A tour of my fishroom

[Crazylegs78]

I have an 18'x16' fishroom that I breed a few species of large cichlids and danios in. Here's the current layout...

Above is the front of the gallery. Below is the back of the gallery with a little lab space behind.
The tank inhabitants have changed since these pictures. Below is where i culture chlorella vulgaris algae and moina for raising fry.


This side of the lab will be automated water change system and scaled up moina culture. Eventually...

Now for some of the tanks. This is my female festae with her 9 silver dollars in a 220g. She's 6 years old and 12" or more. She turned red shortly after I got her and had stayed that way. She cares for nothing but eating. Constantly.

Below is my breeding quad of moba fronts with my petco peacock in a 125g. For some reason I really love the side views.


This guy is my biggest male moba at 10", but he's super timid. He hides most of the time and can't manage more than one female. 125g.

 

[Crazylegs78]

Here's some mis-bar and seven bar mobas. I'm keeping these to see if they produce mis-bar offspring. Their mother has not produced mis-bars since this batch, wondering if it has an environmental cause vs genetic. 125g.


Here's some malagasy cichlids and my big dumb severum. Pinstripe dambas and P. nourissati. 125g.

Here's a cool 40B that happened from breeding giant danios. I weighed down some Java moss on the bottom, lowered the water to about 4" and threw in 3 males and 2 young females. I pulled them out the next day and slowly raised the water level over the next several weeks.

Below is a 6', 325g stock tank that i moved into the gallery for growing out festae. You can also see my 16" male lurking in there. He handles the culling for me.

 

[Crazylegs78]

This is my ebay purchase of a "marbled vieja". It's the oddest behaving fish ever, swimming upside down and sideways, but it's survived quite a bit. It lives with some elective yellow lab females and giant danios in a 75g.


This was an internet purchase of a "moba" fry. Looks like it turned out to be a Burundi morph I believe. He's growing on me. He's about 6" in a 75g.

This male festae is about 7" right now and I've never had a fish with this much personality. He zooms around the tank, splashes, and knocks the lid in order to make sure i see him and feed him. He doesn't have a light, so bad picture.

And I'm growing this guy up to put in the 220g with my female festae.

On the lab side, I do a lot of moina batch culture. 1/2 tsp of bakers yeast in a liter of chlorella vulgaris culture water makes great, nutritious moina for cichlid and danio fry.

And some reward for the efforts...


Hope you enjoyed, thanks for stopping by!

 

[danotaylor]

Nice looking setup mate!
Are the fry in the last pic mobas from your quad or from the mis-bar tank?
What did you mean when you said your moba male can only handle 1 female?
Cheers for sharing

 

[phreeflow]

Clean setup. The female festae looks amazing

 

[Crazylegs78]

Hey dano, and thanks! The fry above came from my quad. In that tank, the male is the boss, no doubt. He's always swimming highest in the tank and manages his females well by interrupting fights while keeping them kind of spread out. The male of just the pair is always hiding. The big female in with him is pretty aggressive, so if i put more females in with them she spends all her time chasing, he spends his time hiding, and no breeding gets done. Her clutches are small as well, with only 7 last time. The clutch from my quad is 30. My mis-bars are not even 2yo yet, so no breeding there for a bit.

Phreeflow- thanks! And I agree about the festae. Hands down my favorite fish, and I will always have one. But there is almost zero demand for them on the market. Big fish species in general really. So I always just save a few of the biggest fry and throw them in any tank with hiding spaces. I can usually find them homes once they're sexable.