cyclopeeze

[electric eel]

here is a strange question for everyone.i have'nt found anything yet that brings out the color of my rams and angels like frozen cyclopeeze but it is fairly expensive.i have some "vermillion" orange koi angels that i'm conditioning for sale at the aca and am wondering how to get the most bang for my buck.i know that fish can only metabolize so much at a time and if it was'nt so expensive i would just feed them it 3 times a day and if some got excreted out semidigested no big deal.i'm fairly certain that noone is doing research on pigment absorption(i thought possibly Ron Coleman from the egg project might know something about it) in aquarium fish but the people posting on this forum seem to be far and away the most intelligent group of people of any forum i have been on.any ideas on how much would be good without wasting it(one feeding a day?)they get 3 feedings a day cyclopeeze,high quality color flake and sera discus granules supplemented with whatever bbs i have left over after i feed my fry.all you ram lovers would be suprised at how much red cyclopeeze and large amounts of bbs will bring out on your rams.any thoughts appreciated!

 

[viejo]

I've been doing 'research' on color absorption since the early 60's. I'm reticent to make any statements as when I think I have found answers the rules tend to change. In a nutshell, 1-foods with a high astaxanthin & lipid content i.e,
copopods (cyclopeeze) & other crustaceans. 2-Light intensity & photoperiod.
3- Trace elements, especially iron & manganese, added to food.
I'm sure that there some other mysterious forces at play also; probably of a water chemistry nature, but for now, they are still a mystery.

 

[electric eel]

from what i've figured out so far the cyclopeeze and lots of bbs are making them express the most orange.this batch got a lot of bbs early on and are expressing well.an earlier spawn that i started on bbs but switched to color flake(with naturose) did'nt express nearly as well(they were more crowded and not as well taken care of also though)i knew light intensity and photoperiod also played a factor but i can't figure it out.i've got 6-20 highs with 30 to 35 max in them and at different elevations(closer or farther to the flourescent lights that light up the room) and have'nt been able to really make any conclusions.one tank that the top was completely covered in duckweed(blocking most of the light but also probably metabolizing most of the ammonia so possibly making water quality better?) has a lot that have expressed better then some that were on the top shelf right by the lights(although they are getting orange too)i don't have much more time with these guys as the show is pretty soon(i'm fairly happy with them though) but would like to figure it out for subsequent spawns.they don't express the red like a ram where the whole fins get darker and darker over time but rather little patches at at time get orange on the angelfish.you see a little more each day.does the red in bloodworms help any?is a longer or shorter photoperiod better for color expression?i was amazed at the difference not only in the difference in intensity of color of the last batch(same parents) but also coverage.some of this last batch are actually expressing some red but its too early to tell how much of what is orange now will turn red.you started me wondering Viejo i was just out in my room and the 20h on one end has 2-48"2 bulb flourescents lighting up that end with daylight spectrum bulbs .these fish have more intense red and orange.the rest of the room is lit up by 2-8'2 tube flourescent fixtures with cool white bulbs.i remember now i always buy the daylight spectrum bulbs but last time i replaced the 8' tubes they told me at lowe's i could'nt buy just 4 daylights i'd have to buy a whole case so i got 4 cool whites instead(they had open boxes of them).they are due to be replaced gonna find someplace where i can buy just 4 daylight spectrum 8 footers.i remember getting ticked off at the sales clerk and now it ticks me off again.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
We had a post a while a go with some useful info in it on colour.
<http://forum.apistogramma.com/showthread.php?t=8189>

The answer to what cause the fish to colour up is apparently the carotenoid compound "Astaxanthin", which both cyclops and BBS contain and comes originally from the phytoplankton that they eat.

Duckweed (Lemna) is a great nitrogen sink, I've got this paper, and quite a few others if anyone is interested?
S Korner, JE Vermaat, S Veenstra (2003) "The Capacity of Duckweed to Treat Wastewater Ecological Considerations for a Sound Design" Journal of Environmental Quality, 32(5):1583-90.

cheers Darrel

 

[electric eel]

i'd be interested in checking out the article ,darrel.i keep duckweed in most of my tanks unless i have other plants in there and don't want it to block the light.there was an interesting article in an old tfh magazine and the author told how much ammonia per gram of duckweed it could metabolize.it was quite a lot but i don't remember the numbers.just had a cool experience at Lowe's.went to get the 5000k sunlight 8' tubes but they only sell them by the case of 10(i needed 4) i was gonna cut the tape and take four up front to the cashier but i just could'nt do it so i found the manager and expained the situation and begged him to sell me just 4.he thought for a minute and said how bought i sell you the whole case for half price so i got 10 tubes for 7 dollars more then i would have had to pay for 4.i guess sometimes honest people do catch a break.how cool!

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Craig, pm your email address and I'll send them to you. I'm keen on duckweed, and I've never found it grows alarmingly or is too difficult to remove, probably because my tanks are fairly nutrient poor and have too low a pH for optimal growth. My suspicion is that it's mainly people with canister filters or over-flow boxes who have a problem with it blocking intakes etc.

More here:
<http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/practical_duckweed.htm>

The efficiency off nutrient removal (for all biofiltration) is dependent upon factors such as speed of flow of the waste water, type of pollutant, depth of the vessel, PAR of the light etc. so it is difficult to get a single value, however for the Duckweed Lemna gibba from:

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF LEMNA GIBBA L., BACTERIA AND ALGAE FOR THE NITROGEN AND PHOSPHORUS REMOVAL IN DUCKWEED- COVERED DOMESTIC WASTEWATER
S. KOÈRNER* and J. E. VERMAAT Water Research, Volume 32, Issue 12, December 1998, Pages 3651-3661

"Removal effiencies of 34 -9 9% for N and 14 - 92.2% for P in systems using L. gibba were reported by Sutton and Ornes (1975), Oron et al. (1986), Hammouda et al. (1995), Vatta et al. (1995), Alaerts et al. (1996) and
Vermaat and Hanif (in press)" and "Nutrient removal coefficients were 3 - 5 times higher than data from the literature for diffrent systems using similar initial nutrient concentrations, probably due to the high duckweed
biomass/water volume ratio used here."

I've got a lot of papers on biofiltration of wastewater, landfill leachate etc. as this is one of our research areas, it is a minority interest here, but it is big in Europe, where they spend a reasonable amount of money on this sort of thing.

cheers Darrel

 

[electric eel]

it might be a bit over my head darrel but i'd like to look at it.i love duckweed and am sure that feeding copius quantities to my apple snails(huge slightly smaller then tennis ball size variety) was why i had such good luck getting them to spawn for me.i read some people have trouble and i'm sure they just don't feed them enough.my 5 breeders could eat a whole stalk of celery in 3 or 4 days easily.

 

[viejo]

I use a lot of amazon frogbite (duckweed on steroids) in my grow out tanks with apparently good results.
As to color expression; ultraviolet light has a definite effect on color intensity. The question here is, what type of U.V. & how much? I am hesitant to place tanning bulbs over my tanks, for my own safety if nothing else :wink:.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
You could try a 11000K tube, or the actinic ones they use in insect traps. They are reasonably cheap to buy, they produce mainly UVB (reasonably safe) and they make corals fluoresce, so I assume they would have the desired effect.

Actinics have a peak spectrum at about 420nm, they are actually full spectrum, but they produce lesser amounts of the other wave lengths.

Personally I would be surprised if there is any real difference in pigmentation between fish kept under 6500K and 11000K lights, although they may appear different in colour under the different lights.

cheers Darrel