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You can certainly cross them to typically coloured males. In fact I have a Super Red male in a tank with two females coloured like yours. He has paired with the paler female now and I will try and get spawns from both females with him if possible.
My male is about 2" and the females are a...
Well albinism in pulcher isn't as simple as in many fish but from what you've posted you may well have a complete albino (homozygous) and an incomplete one (heterozygous).
I'm afraid they both look like girls though! The pelvic fins of the paler one are a give-away as in the photos the front...
Excel is an excellent carbon source in place of injecting CO2 and will give even, but slower plant growth. It can also be squirted directly onto BBA and thread algae to kill them off. Some plants don't like it though like Vallis and Egeria/Elodea.
I've used it as a short-term treatment for tetras, SA catfish and cichlids before with no apparent ill-effects. I certainly don't think it should be a permanent part of the water for anything other than brackish or marine fish though. (Oh, except my Nothobranchius killies!!!! - they'll be...
Chain swords like tennellus can throw up flower stalks sometimes but I've never had them do that submersed. They do sometimes throw runners up vertically in amongst the leaves though so it could be one of those. Either way I'd leave it and see what happens - you should soon be able to tell...
Surely you mean decrease the mortality rate? :biggrin:
I would lay some of the blame at the cories personally. At night they may be snacking on some of the fry as cichlid's night vision is nowhere near as good as that of catfish.
Feeding better food like brine shrimp will also really...
The 50% water change should take care of it yes. I just find Total Dissolved Solids to be a quick and easy way of checking that I'm not dosing too much and altering the water too much. You almost certainly won't need to do it but if you have any problems then it might eb something worth checking.
Didn't you believe me then mate!!! lol! Think you might find the fish resemble the wild form at first and that you'd have to select for the red colouration again in subsequent generations. They might show some red though. Personally having seen them in the flesh I'd get a wild female and...
Dosing ferts won't effect the apistos IME. In fact they will love the 50% weekly water changes. I do tend to keep an eye on the TDS to make sure that it doesn't get too high with dosing all those salts though.
I thought that the lateral spots didn't always appear until the females were mature? I thought I remember reading someone's account (probably Mary Bailey in PFK) that some females that didn't look after their young never showed the lateral blotch.
They do look neat. I've just hatched some Nothobranchius for the first time in a tank in my class at school and they are very neat!
There are a few sites for SA annuals that may give you an idea about some suitable tank mates, but as you need to get breeding them asap they might be best in...
Are you sure the snails are eating your plants? I have both tropical ramshorns and the bladder snails in my planted tanks and they don't eat healthy plants. Small holes in the leaves can be a sign of a potassium deficiency!
I've never kept South American annual killies but I was under the impression that they mostly inhabit temporary waters where there aren't many other fish species, certainly not dwarfs.
If you've got lots of snails then you're feeding too much! Cut the feeding back and the numbers will naturally reduce.
If you want to get rid of some a bit faster then I would couple this with syphoning off all the snails you can see every time you do a water change. If you use cheimcals...
IMHO EI is a nice method to use for two reasons. It provides a slight excess of nutrients (so the plants never run out of them and stop growing) and it's easy to with dry powders (so it's much cheaper buying bottles of commercial ferts). However if you don't want to go with powders then I'd...
Well by UK standards you're fairly high light there so I'd advise using macro fertilisation straighht away! As you're using Excel rather than gaseous CO2 I'd probably try half dosing. What method are you using to work out your dosing levels? EI? If so don't forget the large water changes - I...
I'm just resurrecting mine from drying out (going to try that trick keeping them in the fridge) but if no one else can send you any then I will when they recover.