Last thing a stonefly sees...

 Greenfin_Darter_03.jpg   26.68KB   3 downloads

New gallery found here:

http://www.farmertod.../Reefle/041508/

It's a continuation of the "Dream Stream" with all the hydrophlox assembled in their best attire.

The accidental flame chub even came out to play yesterday

Also found out that what I was calling "purplehead" (Broad River "greenhead") is now known as the piedmont shiner, I would assume that's Notropis sp. cf. [Hydrophlox] or something like that.

Redlip_Shiner_08 and _09 are chiliticus also from the Broad (Phil correct me if that's wrong). The fired up fish are from the Yadkin. I'm looking forward to them firing up to see if they cast more of the yellow.

I just can't seem to capture the red in the rough shiner. The overexposed photo did the best. Perhaps that's the route to go, and let Photoshop do the work. It's been nice to not have to mess with that tho

Todd

Well thanks a whole heck of alot!
Now I can never look at my own crappy tanks, or crappy pics, without feeling inferior.
That's some nice shtuff! You are the Minner Master! Great photography too. Those rainbow shiners don't even look real. There's no tropical that can touch them for looks when they're fired up.
My favorite pics were the close ups of the darter faces.
Now, if you have the time, a few questions. Bear with me, you've probably answered these before.
#1 [I'm sure I asked this one before] What camera are you using?
#2 With all those hungry minners, how do you keep the darters fed without over feeding the minnows?
#3 What filtration do you have on the tank?
#4 With so many ripe minnows, do you breed any? If not, don't you want to send some to me to be your surrogate breeder?

Your photos make my day

Your photos make my day

Same here! Thanks Todd

#2 With all those hungry minners, how do you keep the darters fed without over feeding the minnows?

Check my solution for getting food to bottom feeders at http://forum.nanfa.o...h...ost&p=34125 . I haven't tried with darters, but I bet it'd work great. You inject the blackworms straight into the sand, so mid-water feeders don't get a shot at them. And... blackworms live indefinitely, so there's really no way to overfeed in the sense of having uneaten food in the tank.

But, yeah, Todd, what do *you* do in your insanely dense (but thriving) tanks?

Edited by jase, 16 April 2008 - 11:43 AM.

Very Nice Photos!

Thanks so much for your compliments folks. I have really enjoyed this aspect of the hobby (the photos).

#1 [I'm sure I asked this one before] What camera are you using?

My indoor stuff is all recently been a Nikon D70 body with a 105mm VR Macro and SB-26 flash. It's some real bucks, we got lucky with donations and good will. We could never afford this thing new.

I shoot all my outdoor stuff with my good ol Nikon 4800. I love that camera.

The rest can be answered in the pdf of my article in AC. Here's the link:

http://www.farmertod...e_fish_tank.pdf

I'll answer briefly here.

#2 With all those hungry minners, how do you keep the darters fed without over feeding the minnows?

I only feed every couple days (maybe 3 times a week) and then I do saturation feeding. I stuff the minnows first with HBH Soft n Moist and now trying some Sera Flake. And then I just dump in a ton of frozen food. For example, in that 75 gallon, I would bet I'm feeding about 3 oz of food into at a single feeding. It's expensive, but it works, and I get what I want.

#3 What filtration do you have on the tank?

On the 75's I have an Ehiem 2217 and a Whisper 3 or whatever they're called now. On the 100 gal I have two of the Ehiems.

Oh, and then the sand, ohhhhh the sand That and the plants are my primary filter. The canisters are just nice for trapping some of the mulm out of the light. Makes really great fertilizer for the lawn and garden too.

#4 With so many ripe minnows, do you breed any? If not, don't you want to send some to me to be your surrogate breeder?

They breed, but it's all <ahem> reprocessed. I don't have time or space or patience to mess around with fry. There are plenty of places to ethically collect the 5 or 6 specimens of each species I maintain every few years. The trouble is going to come in the future making time to get the fish from far away. I'm already getting pinched with this new Fellowship I have with NSF (the PI wants to make school work ). But the silver lining is that my research projects are going to have me in the same waters

And the darter heads... Man, that's my favorite too I saw that greenfin shot and my wife probably thought I was looking at something else on the computer lol. I'm thinking I'm going to do a whole series that way. It'll be good for my speciation/diversity/etc lectures.

Todd

Edited by farmertodd, 16 April 2008 - 08:14 PM.

Very nice!

I only feed every couple days (maybe 3 times a week) and then I do saturation feeding. I stuff the minnows first with HBH Soft n Moist and now trying some Sera Flake. And then I just dump in a ton of frozen food. For example, in that 75 gallon, I would bet I'm feeding about 3 oz of food into at a single feeding. It's expensive, but it works, and I get what I want.
Todd

That's very similar to how I do it, with the addition of airline tubing on a big syringe to deliver food directly to the bottom.
My problem is my common shiners are getting too huge too quick and my SRBD are starting to look obese. Meanwhile my timid feeders, tesselated darters and 4 spine sticklebacks, look skinnier than they do when kept alone.
I think I'm gonna upgrade to a bigger tank and remove the timid feeders.

Yeah it works out with most species because the minnows seem to have higher metabolisms or spend more energy and the darters just chill, so the energy requirement is similar.

But for the darters that 1) have small mouths and 2) are from high productivity niches (like tesses and johnny) they just do terrible. When I get really lax with the feeding, I can see the difference pretty quick in the greensides and banded, and it requires some pretty consistent feeding and corresponding water change to get them back online.

I don't have any experience with 4 spine. I just added 2 brook stickleback to my 100 gallon and they own the tank. It's really amazing how oinery those fish are. They're the jack russel terrier of fishes lol.

Todd