BTW... Loved your new video of the platy fry! sooo cute!
i've got some videos but they wont let me put them up?? Hey i just put my fish tanks up... i see that yours gets a lot of replys. ...how many do you have?? i only have the one. First time having fish ever( and i'm 27) i have the dogs but never any fish before. k well ill chat later...Anna aka Bell 8)
we've got 10 tanks.. well 9 now and 2 'temporary' tanks that have mahachai betta fry in one and shrimp in another. A friend has offered us a 30g and we'll use it for a grow-out tank for the mahachai betta fry. the 1st posts in this thread are all of our current tanks and we also have more pics of the fish at our fishblog. we only had 1 tank back in january.. MTS hits hard, so look out.
Tank 10: <cycling>
30 gallon tall tank - Home to ... to be determined by the time it cycles.
Here's pics of it when we got it from a friend. Believe it or not, even after a few months of sitting out in the garage, there was a male platy and 2 plecos left alive in it.
thanks.. we have it out on the hot back porch to help it cycle and the sponge filter for it should come early next week from DFS so when we set it up in denver, it should have plenty of good bacteria on just the sponges alone. since it's too tall for the mahachai fry, we're debating the guppies that Dino has up for sale or angels or african cichlids or a x-ray/glass collection.. or..
Why do you say it's too deep for the fry? The dwarf gourami fry are quite happy swimming all the way to the bottom of the column, which is 2' deep!
BTW, I am now constructing another column for one of the other tanks to see if we can repeat the sporning in a more controlled environment. The problem with the column they are in now is that there are other fish in there that will almost certainly eat them as soon as they are unguarded. If I can repeat this in a smaller tank, it will be easier to remove the parents to allow the fry to grow out.
I read a book which had a huuuge paragraph on betta breeding. It also recommended quite shallow water for the fry. I don't get why. It recommended the same for oto fry, and we don't have such shallow water, and they seem to be doing fine. Do you know why it's recommended?
Yeah, I wondered about that, but then again they can just station themselves higher if they don't like the pressure. Or perhaps they like to have access to the gravel/floor AND little pressure. Doesn't seem to bother mine one bit, but maybe it's optimal to have shallow water, not essential.
Sounds about right. I would assume that nature would have built in a mechanism to avid the problems myself, and I'm a great believer in nature having the upper hand.
After watchin gthe little fellas, they seem to stay close to the surface for a couple of days, then start going deeper, which leads me to believe that they are only going as deep as they are comfortable with. I have no substrate in the column, so if they want to play in the gravel, they have a long way to go down before they find any, since the depth to the bottom of the main tank is nearly 4'. I haven't spotted any of them down there yet!
A guess would be pressure of water at depth, but the gourami's don't seem bothered by it.
yes. and i noticed on the first mahachai spawning that they stay near the bottom more and the long swim to the top on their developing bodies along with the pressure at the level they mainly stay could have a negative impact on their development.
I did think about your gourami tim, but the mahachai might not fare as well since they tend to like the bottom.. and our MTS doesn't mind another tank. the 30g tall was free so i think getting a 20g long or similiar would be ok.
It's trial and error, as with all things. My fry are staying mainly near the nest at the top of the tank and showing little interest in going down to the bottom. This could be due to several factors:
They may not know what is down there and may not have seen anything of interest
They may be cautious about the pressures lower down
The food source is at the top of the tank, with liquifry being pumped into the column at regular intervals, which always rises to the surface and the infusoria source is also near the surface, attracted by the lights.
Whatever the reasons, they seem quite happy up there, and the parents chose the site, so they were obviously content that it was a good location for the young. When I get the next column working we will know for sure, as this will be a different setup with a few small but vital improvements, such as it's own infusoria farm and a better circulation system. The whole tank will be geared for breeding very small fish, with the plan that Gouramis or bettas will use the column and bristlenoses or cories will breed in the bottom. That way I make full use of the tank and can assess it's potential as a breeding unit.
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we only had 1 tank back in january.. MTS hits hard, so look out. 
that will be a sight to see. 