Gold viejita

[wethumbs]

You are correct. I didnt want to start a debate on the subject (or maybe I was trying to) so I statement was abit incomplete. I did an extensive testing on the missing ventral fins issue to find out the cause. I did the entire testing on the same pair of WC Pel. taeniatus "Moliwe" and I toggled the missing ventral fins from one spawn to the other. After repeating it for three different spawns. It was concluded that excessive live food such as microworm will promote the explosive growth of protein eating bacteria. Fry resting on the bottom will be susceptable to the 'attack'. Fry do not start out with ventral fins, they are developed in the first two weeks. It is during this stage that if overfeeding occurs, the ventral fins development will be affected.

I agree that deformed fish should be culled. In my case, I was trying to prove that they are genetically sounded, so I spawned a pair that have missing ventral fins. The fry were all fine. It was kind of interesting to see them still tried to wiggle the stubby ventrals to signal the fry.

 

[gerald]

Small gold Apistos showed up a few weeks ago at a local store near me in North Carolina too, so I guess they are probably these gold macmasteri and either somebody's importing them from thailand or mass-breeding them here now.

DF - There are no viejita in the US trade these days. Most everything sold as viejita, wild and tank-bred, is really macmasteri. Mike Wise has written about this in several other threads on this forum if you look around.

Disappointingly the gold outsells the wild 3 to 1...

Amen, Ste - And try to find a natural-type orange chromide, honey gourami or thick-lip gourami; nobody sells em anymore.