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Some species will not be exported from Colombia for a while.

Tom C

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Norway
The Colombian authorities have, due to overfishing, banned the collection and export of the following species for the whole of 2022 and 2023:
Corydoras axelrodi, Corydoras metae, Apteronotus galvisi, Eigenmannia virescens, Dicrossus filamentosus, Rineloricaria eigenmanni and Farlowella vittata.

Skjermbilde (961).jpg

So let's encourage those who are lucky enough to have the Orinoco form of Dicrossus filamentosus to take good care of them, and breed them in good numbers.

In addition, and for the same reason, collection and export of Carnegiella Strigata and Nannostomus eques is prohibited from June this year. The ban lasts a minimum of this year, and probably a full year.

Skjermbilde (962).jpg


(I have the full papers, if anybody needs them.)
 

Mike Wise

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Thanks for the info Tom. I see more of these bans in the future and from more countries. I feel species maintenance, not just keep/breed once and go on to another will become a more important part of the hobby. I don't keep any of the listed species but I was pleasantly surprised to discover a 6mm/½" juvenile Nannostomus unifasciatus swimming in a tank with the adults last week.
 

MacZ

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2,958
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Germany
So let's encourage those who are lucky enough to have the Orinoco form of Dicrossus filamentosus to take good care of them, and breed them in good numbers.
Anybody got some females? I only got 5 boys. :D
And Tom, any hints for Nannostomus eques? Mine are spawning like crazy but for over a year no fry.
(I have the full papers, if anybody needs them.)
Yes please!
 

Tom C

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Norway
..... I was pleasantly surprised to discover a 6mm/½" juvenile Nannostomus unifasciatus swimming in a tank with the adults last week.
Are you sure they are not Nannostomus eques, Mike?

And Tom, any hints for Nannostomus eques? Mine are spawning like crazy but for over a year no fry.
I know nothing about the tank and conditions you keep them in now, so it's not possible to say what to try to change.
I get fry from mine in two different ways:
1. I put a well fed pair alone in a very small tank ( I use 21cmx30cmx20,5cm (hight) = 13 liters). Peat filtered very soft water with pH around 5. I put in an artificial broad leaved plant, and nothing more. No filter, heater, wood or structures.
They always spawn on the underside of a plant leaf.
Sometimes they will spawn early the next morning, or often they spawn the second morning. They are not picky about choosing a partner. They will spawn in one go, not a few eggs every day, as many other Nannostomus. The plant can be removed to a smaller hatching tank and another pair put into the spawning tank, if I want many of them. I very rarely do this, as I get enough fry from method 2:
2. I usually keep them in bigger tanks (and in bigger groups), with the desired water. I let floating plants and bigger plants which grow from the ground, like Echinodorus, fill the top 5-6-7 cm in parts of the tank. And I wait....
Right now I have seen new fry almost every week in one of my tanks since medio April:
IMGP4017-800.JPG


IMGP4021b.JPG


IMGP4017-800c.jpg

IMGP4026-1k.JPG

I feed the fry hatched in the spawning tank, when freeswimming, infusoria the first weeks. When big enough to take them: BBS.
In the big tanks I rarely see the fry before they are big enough to eat BBS, they find small food particles themselves (and I also put some infusoria in there now and then, just in case), Since most of my tanks receive BBS every day anyway, they have food enough.
In the tank where the photos above are from, Apistogramma sp. "D52" governs on the ground.
I wish you good luck with them!
 

MacZ

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2,958
Location
Germany
Thanks Tom!
I know nothing about the tank and conditions you keep them in now, so it's not possible to say what to try to change.
I get fry from mine in two different ways:
80x35x40, water parameters: EC 60µSI, pH about 5. I use homemade elder and catappa extract instead of peat in 100% RO. Lots of driftwood and leaf litter (constantly producing infusoria) and I'm in the process of letting pennywort and frogbit growing all over the surface. I don't feed BBS daily, but at least 2 days a week right now, we have a heat wave and the cultures turn bad too fast, otherwise they get frozen artema and cyclops. As soon as the weather turns cooler again the supply will be pretty much constant again. Stocking: 11 N. eques (8m3f), 5 Dicrossus.
photo_2022-06-15_10-17-05.jpg
Guess then I should let the thicket on the surface expand more in area and depth.
 

Mike Wise

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11,201
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Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Are you sure they are not Nannostomus eques, Mike?
They are definitely N. unifasciatus. I've kept both and recognize the difference. I've had the adults for several years now. I started with 12 and now down to 2 males and a female. They are in their own tank and basically ignored except for good food and water values. I am, after all, a lazy aquarist. Odd thing is that there are no broad-leaf plants in the tank anymore, just Java Moss and a dense layer of Salvinia. I guess life finds a way.
 

Samala

Active Member
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99
Location
Oviedo, FL
It's interesting the reason/rationale is 'overfishing'. Do they have good numbers and monitoring for the population sizes of each of these species? How do they set catch limits? Is there a permitting or licensing process normally?

If anyone has good articles, books, or resources on this I'd be grateful for links. Fisheries management fascinates me, especially for ornamentals. Where I live (central Florida) we have bag limits on a number of ornamental species (mostly marine), but almost no data on population size and barely any monitoring. Limits are set more or less arbitrarily. Obviously we're not exporting native wild caught fish on anything near the scale Colombia does each year. Curious how they do it.
 

MacZ

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2,958
Location
Germany
It's interesting the reason/rationale is 'overfishing'. Do they have good numbers and monitoring for the population sizes of each of these species?
As far as I know, they have beem monitoring for quite some time.

If anyone has good articles, books, or resources on this I'd be grateful for links.
My spanish is not that good, but from what I can gather, they have used studies on fishing quota and population regeneration.

Quote from the website with the anouncement that I linked above:
Additionally, the decision is supported by the most recent study of the life cycles or life history of some of the ornamental resources carried out by the FUNINDES Foundation, which consolidates the key aspects of its population dynamics and makes an estimate of the metabolic rate of individual growth and the way the cohorts seek their balance in the ecosystem. In this line, species with K values between 0.39 to 0.64 need two (2) years for their populations to show recovery with the restriction of their fishing activity, a K value of (0.9) indicates that in one year they can recover the species, a case that only applies to one of the species covered by the measure.
I'd probably look up said FUNINDES foundation if I were you.
 

Mike Wise

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Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Just a follow-up on my N. unifasciatus fry (only 1).

This is my adult trio:
1657204520129.png


and my lone fry:
1657204765415.png

The substrate is coarse sand with a grain size of ~2mm, same as my apistos' (Do as TomC says - not as I do). For all of the 'Old Timers' out there, yes they are housed in a 50 year old 12.5 gallon/48L Metaframe tank (18X16X10" /45X40x25cm). I bought them used in the late 1970s. Although originally made to house small rodents, I find them good for breeding pencil fish and single pairs of small apistos like A. sp. Wangenflecken and A. borellii.

So now I'm thinking of trying to encourage the pencils to breed. Somewhere I have some fluorescent pearl pink plastic plants that my, then, 6-year old daughter wanted in her tank some 30 years ago. Hmm ... do you think they might scare the fish?
 

anewbie

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1,365
Hum. Why not just put in some easy to grow live plants? I've always found the plants as fascinating as the fishes.
 

Mike Wise

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5 Year Member
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Location
Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Love to see those old Metaframes still in use.
... and I still use some stainless steel frame/slate bottom tanks. They are great for breeding egg scatters where it helps not to have substrate. I must admit that the are hard to seal glass to slate with silicone if they start to leak.
 

Tom C

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5 Year Member
Messages
582
Location
Norway
Just a follow-up on my N. unifasciatus fry (only 1).

This is my adult trio:
and my lone fry:

Great! This is sensentional, Mike! I have never seen this, althoug I have kept the species for decades. I have seen spawning behavior many times:

IMGP2476-800b.jpg
IMGP2477-800b.JPG

IMGP2478-800b.jpg
IMGP2479-800.JPG


and I'm quite sure I have seen a few eggs falling down. But I have never seen any fry.
To my knowledge, this species has never been bred in captivity. All the reports of successful breeding of Nannostomus unifasciatus have ended up with the species being N. eques or N. harrisoni.
Until now!
At least we now know it's possible. Thanks for sharing!
 

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