- 1x 55-gallon tank;
- 1x black lacquer stand;
- 1x fluorescent "hood" (light fixture&glass/plastic tank cover)
- 1X Rena XP3 cannister filter
- 1x Visitherm "Stealth" 250W submersible heater
- 1x Penn Plax "Silent Air" X5 air pump
- 1x Penn Plax "Silent Air" X3 air pump
- 2x Rena "Micro Bubbler" ceramic air stone
- Various check valves, airline controllers, T and L connectors
- 30+ feet of airline tubing
- 50 lbs. "Reef Rock" by Carib Sea (dead coral)
- 20 lbs. "Eco Complete African Cichlid Substrate" by Carib Sea
- 1x jumbo sack of crushed coral
- 2x thermometer
- 1x kitchen spoons
- 1x deluxe water test kit
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Equipment List (DRAFT)
Tank equipment list:
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
baby madness
I'm not sure how much more planning I can plan without knowing a bit more about how to use DWeaver...in short, not until I get my hands more dirty-like.
So, for lack of any better ideas, I'll throw in another scintillating fish-story from the vaults. I hope that I'll be able to extract content from this both for the "fish-diary" section and the "about the saulosi as a species" section.
Ps. Saulosi, and indeed all the rock-dwelling fish of Lake Malawi are known as mouth-brooders. This means that they breed, or spawn, in a most unusual way. When its mating time for two lucky fish of one species, they generally circle each other closely. (Prior to this they perform a lot of chasing and odd movements that happen at no other time, including an odd vibrating move by the male that looks a lot like that breakdance move simulating the effect of an electric shock.) So while closely circling, the female releases some eggs and the male quickly follows around and fertilizes them with his milt (as it is known for fish). As quickly as this happens, the female then circles back and gobbles up the fertilized eggs and holds them in her mouth where they will stay safe and sound for about two weeks.
If you think that with a mouthful of eggs the female would have a tough time eating then I would agree with you. I've read that females cannot eat during this period, and when I got my first holding female on 8/16/07 I began observing her closely. Saulosi, especially the females and subdominant males, tend to school or shoal together but the "holding" female was keeping to herself and chilling amongst some rocks, out of sight. When I fed the group, she would come out and cruise around, nipping up to grab food but not actually opening her mouth to eat. I'll admit, I was feeling bad for her. I began crushing the food up into a powder, hoping to tempt her to eat. My secret agenda was for her -- by eating -- to forsake her brood. I didn't and don't want a bunch of baby fish in the tank because I planned the population to be a certain ideal size to minimize maintenance, ie, the relatively small population in the 55 gallon tank pollutes the water very little. I can basically leave the tank be, and except for feeding, not mess with it more than once a month. But this female wouldn't eat, although she observed the feeding instinct and swam around after the food flakes with the group.
She kept mostly to her hiding place and grew a bit thin. I kept up my hopeful food-crushing. Nearing the end of the second week I actually saw her eating little tiny bits of food, and I figured the end of the brood was near, especially since females often lose their first few broods. One day in the middle of the third week I noticed that the female was no longer hiding. Only because I had been studying her so closely for weeks could I pick her out in the school and she was no longer holding. That was that.
It wasn't for another week and a half or so, a full four weeks after I found the holding female, September 17th, 2007, that I found ONE baby hiding in a small cave and darting out boldly at feeding time to eat micro-bits of flake. A few of the other fish, when done feeding, would hang nearby the cave and menace the poor little fellow. I was actually thrilled to have him in there. He was awfully cute...very small, and very yellow-orange. He was smaller than his parents were when they were delivered to my home in April...he was about 1/4 inch long. I began rooting for him.
He lasted about two weeks before vanishing, bless him. No corpse was sighted, and I suspect that he was taken in the night by one of the catfish.
Later on I read that the holding females will actually begin to eat little bits of food later in their "term." By this time, the fish have actually hatched and are swimming around in her mouth, so she basically eats only to feed them and cannot actually swallow any of the food for herself. So I think my female was eating late in her term to feed her brood. Wild stuff!
So, for lack of any better ideas, I'll throw in another scintillating fish-story from the vaults. I hope that I'll be able to extract content from this both for the "fish-diary" section and the "about the saulosi as a species" section.
Ps. Saulosi, and indeed all the rock-dwelling fish of Lake Malawi are known as mouth-brooders. This means that they breed, or spawn, in a most unusual way. When its mating time for two lucky fish of one species, they generally circle each other closely. (Prior to this they perform a lot of chasing and odd movements that happen at no other time, including an odd vibrating move by the male that looks a lot like that breakdance move simulating the effect of an electric shock.) So while closely circling, the female releases some eggs and the male quickly follows around and fertilizes them with his milt (as it is known for fish). As quickly as this happens, the female then circles back and gobbles up the fertilized eggs and holds them in her mouth where they will stay safe and sound for about two weeks.
If you think that with a mouthful of eggs the female would have a tough time eating then I would agree with you. I've read that females cannot eat during this period, and when I got my first holding female on 8/16/07 I began observing her closely. Saulosi, especially the females and subdominant males, tend to school or shoal together but the "holding" female was keeping to herself and chilling amongst some rocks, out of sight. When I fed the group, she would come out and cruise around, nipping up to grab food but not actually opening her mouth to eat. I'll admit, I was feeling bad for her. I began crushing the food up into a powder, hoping to tempt her to eat. My secret agenda was for her -- by eating -- to forsake her brood. I didn't and don't want a bunch of baby fish in the tank because I planned the population to be a certain ideal size to minimize maintenance, ie, the relatively small population in the 55 gallon tank pollutes the water very little. I can basically leave the tank be, and except for feeding, not mess with it more than once a month. But this female wouldn't eat, although she observed the feeding instinct and swam around after the food flakes with the group.
She kept mostly to her hiding place and grew a bit thin. I kept up my hopeful food-crushing. Nearing the end of the second week I actually saw her eating little tiny bits of food, and I figured the end of the brood was near, especially since females often lose their first few broods. One day in the middle of the third week I noticed that the female was no longer hiding. Only because I had been studying her so closely for weeks could I pick her out in the school and she was no longer holding. That was that.
It wasn't for another week and a half or so, a full four weeks after I found the holding female, September 17th, 2007, that I found ONE baby hiding in a small cave and darting out boldly at feeding time to eat micro-bits of flake. A few of the other fish, when done feeding, would hang nearby the cave and menace the poor little fellow. I was actually thrilled to have him in there. He was awfully cute...very small, and very yellow-orange. He was smaller than his parents were when they were delivered to my home in April...he was about 1/4 inch long. I began rooting for him.
He lasted about two weeks before vanishing, bless him. No corpse was sighted, and I suspect that he was taken in the night by one of the catfish.
Later on I read that the holding females will actually begin to eat little bits of food later in their "term." By this time, the fish have actually hatched and are swimming around in her mouth, so she basically eats only to feed them and cannot actually swallow any of the food for herself. So I think my female was eating late in her term to feed her brood. Wild stuff!
digging for photos and a diversion
My ad didn't so especially well. One helpful guy named Ron Chapman sent me a few good pictures...one in particular is excellent but he was the only fish person to respond.
I decided to get in touch with Dave at Somethingfishy Inc. in Ohio and ask him for help. He's the guy who sold me my fish back in April. This is a story in itself, so I think I'll write it down. It will make good copy for the site.
I found Dave's brick and mortar and online stores via http://www.cichlid-forum.com/reviews/
The reviews were good, and Dave happened to have hundreds of Ps. Saulosi fry for sale at a good price (I think it was 3/$10). As he is outside Cleveland, Ohio I figured the shipping wouldn't be too expensive or rough on the fish. So I ordered 13 Ps. Saulosi and two Synodontis Petricola which were $10 each, I think. I asked for overnight shipping with Saturday delivery and I waited. I'd never done mail-order fish before...back in the old days, I only knew of stores that got fish this way...and maybe some clubs also. Overall I paid less than $100 for the stock and the overnight shipping, which was a great deal. I should know...I shopped around like mad.
The fish came early in the day, in a box carefully packed with two bags of Saulosi and one bag of Petricola. Dave double-bagged each bag and put them into a very thick cardboard box filled with packing material. He also put a heating pack on the bottom to compensate for any temperature drops in transit. He may also have used "Bag Buddies," which is the trade name for a tranquilizer that is often used when shipping fish, but I'm not sure.
I immediately put the bags into the tank so they temperature in the bags could warm up to that in the tank. The catfish, which are nocturnal, looked active and groovy. The Ps. Saulosi looked only so-so. They were really little, vulnerable fish -- the biggest two or three were barely an inch long -- and a few looked like they weren't going to make it. These fish were sitting on the bottom in the cracks formed by the cinched bag. I left them floating in the tank for a good forty minutes and by the end, the sad-looking fish were perking up. All the Saulosi had arrived pale but were now getting their common deep yellow-orange. Later I realized that the fish probably weren't dying but just very zonked out from being in the dark for that long.
These days if I surprise the fish by turning on their light or the room light in the middle of the night they are all very inactive and pale. It takes at least five minutes for their color to return when you awaken them.
Toward the end of the floating period I opened the bags and began to introduce tank water in small amounts into the bag so as to avoid shocking the fish from differences in pH or hardness. Eventually I tipped the bags into a net and let the old bag-water run into a bucket and dropped the fish into the tank. I was definitely doing things by the book because I didn't want this to go wrong, primarily because I didn't want the little guys to die, and secondarily because my budget for project fishtank was nearly exhausted.
The fish ran and hid in the little caves I'd carefully made for them with dead coral, tuffa rock, and lace rock on the bottom.
That's enough of that. Back to Dave. He proved to be a nice guy, and since he breeds the hell of of the Ps. Saulosi and sells them online I'm hoping he'll be able to float me some nice photos. We'll see.
I decided to get in touch with Dave at Somethingfishy Inc. in Ohio and ask him for help. He's the guy who sold me my fish back in April. This is a story in itself, so I think I'll write it down. It will make good copy for the site.
I found Dave's brick and mortar and online stores via http://www.cichlid-forum.com/reviews/
The reviews were good, and Dave happened to have hundreds of Ps. Saulosi fry for sale at a good price (I think it was 3/$10). As he is outside Cleveland, Ohio I figured the shipping wouldn't be too expensive or rough on the fish. So I ordered 13 Ps. Saulosi and two Synodontis Petricola which were $10 each, I think. I asked for overnight shipping with Saturday delivery and I waited. I'd never done mail-order fish before...back in the old days, I only knew of stores that got fish this way...and maybe some clubs also. Overall I paid less than $100 for the stock and the overnight shipping, which was a great deal. I should know...I shopped around like mad.
The fish came early in the day, in a box carefully packed with two bags of Saulosi and one bag of Petricola. Dave double-bagged each bag and put them into a very thick cardboard box filled with packing material. He also put a heating pack on the bottom to compensate for any temperature drops in transit. He may also have used "Bag Buddies," which is the trade name for a tranquilizer that is often used when shipping fish, but I'm not sure.
I immediately put the bags into the tank so they temperature in the bags could warm up to that in the tank. The catfish, which are nocturnal, looked active and groovy. The Ps. Saulosi looked only so-so. They were really little, vulnerable fish -- the biggest two or three were barely an inch long -- and a few looked like they weren't going to make it. These fish were sitting on the bottom in the cracks formed by the cinched bag. I left them floating in the tank for a good forty minutes and by the end, the sad-looking fish were perking up. All the Saulosi had arrived pale but were now getting their common deep yellow-orange. Later I realized that the fish probably weren't dying but just very zonked out from being in the dark for that long.
These days if I surprise the fish by turning on their light or the room light in the middle of the night they are all very inactive and pale. It takes at least five minutes for their color to return when you awaken them.
Toward the end of the floating period I opened the bags and began to introduce tank water in small amounts into the bag so as to avoid shocking the fish from differences in pH or hardness. Eventually I tipped the bags into a net and let the old bag-water run into a bucket and dropped the fish into the tank. I was definitely doing things by the book because I didn't want this to go wrong, primarily because I didn't want the little guys to die, and secondarily because my budget for project fishtank was nearly exhausted.
The fish ran and hid in the little caves I'd carefully made for them with dead coral, tuffa rock, and lace rock on the bottom.
That's enough of that. Back to Dave. He proved to be a nice guy, and since he breeds the hell of of the Ps. Saulosi and sells them online I'm hoping he'll be able to float me some nice photos. We'll see.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
challenges
I think the biggest challenges I'll face are:
- getting good photos. My camera can't focus well through the glass for individual fish shots. Also, lighting may be tricky at home for overall tank/equipment shots but this won't be as tough as the fish shots. I hope that my post will bring me lots of good free shots.
- good graphic design. I'm sure that the ideas of what I want will be tough to create. I'm not sure what program I'll use for the graphic design end...I have PShop and Illustrator, but I'm not a wiz with either. I can fudge stuff sometimes, but not sure the files will work online. Basically, I've learned that with any new software you'll encounter unanticipated problems and delays...so my head is on the realistic/pessimistic side of the fence for the time being.
- respecting copyright. It will be tempting to grab random photos online if I don't get a good response from the fish-people.
- good navigation desingn. I'll plan the site out on paper or with a free flow-chart software, but even so, there are so many ways to skin the cat...it may be hard to decide on the best way to route traffic through what will undoubtedly be the most-visited site of 2007.
colors/design
I'm thinking of making a nice banner to use on all the pages that will incorporate one or two saulosi in with the title 'pseudotropheus saulosi' or 'ps. saulosi.' I thinking of a dark blue or black banner that might have another, much thinner horizontal stripe(s) running through it. Probably will try and evoke the colors of the fish, so black, dark blue, light blue, maybe a bit of yellow.
Background color will be something complimentary, neutral, and light...maybe a very light blue. text likely black or very dark blue. Links will be lighter blue, maybe have them turn yellow once visited if it doesn't look bad.
Tempted to use black background after reading this despite the accessibility issues:
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html
Will also use a side-menu, not sure if it will be on the right or left side with links to the other pages. Bottom will have discrete links/labels-of the dull stuff like date, name, sitemap, home, back to top, etc.
For contents I'm thinking:
homepage: nice photos and an introduction to the fish in general, my tank, purpose of site.
other pages: -about my specific fish
-more specifics about the species, detailed rundown, where they come from in nature, how they were discovered
-about my tank, pictures, how I set it up, equipment used
-maybe have my tank diary here, too.
-either a dedicated photo page or photos throughout, or a mix...ie, a dedicated page with lots of well-organized photos and some other throughout as needed
Background color will be something complimentary, neutral, and light...maybe a very light blue. text likely black or very dark blue. Links will be lighter blue, maybe have them turn yellow once visited if it doesn't look bad.
Tempted to use black background after reading this despite the accessibility issues:
http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html
Will also use a side-menu, not sure if it will be on the right or left side with links to the other pages. Bottom will have discrete links/labels-of the dull stuff like date, name, sitemap, home, back to top, etc.
For contents I'm thinking:
homepage: nice photos and an introduction to the fish in general, my tank, purpose of site.
other pages: -about my specific fish
-more specifics about the species, detailed rundown, where they come from in nature, how they were discovered
-about my tank, pictures, how I set it up, equipment used
-maybe have my tank diary here, too.
-either a dedicated photo page or photos throughout, or a mix...ie, a dedicated page with lots of well-organized photos and some other throughout as needed
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
photo/video sources
In hope of getting a hold of some good, free photos for my site, I posted a want-ad on http://www.cichlid-forum.com on their trading post. I described my website and asked for people to send me/direct me to photos they've taken of their Ps. Saulosi (or, to pictures they are authorized to let me use).
I'll also run a search on Flickr and Youtube to see if people have photos/videos that I might use or link to. I did find one video of Ps. Saulois spawning:
http://www.cichlidforums.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/196/cat/503
I'll also run a search on Flickr and Youtube to see if people have photos/videos that I might use or link to. I did find one video of Ps. Saulois spawning:
http://www.cichlidforums.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/196/cat/503
some original text
Here's some of the content that will end up on the site:
Pseudotropheus saulosi (or Ps. saulosi) are members of a family of fish called cichlids that are very popular among aquarists Cichlids are a large family of fish that are found all over the world. African cichlids are different from those found in
African cichlids like mine are popular in the hobby and at least a few species are available in any decent aquarium store. The Ps. Saulosi was discovered less than 20 years ago and has been in the hobby since the early 90’s. Due to its characteristically mild temperament, small size, and sexually dimorphic coloration (and color changes) the Ps. saulosi has proven to be one of the most popular African cichlids currently kept.
The fish all start out a yellow-orange color. As they mature, certain dominant fish become bright blue and black while other subdominant fish get only a bit of additional color or none at all. Typically, the fish that become the darkest blue/black are the dominant males. Females remain yellow-orange and in fact seem to attain a richer hue with time; they may also get some black coloration on their dorsal fins. Subdominant males may also remain yellow-orange and show little or no color change. Other subdominant males may develop a faint shade of blue.
Many African cichlids and all mbuna can also change color for short periods of time. This color change is similar to a chameleon and is related to behavior. The change isn’t as dramatic as the gradual changes described above but is more like a dimming of existing features or tones. For example, the two dominant males in my tank have deep blue/black coloration; these fish have claimed separate territories on opposite sides of the tank. When one fish leaves his territory and enters the other’s, he typically loses his black stripes, his blue stripes dim, and he becomes an overall light blue color. Sometimes you can even see a trace of the original yellow-orange shimmering “beneath” the blue. Within seconds of returning to home base, the fish regains his black stripes and becomes much brighter in color overall.
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