Some Questions

thanks, too long still do

anyway back to fish just looked at tank and noticed one rummie tilting to the side and spreading all its fins like its been electrocuted and its tail where its black has faded a bit and noticed another 1 doing this too but the tail isnt faded , what is this? i will check on internet to for info


edit checked online could be ich but also read that it could be the rummys showing off or something?

My Black phantoms do it all the time, its playfull and a way of sorting out who is (as Sue says) Boss...

That porcupine thing is dropsy. When a fish has that the kindest thing is to put it to sleep.

My green neons get lumpy stomachs when they stuff themselves with food. Is the lumpiness there all the time or just after they've been fed? If it's gone by the next time you feed, it's probably just them stuffing themselves.

Honey gouramis. Are the two swimming in tight cirlces nose to tail? That is more two fish sizing each other up. Or are the two curling their bodies round each other, usually just under a bubble nest? That's mating.
I've had honey gouramis for about 10 years (not the same ones that long!) and the way they mate is the male builds a bubble nest (though I did have one that didn't bother). Then he swims in front ot the female with his nose pointing upwards. At first she'll ingore him, then start to follow him before swimming off. Gradually she'll go nearer and nearer the bubble nest until after 3 or 4 days of this they eventually spawn. They wrap their bodies round each other, and the male tilts the fremale on her back. She releases eggs and he fertilises them. They are both in a sort of stupor after this, the male usually comes out of it first and he dashes round collecting the eggs in his mouth before they sink, and spits them into the bubble nest. By this time the female has come round and if she gets too near, he'll chase her off, rearrange the eggs then go looking for her and they spawn again. Once he decides there enough eggs, he'll not let the female anywhere near his nest, and he'll chase all other fish away. He'll look as though he's going to harm any fish that get near but he usually just chases he doesn't make contact with the other fish. Within a day or two, the other fish will eat all the eggs. When he's chasing one fish, another will sneak in and grab some eggs.

Males get black starting under their mouths and going along the bottom of the body towards the tail. Depending on his colour there might be a lot of black or only a bit. Wild coloured males - that's the colour in the pic in the fish profile - gets a lot of black while the yellow ones only get a few blotches.




Just noticed that the menu at the top of the forum is missing, probably due to the owner trying to get rid of those spam posters. The profiles are still there if you go to just www.thinkfish.co.uk rather than the forum

It was awful over Friday night/Saturday. It was so bad it was hard to spot the genuine posts!
I have my profile set to notify me of any new posts and I was getting emails every few minutes while doing some family history research. I kept reporting them as they cropped up. First a lot of posts in Russian, then posts selling prescription drugs, then the porn posts, including some with photos. Then on Saturday afternoon I had an email from the site owner after I reported one, and he said he was going to close the forum till he could sort it out. He really objected to the porn spam. I presume the missing menu bar is all part of that sorting out. We can still get to the rest of the site by typing just www.thinkfish.co.uk into the address bar.

hi i am thinking of putting in my anti fungus and rin rot med in tank mainly for my rummies fins, where the fins are see through some of the fins are frosted is a way i can describe it, but its not the wool effect of actual fin rot but i am thinking if this will clear the frosted look on the fins?

sorry for the long reply sue, fish fins are see through yes but on the rummies on some of the fins it looks like its frosted, only way i can describe it better is like a steamed up window kind of effect, so i need to use meds yes? just to be sure?

also i had 6 harelquins but i only have 5 now, the smallest one to me looked a different colour to the others and looked slightly white but i thought it was just the shine from the top of the lights in the tank, it was hard to describe but yesterday i noticed 5 so i think its been eaten by now as i cant see it and cant see the bone either, just hope its nothing bad, just wondering why its been eaten i know fish will eat eachother if they are sick but still ....

just seem the same, thanks sue

Nice photo of a bubble nest  Last time you mentioned gouramis, they were honeys - is the bubble nest from honey gouramis? When they spawn, the male is one of the gentlest types of gourami, but the male will still chase the female.

I really don't know about the lumps on the fish. I know it is a symptom of neon tetra disease but you don't have neons so it's not that. It can be food, I managed to feed my fish too much bloodworm a couple of nights ago and their bellies looked awful, and swollen and mis-shaped. I would say one pea for each shoal, so you have a shoal of glowlights and rummies, that's 2 peas; then the gouramis add another pea. If you still have the bolivian rams, one peas for every two of them. Same for bristlenoses.
If I've remembered all your fish right, try 6 peas. If there are any bits of pea left on the bottom after an hour, suck them out with your siphon tube. You only need to take out just enough water to get all the pea out, it shouldn't take much so it won't take as long as a water change 

It's when you have the gouramis in a tank of their own that you have to take the female out if you want to get the eggs to hatch and raise the fry. In a community tank there is no point taking her out as the other fish will eat the eggs before they can hatch. The male will try to chase them away but there will be just too many fish for him to chase off - while he's chasing one fish, another will sneak in.

Gouramis come from water that is a bit stagnant. That's why they evolved to have a labyrinth organ, stagnant water doesn't have as much oxygen as nice clean water so they had to be able to use air to get enough oxygen. The labyrinth organ is a system of hollow bones in the head, they gulp air into this organ then they can get oxygen from it. Even though our tanks have lots of oxygen in the water they can't not gulp air and if you put them in a bag of water and don't leave an air space in the bag, they can actually drown!
Because of the stagnant water, the eggs have to develop near the surface so they get plenty of oxygen too. So males blow bubbles which they coat with something to make them sticky and they clump together. He is the one that makes the bubble nest, then when they spawn they wrap round each other, she lays the eggs and he fertilises them. They are both in a stupor for a few seconds, then he comes out of it first and dashes round sucking the eggs into his mouth and spitting them into the bubbles. They do this several times till the male decides there are enough eggs. Then he'll chase the female away and any other fish that comes near. It is his job to guard the eggs and to catch any that fall out and put them back in the bubbles. If they are in a breeding tank, you take the female out as soon as they've finished laying eggs as breeding tanks are usually small and he might kill or injure her if there isn't enough room for her to get away from the male.
After a few days the eggs hatch but the fry can't swim at first. They hang from the nest with their tails sticking down, and the male makes sure they don't fall out. After a few more days, the fry start to swim and leave the bubble nest, and if they have managed to make it this far they'll get eaten pretty quickly. If they are in a breeding tank, once the fry start to swim you have to take the male out too or he will probably eat them himself.

You have to look very carefully at the bubble nest to see the eggs. The bubbles are see though and the eggs are white-ish and not see though in between the bubbles. They are quite hard to see, I usually have to get a magnifying glass to see them properly. The eggs hatch in 2 or 3 days, and it's a week after the eggs were laid before the fry start swimming. They are very tiny, there is a pic in post 5 here . By the time I found the fry, they were able to swim and the bubble nest had gone. They'd all been eaten by the next day.


Some people have managed to use a breeding net. They put a piece of glass or plastic under the bubbles and carefully slide the bubbles and eggs onto it, then slide them off in the net. There are some problems with this. The eggs and newly hatched fry can fall out of the bubbles but a net is too small to put the male in as well, so there is nothing to put the eggs and fry back. And I have found that gouramis are very good at sucking eggs and fry through net, so any that fall to the bottom will be sucked though and eaten.
Then there's the problem with getting them to grow. I have never managed to keep fry alive more than a couple for weeks. They don't have a labyrinth organ at first, it has to grow and while it's growing the fry have to be kept warm and with very moist air on top of the water. Any colder air getting in will kill the fry, and it is very difficult to feed the fish and do water changes without letting cold air in to the top of the breeding net.

Going to ma now sue is it ok to get rainbow fish ?