Fish Photo Post

I mentioned in my last post that I'd get up some new pictures of my fish that you've probably read so much about on this blog. I'm still trying to get the hang of my new camera so hopefully my photos start getting better overtime but, I can definitely say these pics are a major improvement over older ones you may have seen on here prior to this post. Let me know what you think or anything else you'd like to see a photo of in the future.

Male tuxedo guppy "Peppermint" and some of his fry

Closeup of Peppermint

Female tuxedo guppies: Freckles and Rudder

Male Betta: Ebo

P.S. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

What is That?

Click Image to Enlarge

As I was using the rapid-shoot on my digital camera to try and get some better photo's of my guppies (I didn't exactly succeed in getting any non-blurry images BTW) I did came across an interesting find which I hadn't noticed until I was later viewing over the images on my computer. As you can see from the above image here there is some type of creature which dwells in my aquarium... I am not 100% certain as to what this is (perhaps planaria?). Thus far I haven't been able to see these creatures with my own eyes although I have been able to spot planaria before. Interestingly enough certain cameras are capable of capturing things of which we can't see with the naked eye, and the guppy is capable of seeing them.. and even eats them as you can see from the slide of photo's I took below (you may have to look closely!).

Fish Updates

Here is a photo of one of the first batch of fry that my original female guppy (who recently passed away) and one of her sons reproduced, these fry are now 6 weeks old this week and in my opinion have been growing rapidly (they all basically look like this thus far) as they are about an inch in length now.

Here are the original female guppy's first offspring (to which the father is unknown and the mother is now deceased as mentioned before). These two males were the ones that reproduced this current batch of 6 week old fry and are the only 2 fully matured males I currently have. I don't plan on breeding these two again until the 6 week old female fry are mature. These two have also reproduced with there sisters in my other tank and those fry are around 3-4 weeks old now and seem a bit slow growing.

Male guppies at 7.5 months old

Some people have asked me how Mr.Moto my blue veil-tail betta is doing and he's doing just fine although I think he has been wanting to breed for some time now, but I do not plan to breed betta's due to there general temperment and the amount of space it will ultimately consume for me. Today I placed him back into his smaller Cubus tank while I clean out his Mini-Bow. As you can see his coloring has changed yet again. Mr. Moto's head area has turned mostly black in color and he has odd white lines that run vertically between the mouth to gill area, which I think may be a breeding identifer as well as the white area running under his belly. The horizontal stripes along his sides though are what I call his "stress stripes" which didn't start to appear until I moved him back into his Cubus (the tank change and move can cause that to happen obviously but they will go away when he feels more at ease). I also have never noticed the tiny black line of dots on his lower under-belly fin, perhaps that's also a breeding sign.

Click to Enlarge

Tail Split Remedy



A ginkgo leaf looks similar to a tail split



After moving my male guppies back into there 10gal aquarium last week I noticed one of my males had a tail split straight down the middle of his tail to the base. Tail splits can occur for many different reasons such as...water parameter changes, fighting, or even getting snagged on aquarium decor. After waiting about 2 days to see if his tail was going to mend itself, it really didn't seem to be so I took a shot at trying to correct the issue.

I decided to pour in a bit of PimaFix (originally I was going to try Melafix but I couldn't locate my bottle of it) into my 10gal aquarium. By the next day I shocked to see that his tail was halfway repaired! So I continued putting in 1-2 capfuls of PimaFix into the aquarium every day (I actually didn't remove the carbon from my filtration either) and in under a week, his tail split was basically gone. Click here to see how it helped my gold barbs in the past as well.

What's PimaFix?
PimaFix's active ingredient is Pimenta Racemosa (1.0% in the API brand I used) which is a bay rum oil that comes from the West Indian bay tree (or bay rum tree) which is part of the myrtle tree family. Common remedy uses for Pimenta Racemosa are for colds, flu's, digestion and insect repellent. PimaFix claims to rapidly treat internal and external fungal infections on fish as it's an anti-fungal product. It also claims to help cottony growth and reddening on fins and body.

Guppy Updates - Updated

My male guppy fry just reached 5 months of age (getting close to full adult hood). They have gained a lot of color in their tails over the last month and have been chasing the females constantly. The males tails are still growing longer at this stage where the females tail growth has basically stopped since last month. The color pattern on the males has definitely been changing and enhancing a lot more in color over the past month. The females appear to look just like their mother. The males have developed an interesting spotted color scheme on their body, similar to that of an endler guppy.

Click to Enlarge (around 5 months of age)

Around 2 months or so ago the Mother guppy gave birth to another female fry. It is common for guppies to give birth without having mated again.

Male Color Description

Half tuxedo body, inherited from the mother I'd assume since she has this characteristic. Possible endler guppy body type with orange spot on the top of head and upper sides of body. A solid pale blue/white stripe which runs all the way down the top of the back. The dorsal fin is pale blue/white and orange at the base. The pectoral fins are also pale blue/white.The caudal fin appears to be an orange color shade and has become more orange this past month where it had looked half yellow before. At this stage the caudal is still in the growing process so I am not sure the outcome of the tail shape yet although it looks like it could become a possible delta or flag shape thus far.

Maturing Guppy Fry

As it's nearing the beginning of May, my guppy fry will then be reaching three months of age, they're currently around half the size of their mother (nearly one inch in length) and I am sure they're going to start growing more rapidly at this stage as they're taking on more food now. I have decided to finally clean out my other 10 gallon aquarium this coming weekend in order to have it setup before the males mature and begin chasing my females around (as I don't want to go overboard on the breeding ordeal right now). It appears about half my fry are male/female this time around. They all look very similar to their mother (showing a tuxedo body) which is slightly disappointing because I was hoping they would show different characteristics in order to better identify what their father looked like (perhaps he was similar to the mother in this case) but this could change in the males as they begin to mature more.