My Managerie of Tanks

Female emperor tetra developing male characteristics is interesting and more so because she has bred previously. Make sure you document her life until she dies.

Wow, that's fascinating about your female tetra changing to male characteristics, you're thinking maybe like a post-menopausal thing? I don't know how they look as juveniles... would be interesting if they all look male as young before female characteristics show, then revert in old age? Sorry, not a species I know anything about! But always cool to learn new things, and if it's surprising to you, with your experience and knowledge base, then I know it must be unusual! Please do keep documenting.

If any of the other females from her original group remain, would be worth keeping photo documentation on them too, seeing if there are any differences in them too.

The Buce kedagang, thank you so much for the photos and tips! It's a gorgeous plant, and has already put out some new growth since I added it to my tank end of July. I have a couple more questions though, I'm sorry! Please explain to me as if I were a ten year old brand new beginner!

Dang it, hit post instead of insert quotes, please see next post! lol

CassCats said:

If you trim that one right below the root, it should propagate well, and should send out new shoots where you cut it.

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Any chance you could circle/add a line through where you mean I should cut?

Are those bright green bits growing out of the tallest shoot, new roots? I've been wary of trimming it by just lopping the top off the way I would say, L.sessiliflora, because of it being a rhizome plant. But don't know much about how these can grow and propagate, becaue of course plants like java ferns have two ways of propagating. But I haven't done much propagating of rhizome plants beyond just letting them do their thing, but I'd love to learn!

Just also don't want to accidentally kill my most expensive plant! Haha.

CassCats said:

Some just spread on their own. The kedagang randomly sends out new stems from the main stem too.

I know I've got lamadau red, sp red, wavy green, dark biblis, and the kedagang in there.

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CassCats said:

Oh, @AdoraBelle Dearheart I took a close up photo of the Bucephalandra bunch for you
View attachment 347992

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See, yours looks amazing! Looks as though it's multiple plants attached to a piece of driftwood? How did you attach them? I find fishing line very fiddly and struggle with it myself. Have used superglue for other rhizome plants (just a small dab on some roots, without smothering the rhizome or roots! Try to poke it into cracks in the hardscape where I can, but sometimes, they do need attaching, especially to make a thicket of the same plant like this! And when you have fish that will knock them loose like we both have, the plecos and cories!

What method are you finding works for you?

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Wow, that's fascinating about your female tetra changing to male characteristics, you're thinking maybe like a post-menopausal thing? I don't know how they look as juveniles... would be interesting if they all look male as young before female characteristics show, then revert in old age? Sorry, not a species I know anything about! But always cool to learn new things, and if it's surprising to you, with your experience and knowledge base, then I know it must be unusual! Please do keep documenting.

If any of the other females from her original group remain, would be worth keeping photo documentation on them too, seeing if there are any differences in them too.

The Buce kedagang, thank you so much for the photos and tips! It's a gorgeous plant, and has already put out some new growth since I added it to my tank end of July. I have a couple more questions though, I'm sorry! Please explain to me as if I were a ten year old brand new beginner!

Dang it, hit post instead of insert quotes, please see next post! lol

Click to expand...

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Any chance you could circle/add a line through where you mean I should cut?

Are those bright green bits growing out of the tallest shoot, new roots? I've been wary of trimming it by just lopping the top off the way I would say, L.sessiliflora, because of it being a rhizome plant. But don't know much about how these can grow and propagate, becaue of course plants like java ferns have two ways of propagating. But I haven't done much propagating of rhizome plants beyond just letting them do their thing, but I'd love to learn!

Just also don't want to accidentally kill my most expensive plant! Haha.



See, yours looks amazing! Looks as though it's multiple plants attached to a piece of driftwood? How did you attach them? I find fishing line very fiddly and struggle with it myself. Have used superglue for other rhizome plants (just a small dab on some roots, without smothering the rhizome or roots! Try to poke it into cracks in the hardscape where I can, but sometimes, they do need attaching, especially to make a thicket of the same plant like this! And when you have fish that will knock them loose like we both have, the plecos and cories!

What method are you finding works for you?

Click to expand...

Here marked with a red line is where I would cut yours.


I use super glue for this piece of wood, and yeah it's many, many pieces of buce and anubias on that wood. That was the wood in the 5 gallon, I just moved it to the 10g redo. I

Regarding the emperors, they ironically start with red eyes as fry which go grey before they turn either blue or green depending on their sex.

Here's some fry pics, since I raised most of the ones I've got left.
From day born to size moved to the adult group.









It was after this stage they started their eye color change.

Female fry, eyes turning green


Male fry, eyes turning blue


And the group of ladies I kept




Bonus: here are two other fry I raised of other species. Cherry barb and dwarf praecox rainbowfish

See?? This is another talent of yours I've missed so much! Not only brilliant at breeding, but taking incredible, clear, progress photos! I can't get over how tiny and adorable they are in those early days! Then when they finally start to get the recognisable colouring

TY for the planting tips! I won't be afraid to use glue again then

Epecially now I'm setting up this mini-scape for my betta... I tagged you because you're the Queen of Scaping, in my eyes at least!

Here's some pics of other things I've bred over the years.

Osteogaster schultzei


Hoplosternum punctatum (thus far the first and only record on planet catfish for this species, its not one to breed in captivity without artificial hormones supposedly)


hoplisoma paleatum albino


hoplisoma paleatum


Osteogaster schultzei


Trichopsis pumila


Gastrodermus pygmaeus


Bedotia madagascarensis


Pseudomugil gertrudae


Brochis splendens


Pangio doriae (started with 3 and magically found another one in the tank lol)


Ancistrus bodenhameri

I've bred one of the many you listed!

Would love to know the method you used to spawn and raise fry from the pseudomugils... breeding some of those is next on my want list! Although I think I'll be beginning with the red neon, P.luminatus

Or how you bred the first non-artificially induced fry from that species! Just out of curiosity/to learn more, really! But don't give away any of your trade secrets, of course.

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

I've bred one of the many you listed!

Would love to know the method you used to spawn and raise fry from the pseudomugils... breeding some of those is next on my want list! Although I think I'll be beginning with the red neon, P.luminatus

Or how you bred the first non-artificially induced fry from that species! Just out of curiosity/to learn more, really! But don't give away any of your trade secrets, of course.

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Pseudomugil breed easily.

I'd recommend lots of moss in the spawning tank. Remove the parents because they are egg eaters, so you will want either really dense floating plants or set a separate container to spawn in where you remove the parents afterwards.


The hoplosternum punctatum spawned on their own. I take no credit for triggering anything. They like using broken anubias leaves that float or water lettuce leaves, they then stuck the eggs to those and make a bubble nest with it and the male guards it.







They've been moved to the 135g at some point, which they still spawn but I do not collect the eggs anymore since a high number of fry had been born with undeveloped eyes and while I kept those ones as pets instead of selling, I do not wish to keep more culls and I have to question the genetic quality of them. Not worth it.

I took the vals from one tank and moved them to my "blackwater" which is no longer blackwater.


Mr Ancistrus bodenhameri sitting on a log


Osteogaster aenea


And bonus, some photos of Earl

This tank had the vals taken out of it to move to another, which now the other plants need to fill in the back more, but it's going in the direction I want it to.








The 20g needed a glass cleaning and needed the sußwassertang mess tidied up a little neater.





I moved my aging pseudomugil gertrudae to the 20g since I took down a tank recently. They're doing good in it, but man do they not age pretty. They're growing some dorsal finnage on their body as they're getting old. I bought them as near adult sized and this is my second year owning them, so safe to say they're nearing 2+ years old. Life expectancy of these guys tends to be 1-2 years average so I expect this will be many of their last year.

Anyways, this old dude is named Misprint, one of his spots on his tail turned into an ink blot, like he's had a bad run-in with a printer.


I did breed them and kept this lady, so she's the youngest of all of them, but she's about a year old by now as well.

My apisto pair were having a little spat yesterday, which my husband laughed and said a leaf was attacking my fish so I think at least the female has earned the name Spicy Leaf.

Some photos.





Trigonopoma pauciperforatum, this was a lovely bycatch fish I found not too long ago mixed in some harlequin rasboras.


One of my cherry barbs. Starting to believe they're immortal haha the older ladies of them are almost 7 years old now. This male is about 4 years though. Born in my filters lol


Another immortal bunch, my black neons. 7 years old, got 3 ladies left.



One of my goldfish, nearly all his black is gone lol (for context, he was sold as a black moore)


And I had an oops. I got a pair of plecos and turns out, the female ended up being ancistrus triradiatus and the male is ancistrus cf cirrhosis. Didn't provide a cave and what not annnnd I still ended up with fry. So hybrid ancistrus fry left them to their own chances and they're trucking on better than I expected. I was kinda hoping they'd be eaten because I don't want hybrids, but here we are. I'll be moving mom to another tank so it doesn't happen again.

@CassCats
Great pictures.
I'd like to know what camera or phone you are using to take such awesome high rez photos.

Fishmanic said:

@CassCats
Great pictures.
I'd like to know what camera or phone you are using to take such awesome high rez photos.

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I use my phone, currently a Samsung S22. It's due for an upgrade, but I'll probably be sticking with the same series of phone going forward because the camera is good. Though, Google pixel phone cameras seem to do just as well when I tested them out in the store. The newest pixel phone had a fantastic quality camera.

Kid's endler tank. Home to 8 male endlers (well, one of those eight is a guppy-endler hybrid). Can't get a frontal photo anymore because of room location. The bed is in the way lol it's beside his bed so he can watch his fish at bed time.
I had to replace the light it had, the new one is a JC&P submersible bar light, it's fairly bright but I also can't adjust the white balance so it comes out more red toned... which makes the red on his endler boys POP.
But, given it's a better light, I might be able to add more plants and remove the fake few he's got in there.



I should note, this tank has adjusted water. The GH and pH are much much higher than my tap water. I raise the GH with Equilibrium but also the substrate is crushed coral. Happy snails and endlers lol


This is the hybrid boy, courtesy of a local friend who bred a black bar endler male with an albino koi female guppy. His black bar shows sometimes and other times he doesn't show it.


Other endler boys, just black bars.




Endlers and guppies are so hard to photograph. They don't sit still for the life of me

Earl and his tank. The plants are starting to fill in the back.


Earl is as purple as ever these days.