PlanetCatfish.com

hey guys
after working 12 hours at the LFS for 10 dollars an hour i decided to use the money i earned to get some foerschi whiptails
i got 3 and all of them seem to be 10-15 cm long
i put the 3 in an aquastart 500 tank.
i do know this tank might be a bit too small to house them, but i plan to put them in my fluval vicenza 180 tank after it cycles with a few L002 and a few peppermint bristlenoses

what should i feed them??
i started feeding them with Sera catfish wafers
do they have an omnivorous side to them? i am not sure because i dont know their scientific name-but i know its a rinoloricaria fish
i will get a pic of these fish because they dont move that much which makes them very cooperative!!

and do the males show their bristles when the conditions are right and they are fed well etc.? because none of them have the bristles

This is likely the fish known as LG6 or Loricariinae sp.(1). Despite what the record says it has been bred many times.

oh ok thanks mummy monkey-could you perhaps answer the other questions in the first post too??

I guess the cat-elog needs updating about the breeding as one of the pics shows a pair with eggs.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... ge_id=9514

ok just searched through the internet and found some answers. the only answer i found was it isnt a rinoloricaria species and one on scotcat about a breeding experience. because when i typed in foerschi whiptail it only came up as forum posts on this wbesite and others just about identification
LG6 came up with technical crap
and loricariinae sp.(1) came up with the catelog and not much of others
so could anyone help me?? i want these fish to live happy livesbecause they were expensive

I'm guessing you've already seen this thread, but do the fish pictured by Ben Moore match your fish?

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... hp?p=95375

Also, the breeding account on Scotcat is by Graham Ramsay (mummymonkey), so his account that this species prefers meaty foods, but is "messy" so needs regular water changing, can be trusted, if it's the same fish. Pictures of your fish would help (but not me- a whiptail's a whiptail to me!).

ok will do carp and i will try to read grahams article on scotcat more carefully.
these fish do look like the fish in the catelog but i guarantee you guys these photos wont be good
im not a good photographer and i only have a 3.2 megapixel camera

like i said really crap photos this is the best few i can get
using my camera phone


but im still very confident that these are LG6 Loricariinae sp.(1)

[Mod edit: Fix image links ... --Mats]

I can't tell what that is from the photos - it looks like your camera isn't capable of focusing that closely.

--
Mats

Don,
Does your camera have a "macro" setting? It's really helpful. I have a very inexpensive camera, but it has a macro setting. It has a little flower icon for close-up photos. It makes all the difference.

I have a trio of . They look a little bit similar to you have, but I can't be sure. They threaten to breed every now and again. They are omnivorous, towards veggie. But, they never sneer at meaty tidbits. Their tank is next to a sunny window. The glass is very clean and the plants grow nicely. Mine love the Sera catfish chips. I alternate that with sinking pellets, such as spirulina or brine shrimp and a once-weekly feeding of brine shrimp, frozen daphnia or blood worms. I also give them a day off from food during the week. Enjoy them!
Amanda

hey guys sorry about the images.
i am using my camera phone right now because my sis lost the camera charger for the best camera in the house
but i do belive it is boxing day tomorrow and my mum wants to buy a digital camera so i found a 12 megapixel camera through some junk mail and found her a camera i think by tomorrow i might be ablr to post a good picture-not guaranteed though

and before i started the thread my first thoughts on these fish where the rineloricaria eigenammi thats why i said before:

DJ-don wrote:i am not sure because i dont know their scientific name-but i know its a rineloricaria fish

but i really see no difference between the LG6 and Rineloricaria-but my thoughts are my fish are LG6 because their "skin" colour is more a lighter coloured but the rineloricaria seemed to be a bit more red

hi there,
i keep them in a 30L tank with 120-150 microsiemens, no heater (24°C) they lay eggs like chicken !!! i still got about 50 young ones vom 1.5-8cm length...


but they are not often sold! feed them any sera tablets spirulina flakes might be fine...some cyclops to generate eggs will be good too. soft water is needet to breed otherwise nothing goes...

here it is in german:
http://www.welse.net/SEITEN/lg6.htm

farid

Farid wrote:hi there,
i keep them in a 30L tank with 120-150 microsiemens, no heater (24°C) they lay eggs like chicken !!! i still got about 50 young ones vom 1.5-8cm length...

but they are not often sold! feed them any sera tablets spirulina flakes might be fine...some cyclops to generate eggs will be good too. soft water is needet to breed otherwise nothing goes...

farid

thanks farid for that. just some questions though.
1. what is microsiemens?
2. what are cyclops?

i actually might have to check our water from our taps to check what the hardness is. some canberrens say its softer but some say its harder (water in australia i guess is quite messed up because of the drought and all)

3. if my water is too hard (i dont think so. afetr a weekly water change they lay eggs), how do you soften it? doesnt it change pH?

MicroSiemens is a measurement of electrical conductivity (EC). It is essentially the opposite of ohms (electrical resistance), and Siemens corresponds to 1/Ohm. So if you have something with a resistance of 20 Ohm, then it has a conductivity of 0.05, or 50 millisiemens.

When used for water, it is technically microsiemens (or millisiemens) per centimeter [just like any other resistance/conductivity, it is related to the distance the electricity travels through whatever media it is travelling].

Electrical conductivity in water is another way to tell how hard/soft the water is [1] - another measurement is total dissolved solids, TDS in parts per million (ppm) aka mg/l. 1 ppm TDS is approximately 1.6 to 2 microsiemens, so Farid's TDS level is around 60-100 ppm.

You can buy a meter for TDS or EC [it's essentially the same meter for both, just with a different scaling factor] - here in the UK they cost about 15-20 pounds depending on supplier/model, etc.

[1] Well, technically, we can have high conductivity with soft water (because whatever minerals are dissolved in the water aren't what counts as hardness, e.g. Calcium Sulphate, Sodium Chloride etc), but it's impossible to have hard water and low conductivity.

Cyclops is a small water-creature, often given as a live or frozen food.

--
Mats

They indeed look like LG6 whiptails. Our fish shops here generally just import them as plain old whiptails which is why the confusion.

In comparison to other whiptails, they do like a little bit of meaty foods but it doesn't have to be specialised. Bit of occasional bloodworm or similar for a treat, but on the whole they do quite well with a good quality flake, hikari algae wafers, and cucumber. I prefer the cucumber over zuchinni only because it is cheaper and I feed a lot of plecos. LG6 will eat pretty much anything and they will never starve thats for sure.

They can tolerate a reasonable range of temps and ph but they do well for me in 24-26C and pH of 6 to 7.
Mine were breeding quite regular until our hot summer arrived and although not exactly stressed, they have stopped breeding for a little while. Some days the tank temp can rise to as much as 30C which although I haven't had any deaths they weren't too happy as most whiptails like the temp around 24-26C.

They do like a good amount of oxygen and current in the tank and this can be provided with an internal power filter and sponge filter. On my 4ft tank, I also have a canister.
LG6 will seldom cave, preferring to just hang out on the glass sides.
I keep my colony with L066 plecos in a 4ft tank as they seem to like similar foods.

They lay around 70ish eggs on the glass and the male will tend them for around 6 days before they hatch. Each fry will be assisted in hatching by the male individually over several hours. Fry don't really have an egg sac like plecos but they may still take a day or two to feed.

You can steal the eggs and artificially hatch them in an egg tumbler, or you can watch the eggs with dad closely and at the express moment they hatch, siphon the fry out with an airline hose and dump them in a frysaver in the tank. Fry will seldom survive in the main tank for some reason and its best to raise them up a bit in a fry saver. Note: the fry are tiny and can wriggle through an ordinary coarse sponge so cover it with a bit of filter wool or something first.

Although adults do like some meat content in their diet, tiny fry are just happy to nibble on algae, veges and very tiny bits of powdered foods. I used just about anything that came to hand and ground it to a powder for them. Artemia cycsts, dried cyclops, algae wafers, fry liquid, fry powder. They usually go for anything at all. Just be pretty lousy with the feeding, overfeeding and fouling the saver is the biggest killer of fry.

thanks for the help brengun!
these fish definetley look like my whiptails so i guess they are LG6!!

is there a way to tell the sexes of fish?

Girls get the fat belly like the one in the bag photo at a fairly early age so thats the best way.
Boys eventually get a few cheek hairs but no where near as hairy as a mature royal whiptail male does.

Brengun wrote:Girls get the fat belly like the one in the bag photo at a fairly early age so thats the best way.
Boys eventually get a few cheek hairs but no where near as hairy as a mature royal whiptail male does.

the male will show the cheek hairs when ready to breed or conditioned right? as i can see there isnt any cheek bristles on any of them

Males usually pick a good spot in the tank and defend it, then its up to the ladies to come visit.

mummymonkey wrote:Despite what the record says it has been bred many times.

I'll change that over the next couple of days, but, any more details especially around fry raising would be good to add too.

Jools