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I couldn't agree more! they are really great, for anyone reading this there seems to be a guy called Keith there who is the one to talk to. Really helpful and knowledgeable. Wooki how have you found the cuneovirgata? do they seem to socialise with the alternans? These are great pictures.

I did. I have seven of these now all from wildwoods. They're really cool fish, I haven't kept regular kuhlis for comparison but as far as I can tell these ones are more or less identical in terms of behaviour just significantly smaller. They're quite shy and tend to spend most of the day in...

Actually here's where you can buy both adult and tadpole Xenopus tropicalis in the UK Xenopus resource Could be cool to raise one or two from tadpoles.

There's also Xenopus/Silurana tropicalis which is a little larger and more robust than african dwarf frogs but much smaller than Xenopus laevis and can be kept safely with fish that are too large to fit in its mouth. 28mm - 55mm snout to vent with females being larger than the males. I don't...

There's a lot of pretty contradictory information out there about whitespot too with some sources saying that it's always present at background levels in a tank and only becomes a problem when fish are stressed or their immune systems compromised and others saying the opposite. Also a lot of...

This species is too small and fast moving for the only camera I have available to me right now to focus on them, I just get blurry flashes of blue. But the second white dot has also gone this morning. I'm wondering if this is actually some kind of copepod that's attacking the fish, or rarely...

About a month ago I finally got ahold of some sundanio axelrodi that I had been after for a while, I posted about them because one of them was in extremely poor health when I got them and died very quickly. It was a male and appeared to have some kind of parasite and/or fungal infection that...

If you don't absolutely have your heart set on fish then you might also consider Bombina orientalis and Occidozyga lima. You'd want to have lower water levels though in both cases which would mean more of a riparian scape with floating plants and emergent pieces of driftwood for the frogs to...

I don't know much about sparkling gouramis but this is a really nice and natural looking tank. Looks like a perfect slice taken out of a slow flowing river margin and I've always found it easier to make a tank look nice than it is to make a tank look natural and nice.

Just a tip for anyone looking for female dario dario that happens to read this thread - Wildwoods aquatics in enfield told me on the phone today that they have a new supplier that provides them with even numbers of male and female dario dario that are captive bred and readily accepting frozen...

I will be sure to keep you posted if I find some. Found a guy in Scotland who can get fish from aquarium glaser in germany but glaser just informed me they stopped carrying these guys two weeks ago. Kew aquatics don't have them on their indonesian import list either and said the best bet is just...

can't thank you enough for this!

Anybody keeping these dwarf kuhli loaches? or ever seen them avialable in the UK? It seems that the wholesaler aquariumglaser sells them, does anybody know of UK suppliers that are able to source fish from them?

Sorry to hear about the fish. It's hard to imagine this damage was done directly by another sprakling gourami though. Is it possible there's something sharp in the aquarium that she rammed into when she was being pursued by a male? I've started sanding down lava rock before I use it in my badis...

Food for thought. I should maybe try seeing how mine respond to slightly cooler temps. I do the same thing with my geckos in terms of creating seasonal fluctuations in day length, temps and moisture but I hadn't really considered that the fish might benefit from it too. Can you elaborate at all...

Those temperatures are at the lower end of the range I've seen proposed for them right? Do you adjust it to mimic natural seasonal changes or have you found some advantage to keeping them on the cooler end of things? Do you notice their behaviour change much after mating? In my experience pairs...

For anyone interested I did a proper inventory of a full batch of fry. From a single mature pair with constant access to various live food at a temperature of 23c in very soft slightly acidic water, 73 fry have matured to a point where their sex can be determined with a high degree of...

I wish i could like this post more than once. I couldn't agree more.

Eventually I really must branch out into keeping these beauties and I'd really like to get D. hysignon again too. I've also heard that females of D.tigris are easier to come by and several shops when I was looking for female dario told me they'd never seen one but that they could supply pairs of...

Not the best picture but check out the pectoral fins on this little guy! They're never usually this long and he's not even fully mature yet, I would expect him to colour up more as he grows and has the opportunity to establish his own territory.

I suspect that more of our fish are still wild caught than people might like to imagine but it's not as ethically black and white as we might tend to think either. Here's a couple of interesting articles on the topic "Buy a fish, Save a tree" Discover Magazine "Saving the Rainforest, One pet...

I was finally able to trade some of my scarlet badis for 9 sundanio axelrodi. I got nine sundanio, 6 females and 3 males, but one of the males was clearly diseased and passed away within 24 hours. It was suffering from fin rot on the tail fin and 3 small white masses were evident on its body...

This has also been my experience with scarlet badis. Fry and juveniles up to a certain size like to hide in thick moss regardless of depth, and even very close to the surface, but once mature they tend to stay low around the substrate. Adult males seem to love nothing more than caves created by...

That's really fascinating that you've noticed the same thing with females being marked after pairing in D. tigris and an amazing tank too!

I think the best answer I can give for D. dario is that If the males are ABLE to effectively defend a territory then they will do so quite aggressively. I think hardscape may play a role as well as stocking density. At high densities the males will still occasionally chase one another a little...

I'm not too sure about at exactly what density their aggression becomes significantly 'diluted' but I also have no experience with D.tigris. I have kept a dario species that was sold to me as D. hysignon 'melon red badis' and it was much more aggressive in general than I have experienced D...

Just a point of clarification on the term 'sub dominant males' too - I use this term myself out of habit but it's probably not really accurate. I have maybe 50+ males right now and not one of them is grey or totally lacking in colour like we tend to see in the shops. This is either a consequence...

The first one looks female to me but that second picture looks like it could turn out to be a male. If you have males then one of the surest ways to tell would be to put it in a small tank with a male for temporary observation. Females will intermittently flash dark stripes when the males are...

If you do bring some Opheodrys vernalis and Lepidobatrachus llanensis with you and we can do a swap! You have access to so many cool species that we can't get over here.

Let me just reiterate as well that I have confirmed pairs available for trade or enitrely free of charge if anyone is willing to collect them in person or meet me at helensburgh train station.

I can tell you that with large numbers of them in the same tank the males behaviour is quite different. They largely abandon efforts to establish and defend a territory and pester the females far more than they do other males. The opposite was true when I've put only two males in a tank. They...

I've observed a fairly even distribution of males and females in the batches of fry I've raised. If anything there's probably slightly more females than males. One thing I did notice was that you can tell the sexes apart earlier than I expected and males will begin to show colour when they're...

I eventually managed to find a single female in a fresh batch of imports and have since had a lot of success breeding these - I'm literally giving them away for free so consider moving to Scotland. Here's a video of some of mine just for reference in your hunt for females. It's useful to see...

I spent a good while looking for these not long ago, they were another fish along with female scarlet badis that proved quite hard to find in the UK but which was common in Germany when I was over there. If you manage to find any I'd love to hear about your attempts breeding them. I recently...

I've been struggling to get all my scarlet badis fry to accept frozen foods but I've been able to wean them all onto decapsulated brine shrimp eggs which have the convenience of being a dry food while also offering pretty good nutritional value. I'm hoping to now get them transitioned from...

Very nice. You hoping to breed them then? I bet the males territorial displays will be impressive. Have you found it tricky to get them to accept non live food?

I'm a huge fan of badis! I've got more than 30 Dario dario at the moment!. Have you got a pair of these?

I've got 30+ grown on scarlet badis fry now that are eating all the same foods as the adults but actually they can eat much larger daphnia and moina than I expected even when they are still very small - they just keep chewing them and spitting them back out until they're compressed enough for...

roughly how old do you reckon that one is? would be good to have some sense of how quickly they develop.

This is the best picture I've been able to get of one of the fry so far but it's becoming easier as they are now free swimming. It's the tiny little thing above the ramshorn at the edge of the wood. The young growth of fissidens fontanus gives you some sense of scale and if you look closely you...

There used to be a shop in Edinburgh, it's closed down now, that for whatever reason would sometimes have incredibly rare fish without really knowing what they were or how rare they were. I didn't fully appreciate it at the time but they used to get a lot of rare Hisonotus somehow. I would...

Really interesting thread. I've found with some shoaling fish that there's a sweet spot of flow where they're most active. Boraras seem to like very little flow but are much, much less active when there is no flow at all. I believe this is because they feel much more vulnerable when they are the...

Here's a video of the rotifers I'm talking about. I can harvest this amount several times a day or as often as needed from a worm culture no larger than a thick book and all that's necessary to keep it going is to pour out and replace the water about once a week and sprinkle a little oat flour...

I've got a lot more fry than I realised, I've been leaving the tank alone other than feeding but I weeded out some floaters today and there were loads of fry hanging out along the back wall that were just hard to see because of the black background. Some of us have been discussing culturing...

I'm keeping them more or less the same way @dw1305 does in his buckets. I've got them in a plastic tub with java moss, some fallen beech leaves, a little bit of cuttlebone and some snails. I've tossed some algae from my vivarium in there as well as the odd bit of food I make for my shrimps and...

Got a picture of my female while she was up against the front glass that shows the black bars that can be present on the females quite well, as well as the little flashes of blue iridescence that they can display. It's actually incredible how quickly they can make these black bars appear and...

I've not ordered from this company before but before I was able to source my female from riverpark aquatics I was in contact with them and they did claim to be able to get female scarlet badis. I think it's entirely possible that they have actually made an effort to do so based on my harassment...

Depends who you ask and I'm guessing whether they are wild caught or not. I've seen reports of people even being able to gradually wean them onto flake foods but it seems to be very rare and they might actually just be seeing them take the occasional nibble and assuming they are subsisting on it...

The owner of aquasnack uk told me he used to breed them and I think he said about six months.

Those pictures are great @MirandaB but mine are still only a few mm long, barely bigger than baby shrimp, so it's hard to make a comparison. I can't get pictures yet because they hide the minute the light comes on. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I'm glad that I've got such a reliable...

I am totally convinced that providing them too much live food gave the amanos, and berried females in particular, a taste for flesh. This NEVER happened when I was feeding the boraras flake food and the shrimp vegetable based foods. I was always still feeding the shrimp various algae based...

That would be really cool Miranda. I've got a better look at them this morning and I'm not sure they actually have stripes after all, might have just been shadows from the floater roots. It would be great to have something to compare them too.

I've got a lot of fry in my tank at the moment. I don't know whether they are from Boraras maculatus or the pair of scarlet badis but I have some extremely aggressive amano shrimp in there and the fry are way too fast for them. The amanos prey on vulnerable cherries after moulting and I even put...

hmmmm...... maybe they are boraras fry after all.

Did you notice the fry had stripes? There were four of them that darted away to hide in moss when the light came on today and they're still tiny but all looked kind of stripey to me.

Saw my first fry today, can't be absolutely certain whether it was a badis fry because there's also boraras in there but it had looked like it had stripes so I'm thinking badis.

This looks like a female to me. Here's an old picture of my female Tiger badis for comparison. I witnessed my Scarlet badis pair mating the other night so I'm hopeful I may have some fry soon too.

Amazing! that looks quite well developed too, how old do you reckon it is? Did you notice them guarding the eggs or any other behaviour that might have tipped you off or were these a total surprise? I'd love to see some pictures of your set up for the pairs miranda just so I know what definitely...

I introduced my female to a male yesterday and I was very interested to see that she had a very strong reaction to him. Even when he was still floating in a bag she recognised him almost immediately and watched him intently the entire time he was acclimating, they've been moving around the tank...

@OmlettG you are part of a very, very exclusive club now. I'd like to help anyone trying to breed these fish in the UK anyway I can so if you want just PM me your address and I'll send you starter cultures of Moina macrocopa/micrura and Chlorella vulgaris for free. Moina can be a really useful...

I don't understand what you mean, two around 7/8? If the fish in the picture has shown grey stripes I'd say with a very high degree of certainty that it's a female, I've never seen a male with dark stripes and I've never seen a female without them. I don't think there is much reason to be...

That looks like a female to me. I think the fact that juveniles don't necessarily display their adult colours makes it particularly hard to tell from photos though. @MirandaB gave me a good tip about the females head looking a little different in profile and slightly less pointed. Does it ever...

£5. Not bad considering I've offered more than £100 for a female D. dario recently and been quite understandably refused. I am going to spoil this fish. She's still quite small and maybe a little underweight so I'm going to condition her for a while but once she's paired up and healthy I will...

I'm certainly going to do everything in my power to breed them. I need to hope I can keep this one happy and healthy but she's eating well and exploring her tank a lot today so I'm hopeful. There's another member here that has some pairs they're trying to breed too. One way or another I think...

@dw1305 @lazybones51 @Tim Harrison Gents you three all also expressed an interested here in getting ahold of females so this is just a heads up that I was finally able to acquire a definite female yesterday from 'riverparkaquatics' on ebay. They got a small batch in and said there were two...

Just to add that I still feel terrible about what happened to the D. hysignon male - don't ever keep these species together, D. dario is much more aggressive and, even if they're not at first, can eventually become so and are well able to harass even larger fish that they don't like the look of...

and the killer D. dario He started off as the most pathetic little malnourished transparent runt imaginable at the LFS but became an absolute monster.

appreciate the tip! I actually had a pair of Dario Hysignon a few years ago and the difference between male and female was very apparent. I made a terrible mistake with this pair and had them temporarily in the same tank as a much smaller surplus male Dario dario that had been sold to me as a...

No luck with the adults in a seperate breeding tank so I'm going back to the drawing board. they're back in the main tank and I'm going to condition them for a couple of weeks with the microworms I bought then try them in the breeding tank again. I've also reduced the temperature in the main...

Damn. I was just about to link you to a website where I thought I'd found a promising lead on cultivating specifically diatoms - "www.sciento.co.uk". It looks like they've shut down since I posted my first message in this thread though which is a real tragedy. They had some cool stuff available...

Was wondering whether you had some method for cultivating diatoms specifically as opposed to other kinds of algae

also interested in buying fry from you.

Incredible, looks like you really do have a female! I'll give you £100 for that fish if you ever change your mind and want to sell it.

Given much thought to how you would cultivate diatoms? I've been thinking about this too.

If you watch this one 480p and full screen you can see the clouds of individual infusorians fairly well. I have no idea whether they might be rotifers or paramecium or something else entirely, they were extracted from water vacuumed from the main aquarium and cultured here on hay sold for use as...

If anyone is curious, and for the benefit of anyone reading this and planning to attempt something similar, here are some videos of what I've set up as well as some of the cultures I'll be using for the fry.

So I've added to the plastic tank 5L of fresh dechlorinated and naturally very soft tap water, 8 litres of distilled water, and I'll add the fish along with about 5L of their tank water and obviously acclimate them slowly. It's all going to stand for 24 hours before I add the fish and there's...

So today I've set up a roughly 20L plastic storage tub with mixed aged oak and beech leaves covering the bottom, some live Sphagnum cupidatum that has been growing submerged and Pistia Stratiotes floating plants. There are no shrimp or snails and I've filled it with distilled water. I'm...

I think that's exactly what I'm going to do, maybe just in a plastic box with a heater and plenty of leaf litter. There's way too many red ramshorn in there, if they really do eat the eggs they wont stand a chance. I want rid of the ramshorns anyway, I'm hoping that in the longer term, if i...

I've just ordered some alder cones and a few microworm cultures. Any idea whether the snails and shrimp will eat the eggs?

I have seven Boraras maculatus that I'm trying to breed without any success so far. The group actually managed to produce a single fry that grew to maturity once before without any effort on my part but now that I'm doing everything I can to get them to breed I'm not having much luck and I have...

I'm going to branch out and start making enquiries on tinder "seeking a female for breeding, any female, swipe left unless you're a tiny percoid fish called Dario dario" Got any tips for identifying females? Can you recall at roughly what size/age sex becomes apparent in this species?

what a tease. Alright, next phase of my plan will be to start knocking on doors in Norwich.

Jokes aside I do actually wonder if they're being bred in some way that disproportinately produces males. Maybe with hormones or altered temperatures as with some reptiles? I'm pursuing all the leads that have cropped up in this thread so thanks everyone.

I could probably arrange to have them imported from Germany but it will be insanely expensive for just one or even a few fish. I looked at importing a 5cm long gecko from germany last year and it was going to cost £1000 even before brexit. This is why I'm so keen to find out why they're not...

The most frustrating part about this is that it must actually be really time consuming for someone to filter out 100% of the females from imports coming to the UK as it really does seem that not even 1/50 manages to slip through with all the immature males. Every single scarlet badis I have ever...

I really wish I could figure out why they aren't available in this country, it was so bizarre seeing them everywhere in Germany. I literally never found a single shop where Dario dario was avaiable that didn't have a roughly even ratio of males to females. If Brexit and covid didn't complicate...

I'm trying to work out why these essentially don't exist in the UK. I have been trying to find one for years without any luck, I've even driven cross country on more than one occasion to buy a 'female' from a shop that's been adamant they have them only ever to find unambiguously sub dominant...

Castle I understand the best way to determine sex before maturity other than by their behaviour, is that actual females will never have ANY red striping on the body, especially when sub-adult. Fully mature females may develop some darker stripes or a reddish tint to certain areas but never the...

AlbaAquarist, I'm embarassed not to be able to give you better information on the water. I keep them relatively cool at 21/22c and would plan on raising that a little once they're in breeding condition - I understand the females get quite plump. I have well water rather than mains and it's...

I plan to try and breed these. Right now I have two Dario Hysginon, I believe they are a male and female pair, and a single male Dario dario. I've been searching for a few months now for female Dario dario with no luck whatsoever. The male who I found on his own amongst a huge shoal of tetras in...

how big a tank do you keep them in papa cee? I've never tried letting them just forage for their own food but I'm curious about how much space is required to provide the amount of algae and 'aufwuchs' they need to thrive. I suppose surface area available for grazing is more important than volume.

I second repashy gel foods for ottocinclus, I have used supergreen rather than soylent green but I've read that either will work. Some people definitely believe the extra protein in soylent green is beneficial for ottocinclus but others seem to disagree. I've only used supergreen which is...

Just thought I'd add to this thread for anyone interested in ottos who might read it that my experience with this fish suggests they're not exclusively vegetarian as a lot of material suggests. My O. affinis definitely eat baby brine shrimp as well as their usual cucumber and the native algae in...

I understand Tyne Valley can ship, I haven't used them but they look pretty good and they have mosquito rasboras. Galaxy rasboras are pretty common, if you bide your time I bet some pop up in one of your locals.

Boraras uropthalmoides is my favorite nano fish, you could keep quite a large group in a 50l. They're great to watch, mine tend to do their own thing most of the time but sometimes form a very tight group when I feed them. When they're happy and healthy these fish have really beautiful colors...

I'd love some zebras but I don't fancy my chances of finding any around Edinburgh and it seems like otos by mail order might be a bit risky on account of their delicate nature. 90% of the time when I see affinis or macrospilus in edinburgh they're half dead already and it's pretty slim pickings...

I've not noticed them going for wood yet but they do seem to have a go at more mature clado algae that my affinis don't seem interested in, the biggest difference I can see is that they seem more calm and less skittery than my others. what do you mean blah way more than normal ottos? how big are...

Managed to acquire sone of these from my LFS and as they seem to be much rarer than most Otocinclus, I thought I'd give the members here a heads up that there are still some available from Water Wonders on Gorgie road in Edinburgh. The reason I've listed both names is that some people catfish...

This reminds me of toad stones and although most accounts of these are pretty questionable, some are hard to dismiss. I also know of a coke can that with no holes other than that which you drink from was found during a voluntary rubbish clean up to contain a fully grown, extremely fat and...