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I guess the best option for me is to finely chop the fillets so that the pieces can be spread all around the tank. The reason is that I have a lot of smaller Pseudacanthicus (L24, L25 and spinosus) that are shy eaters at a young age. I may also try the fish spear kebab , but I am not sure the smaller more shy fish will appreciate it.

Thanks

Have a pair 240s that is trying to breed. They have been in the cave for 2-3 days now. Today the male was out and had changed the collour to almost white.
Is your fish also doing this when they comunicate with each other?
Post a photo of them here so you can see.

Have you tried the food from Åleds aquarium? They have frosen mussels that is amazing for predator catfish. I use it for all my cats, and they love it.
Its really easy to brake up in different size and hold the shape until the fish finds it. It will not cloud the water and sink to the bottom fast!

Hi OlePaulsen
As you already know a male and a female sharing space is breeding behaviour. About the pale coloring I assume it is the normal "stress coat", but I am not sure. Maybe C. forsander (he is the real expert)have seen it. I have not seen this coloration except for in cases of fighting or suffocation.

I have borrowed an EOS40D. It is similar to my ruined EOS50D, so I am spending the evenings photographing in my big tank. When and if I get the money I will buy A new camera. Thanks for borrowing me your camera Morten

This is one of my larger females outside the cave of my largest male. The tail of the male can be seen on the right sticking out of his concrete cave:

OlePaulsen wrote: Have you tried the food from Åleds aquarium? They have frosen mussels that is amazing for predator catfish. I use it for all my cats, and they love it.
Its really easy to brake up in different size and hold the shape until the fish finds it. It will not cloud the water and sink to the bottom fast!

It sounds like a very fine food, but unless it is 50kr kg or less I can`t afford it. I have a lot of big catfish, and have to give them something inexpensive. As an example I use a lot of REMA1000 islandic shrimp costing 29,- kg and canned peas. What is the price of food from Åleds aquarium, and where do you buy it?

Haavard Stoere wrote:I want to share what just happened to one of my L240 females as a warning to everyone who keeps Leporacanthicus species.

One of the females was sitting unsheltered in the middle of my tank. From the coloring I could see that she was cyanotic. A small strip of cod fillet was visible in her mouth (I gave my fish strips of cod fillet today.) She obviously tried to get it out, but she couldn't. Because of her poor condition I could easily catch her, and pull out the 4x1cm strip of fish with my fingers. After returning to the tank she hyperventilated for a while, got the black base color back and swam into hiding.

When she was choking her base color was reddish/grey.

I wonder how to safely continue feeding my fish with fillets. Maybe I should use whole fillets for them to chew and scrape from or finely chop the fillets? Do any of you use fish fillets?

I had a similar strange feeding problem with 1 of my L333's a couple of months ago. I often feed them frozen food such as prawns, mussels and squid rings. 1 night I came down a couple of hours after lights out having earlier feed them some squid rings and other bits. As I sat there in the near dark watching, I could see a L333 bumping around the bottom of the tank and for some reason I grabbed a torch and shone it on the L333. The L333 must have swam into a big squid ring and got it stuck under his mouth and over his head, after watching him for about 5mins, I decided he was very distressed and clearly unable to get it off on his own, so after a quick fight I got him out of the tank. He was really discoloured (maybe due to catching him) and the ring was stuck really well, to the point I worried about hurting him trying to break it. Finally I cut it off with a small set of scissors and he swam off to hide in his favourite cave but thankfully he has been OK since. Now I always break all squid rings to stop this happening again!

I bet she is gravid:

Lloydy wrote:Now I always break all squid rings to stop this happening again!

That is a beautiful story:) Thanks for sharing:)

I buy the food at Åleds Aquarium, outside Göteborg.
Its the best aquariumshop i have been in! So clean and lots of nice fish!
Check it out here

http://www.aleds.se

Musslor:
Råprotein 13,8%
Råfett 3.1%
Aske 1,9%
kolhydrater 1.0%

I think i payed around 30-40NKR each.
I use to buy a whole styrophoam box at the time.

Haavard Stoere wrote:I want to share what just happened to one of my L240 females as a warning to everyone who keeps Leporacanthicus species.

One of the females was sitting unsheltered in the middle of my tank. From the coloring I could see that she was cyanotic. A small strip of cod fillet was visible in her mouth (I gave my fish strips of cod fillet today.) She obviously tried to get it out, but she couldn't. Because of her poor condition I could easily catch her, and pull out the 4x1cm strip of fish with my fingers. After returning to the tank she hyperventilated for a while, got the black base color back and swam into hiding.

When she was choking her base color was reddish/grey.

I wonder how to safely continue feeding my fish with fillets. Maybe I should use whole fillets for them to chew and scrape from or finely chop the fillets? Do any of you use fish fillets?

Once, I killed several L91s fry with frozen artemia that got stuck. I've never got the problem before (as far as I know) but I rarely give them fish filets. Just shrimps and shell fish...
Perhaps it's good to give them small parts... But I agree on beeing careful with this!

Very nice photos!!!


Cristoffer

OlePaulsen wrote:I buy the food at Åleds Aquarium, outside Göteborg.
Its the best aquariumshop i have been in! So clean and lots of nice fish!
Check it out here

http://www.aleds.se

Musslor:
Råprotein 13,8%
Råfett 3.1%
Aske 1,9%
kolhydrater 1.0%

I think i payed around 30-40NKR each.
I use to buy a whole styrophoam box at the time.

Have you tried to make this you're self? I make my own food among with wafles, shrimpis... It's works very fine and the fihes just love it. It's makes the water a but unclean, but I use small fishes and shrimpis to take care of the leavings...

You can decide you're self if you whant to have carnevore ore herbivore food....
And for you guyes who lives in norway, you can catch fish without any cost... I use fresh water fish as Zander, Salmon, Pike....
You can also find spirulina puder and multivitamins at a low cost: www.gymgrossisten.se

Cristoffer

Cristoffer Forssander wrote:

OlePaulsen wrote:Have you tried to make this you're self?

Yeah, I have made a few different mixes, but find it easier not to mix the ingredients into a pulp. Not so much because of the pollution thing as the extra work. It is so easy to open a can of peas and distribute them around the tanks or pull out a bunch of whole Icelandic shrimps. With the shrimps I just cut of the rostrum and pull off some of the extremities. I am not saying that whole foods are better for the fish than procecced food. It is more about what lazy me prefer.

About the fish fillets I think I will try to send them through the foodprosessor and freeze them into 1cm plates. Alternatively chop the fish with a knife.

OlePaulsen wrote: I think i payed around 30-40NKR each.
I use to buy a whole styrophoam box at the time.

300-400kr kg. is to expensive for me. I have a lot of fish to feed.

Mix in a mill

20% fish
20% shrimps/other
60% weggies, broccoli, carrots, spenat, greean peas and so on...

Use 10- 15 % oat flakes with water to make it soft. (makes the food stay together)

Add multivitamins and spirulina powder.

Mix it all in the mill and place it in plastic zip bags! The its just to put it in the freezer and break the pieces you whant.

You can always add some black mosquito larves after mixing!

This is not expesive, but there is a lot to buy at once. Make sure that everything deforst befor mixing it.
I go to the supermarket Willys... I don't know if you have this in Norway, but I promise that this is the the cheapest way to give the fishes good food. And you can always change the composition to adapt the food for a particular species.


Cristoffer

A small question on the self food making issue.
You say defrost well before making, so the fish is already been frozen ones. And after preparing you freeze is again? I've always learned you can't freeze something twice because of the bacteria. Or is this only for human consumption?

Sorry for asking, it may sound stupid

I guess human beings are getting a bit "fragile" (and would I say assigned to follow the consumption rules)... But if you defrost a fish, you prepare it and mix it together with good ingredients, to finally (and shortly after) refrost it for easier conditionning, it won't be so terrible. What do you think ?

Of course, I wouldn't let it out of the fridge during several days, on a table under a hot sun with flies on it But prepared like this, I guess it's without any problem. I did it often, and my fish don't seem that bad these days

Thanks for that. I guess if it's kept cool and made in a short time it wont harm anyone or any fish.

Have you ever dropt a piece of fish food and overlooked it for some days?? I have...... Eeck I would not eat that in a million years. It smels horrible

As ElTofi says, it's all about how warm it gets. If you keep it below 4'C, there will be extremely small amount of bacteria growth. One of the problems with defrosting if you are NOT using a microwave or some such, is that it takes quite a while, so the outside of the stuff being defrosted will get quite warm [relatively speaking, e.g. 15-20'C], and the inside is still frozen. It helps if the frozen fish (etc) is small/thin pieces.

I'd probably also not defrost it too thoroughly - a blender/food processor is quite capable of chopping semi-frozen fish into small bits - as long as it's not all completely solid of course.

--
Mats

Could this large gravid female actually be a male?


It has takes residency in a large concrete cave of its own, and looking at the snout it seems very masculine. It would be good news if I had a third male with both eyes intact.

Yes, It could actually be a male, but I can't be sure on that photo. But there are spines around the snout and I thought that the snout was a bit broad. But I'm not saying that this is a male, but it could be!


Cristoffer

jac wrote:A small question on the self food making issue.
You say defrost well before making, so the fish is already been frozen ones. And after preparing you freeze is again? I've always learned you can't freeze something twice because of the bacteria. Or is this only for human consumption?

Sorry for asking, it may sound stupid

Its hard to mix it in the mill if it's frozen. And hard to mix the ingrediences.
I've never had any problem with the food. Make sure that everything that you use to make the food is clean and freez the food again as soon as possible...

I'ts not a stupid question.... but I haven't solved this in another way.

I don't think the risk for bacterias is that high.

Cristoffer

The juveniles are almost 10 weeks old:

Nice pic!

Do you're juviniles display different amont of spots and size of spots?


Cristoffer

Nice looking juvies.

Cristoffer Forssander wrote:Nice pic!
Do you're juviniles display different amont of spots and size of spots?
Cristoffer

The spots are quite similar in both amount and size.

The biggest of the two one eyed males has had a female visitot comming and leaving the last few days. I bet the eggs will be laid before the end of the year. Hopefully I will have better survival rates this time. It would be cool as there are quite a few people who wants to buy.

The large L240 on the previous page is a male.

I have had one spawn. They hatched 5 days ago and only 4 survived. It was a really bad clutch of eggs. I swear it wasn`t my fault.
One of the females is visiting the one eyed male. It is another female than the previous, so very soon I will have two breeding females in the group.

Very cool. Can't wait to hear about the results. They're probably still going through new parent syndrome, so hopefully they get their act together for the next clutch.

can you please add me to the list of people that want to buy? I would love to have another of these awesome fish!

Great thread!!Congratulations.I have found all this information very helpful as i have just put together a group of 10 large adult L-240 in a 5x3x2 foot tank.Thanks again,keep up the good work.

lethalcustoms00 wrote:can you please add me to the list of people that want to buy? I would love to have another of these awesome fish!

My fish are for sale Not sure where you live though.

hotplecogirl wrote:Great thread!!Congratulations.I have found all this information very helpful as i have just put together a group of 10 large adult L-240 in a 5x3x2 foot tank.Thanks again,keep up the good work.

Its a beautiful species, and I am sure you will succeed in your quest

This has been a very good fish breeding season so far. Today I harvested a cluch of around 200 eggs from The 240s. I hope the eggs are better than last time. I will post pictures of this attempt.

Haavard Stoere wrote:

lethalcustoms00 wrote:can you please add me to the list of people that want to buy? I would love to have another of these awesome fish!

My fish are for sale Not sure where you live though.

Town of Gillette, State of Wyoming, USA (unless I completely misread the "location").

I have a feeling cost of shipping will be quite high (and risky, I've had more than shipment to/from the US get delayed by more than a day).

That's about 2000 miles west of New York, if that means more to you...

--
Mats