Hi...I know I have been posting a lot of questions...such is the curse of being a newbie (but at least a newbie who wants to get it right...).
I currently have 5 male and 5 female endlers...each gender in seperate tanks. The females are housed with my 10 day old fry.
I have read numerous forums and posts that say that any inbreeding between the fry with other fry or with adults will result in weaker, unhealthy fish. So...so now, I am keeping them separate (I know the current adult females will drop several more times though).
At what point do I seek new stock of either males, females or both? Where would be a good place to look for new ones because I would guess that the ones I found at the lfs that they got "from a local guy" would probably be related to my current stock. Do people here on the forum sell/trade/give away stock? Are places like Aquabid or other online retailers a good idea? What about these "local auctions" I have heard people mention? I want to keep my fish healthy so whatever is best...suggestions...feedback...input...advice...is welcome!
Thanks again for all of the knowledge you have been sharing with me the past few weeks
I have two colonies of endlers, wild type, that I bought at least 5 years ago as 3 pairs. I have sold off dozens of adults and still have good stock. If you have 6 pairs, you have enough diversity for quite a while already unless yours all came from a single breeding. Mine came from the person running the species preservation program so they probably all had different parents.
I have five pair and got two pair at one locatio and three pair at another locatio an hour away. The tigers came from one and then my chili and two others came from the different place. I think they are probably from different breeders/broods, especially since they were different types and the females were all different sizes. So, I guess based on that, I should be okay for a while. Maybe when it is time, I could convince you to sell me a pair.
Tigers are simply not true endlers iwrmom. They are the result of crossbreeding endlers with guppies. I am well aware that they demand a better price than true endlers at a club auction and they are quite pretty to look at. I am not familiar with chili endlers but am guessing that they are also guppy/endler crosses. In that case it would probably be best if you get some new fish of each variety eventually. True endlers would actually degrade the quality of your endler/guppy crosses. The look of your fish has taken several generations to develop after moving away from wild endlers. You will not want to backtrack to wilds like mine.
Oldman...interesting about "backtracking" with wilds...I am glad you brought this up so that I don't make any mistakes and undo any genetic setting that has already been created. I don't mind having a tank of hybrids for my son that he can enjoy because in the big picture, he is the reason we embarked on this adventure. Someone is giving us a full 29g set up in a few weeks though (sticking extra media into my other good tank now to get some nice bacteria growing for the new tank). I am thinking that I would like to keep that tank with wild strain ELB and cory pygmaeus. We have a school of corys in my son's tank and I love them! The other thought was to make it a fancy guppy tank...I have seen many pictures lately and they seem to have incredible diversity in the colors and varieties out there. But, it will be several weeks still so I have time to research properly and get advice from you more experienced folks. The 29g will bring us up to 6 tanks...and then another friend has a 40g that might come my way if it doesn't sell at their tag sale. My cat is feeling neglected...lol...and is very upset that all the tanks have covers.
Here is a question...since I do not have the new tanks yet and we are only in the planning and research stages. Is it better/easier to keep species tanks or to diversify with many species that get along well together? (Obviously I wouldn't put endlers and cichlids in the same tank).
It depends on your objectives. I maintain lots of single species tanks because I want to breed my livebearers and do not want any inadvertent crosses to result. I also keep a very nice 6 foot long 120 gallon tank that is filled with lots of different fish. It purpose is to show off those fish and I never see any fry in that tank from any fish but my rainbow cichlids. When they breed all other fish are confined to an area about 3 feet long at the other end of the tank. They do not accept any argument regardless of the size of the other fish. If I remove those rainbow fry after a few days, I actually do end up with fry that can survive and grow. These are the exceptions that prove the rule for me.
