Would like to add this to my boo...

Once you have a certain number of tanks (anything over 150+), bare bottom without substrate is most definitely more efficient. On my few tanks with sand, I find it more efficient not to avoid siphoning out sand as it is easy to capture the lost sand with an bucket that is allowed to overflow (sand t...

I have a suggestion that may or may not appeal depending on your preferences. I maintain quite a large number of tanks in several fish rooms. Most of my tanks are racked end side out to maximise space. Some species such as cave dwelling african cichlids do not like their shelters being disturbed or ...

Viktor, how would someone donate funds safely if they wished to help you? Or if a business or sympathetic enterprise wished to sponsor you somehow?

It must be expensive rescuing fish and trying to set up your public aquarium.

My comment was aimed at reducing tank mainenance as that was the origional quest. If someone strives to water change 20% of a tank once a month, simply set the auto water change amount to replace the same 20% once a month. No net loss in water wastage but a big savings in time, reliability and effor...

I am not going to get into the filtration discussion but if you wish to have a low maintenance tank, apart from low stocking rate, I would utilise automatic water change. If you add an overflow, you can apply slow continous drip 24/7 to diplace tank water out. Adding new water in drips allows you to...

"IchthyoPark" is a really terrible name. No offense. It's bad on so many levels and that's coming from a fishhead.

I'm wondering if you can rent out some of your housing for free yard maintenance ?

Hobbyist Public Aquarium!? How are you not getting free tanks or product sponsorship from some of the larger manufacturers? You don't have to sell your soul but it may not hurt to have a sponsorship board under your front signage.

Well Viktor, you need to ask for help. If not for financial assistance then for business, planning and marketing assistance. As you already know, your time is taken up by property maintenance. Time you can't afford because not only is your dream slipping away, but bacause of the hidden costs and los...

A heartfelt thank you, guys. You support is very humbling to me. One of the original 4500 gal developed a fiberglass seam separation on the bottom and a slow leak. It's the one with the brutes - RTC, Jau, Piraiba, pacu, and Co. They will have to go into the prospective 10K, while I drain the 4500 g...

My suggestion for anyone using PP as a treatment is to put a small sample of the origional treatment water in a clear vial or plastic bag before you start adding fish. It will go a brown colour as organic load reduces the PP strength and purple hue fades so you will need to add more PP as time goes ...

I have similar experiences when feeding protein rich food like artemia and agree it's likely to be parasitic protozoa. What I do is use a constant dripper for auto water change to reduce maintenance schedule. On very young fry, I use a large well established tank as header tank for water source into...

Well done! For royal whip tails, I used 6 - 8 lengths of 25cm x 2cm x 2 cm hardwood per baby tank with a wire hook at one end. Put these outside in direct sunlight in 14 numbered 2L plastic bottles with a pinch of soluble fertilizer to grow thick algae and rotate out with new food sticks each day, h...

For a long time, Aussies have had to buy smuggled fish species that are perfectly legal (and plentiful and cheap) for many of the international fishkeepers here. Imagine if almost every fish you currently have or want was an illegal fish? What would you do if your government (or other governments) d...

I have used hormone induced spawning for several years since I think this is just another aspect of fish keeping and breeding. It is quite a challenging and difficult science/art just like other facets of fish keeping. Photo-period lengths, water temperatures, environmental conditions, different ind...

A lot of the photos look like the fish are dead. Do they collect and kill just for research?