Wild Nut

Hi Andrew, welcome to the forum! I think your tank is really too small for danios. Most of the commonly traded varieties of danio such as leopard and zebra, are extremely active swimmers and while they are not large fish, a tank of around 2-3ft is recommended by most of the better reference sites. It sounds like your plants are terrestrial plants that were sold as aquatic, if you were told they would only last 2-3 months. If they are, I would remove them now as they will eventually die off if kept fully submerged, and this can cause issues with water quality. You are better going for plants such as lace fern, java fern, anubias etc. as these are hardy and will survive long-term under water. Terrestrial plants are just a way for stores to make more money off you as you then have to keep going in time and time again to buy new plants. From your post I assume your tank wasn't properly cycled in advance? Do you have test kits for ammonia/nitrite? I prefer liquid test kits as strips can be pretty useless and give you inaccurate results. Poor water quality is probably the biggest killer of fish in this hobby - particularly with new set-ups. Without test kits, you are basically going in blind as you have no idea of the quality of your water and whether you should be doing more or less water changes. Crystal clear water can be fatal to fish because you can't see the ammonia and nitrite building up, and you only need very low amounts to cause serious harm or even death to your fish. Your danio's behaviour definitely sounds abnormal. My first port of call when something is wrong with my fish is to test the parameters and do a water change. If there are no issues there, I start to consider other possibilities such as disease, external/internal parasites or possibly that the fish may have issues relating to its time at the store prior to purchase. I wasn't sure how new you are to this hobby, so apologies if some of this stuff you already know.

No. My poliaki female still looks like a female of that species should, and this female's daughters still all look like standard australe females. Maybe she's just letting herself go now the kids are grown.

Recently, I noticed that my A. australe female, was getting colouration similar to the male on her fins. Anyone have any idea what is causing this? Also yes she is extremely fat. I actually hardly feed them, but this pair just seem to get fat on air. My poliaki female is nowhere near as big as those two and I've had her a lot longer. Also sorry for the horrid photo. The male always chases her off so I had to get what I could.

Just wanted to update this to say today I did a water change on the tank and out of curiosity went through one of the spawning mops and found myself an egg! I think some of the males are as big as the parents were when I got them, and the females have lovely subtle colouration. Their tank is like a killifish playground. It has PVC pipe, floating anubias, floating java fern, java moss, terracotta pots, spawning mops, IAL and film canisters. It may not look particularly attractive but they are always zipping around in there chasing each other around and sparring. It's hard to get photos of them, but I managed this one of a smaller male. Their parents and my poliaki female are going well also. I just do one partial water change a week and chuck in some food every day or so and they seem content with that. As an aside, If you live in Melbourne I am still selling these at $10 a pair. I have a number of pairs available. Otherwise I am probably just going to see if I can't find a fish store to take them all.

I know someone/LFS has had nothos in before. But I think only rachovii. I thought it was an issue with the peat moss the eggs of annuals were transported in/ the fact you can't identify species based on their eggs that is the main reason why you don't see them in Oz. However, I could be wrong.

Yay a brownorum! Although I think it needs to look a little angrier to be completely realistic But seriously, thanks for all the wild betta emoticons!

Speak of the devil and he (she) will come. Anyway I thought of persephone but they aren't really characteristic of the coccina complex since most of the species from that group are red. Plus I love the side spot on brownorum and think it would lend itself well to an emoticon. Here is a photo of my brownorum male if you want a clear reference. For something different though, you could do a Betta hendra. I got a nice close-up shot of my male yesterday.

I think a brownorum or something like burdigala/uberis should be next. I have a brownorum icon someone made for me on another site and it is so cute with its little side spot.

Hey you've had your unimaculata complex fish. Now it's time for something from the coccina complex

Darkened the water up on my killifish tanks. They seem to like it, and it does make the orange pop. Some of them must nearly be at the same size as the parents were when I got them.

Did not even see that post. Would have saved me the bother of doing an annotated screenshot

Yeah without the / you won't get an image. However, this is how I upload photos to the forum. Saves me having to wrap every single url in tags.

It's okay just as long as I don't start answering my own posts. Or making up alters to make it seem as if I'm not that weird person posting by themselves in the corner I agree that is a very valid point you have made Wild Nut. Damn it wouldn't let me put my quote separate. Joke...ruined

I am on another forum that uses this, and I do think people just press 'like' rather than take the time to respond to a post. On the other betta forum I am on that does not have this function, you definitely get a lot more discourse even if it's just a sentence or two. Personally on a forum, I prefer if people tell me what they actually liked about a specific post rather than just click a button.