My Impulse Buy...

[madasafish]

Arg. Sorry to hear you lost the marmalade cat. Those are really beautiful mbunas... Does this picture resemble the one you had at all?

http://www.bigskycichlids.com/Ltrewavasae_marmaladex.htm

I find that hierarchies established in a cichlid tank often spell trouble for newcomers. Newly introduced mbunas are likely to be harrassed, esp. if just one is added. Again, really sorry to hear about the loss.

Did you contact Stephen about the flounder? He doesn't check the index every day.

 

[Menagerie]

Did you contact Stephen about the flounder?

Sent him a PM.

Does this picture resemble the one you had at all?

Same mouth, but my beautiful fish looked like a calico cat (minus the white). I just rearranged the rocks the other day and we saw the beautiful fish nip back, we thought everything would be fine. I know better than add one lone Mbuna to an established tank

 

[fishstixs05]

Menagerie, I succame to the fish impulse this weekend too. It started on saturday, when I went the "O" street aquarium to "look around". I then decided to get three clown loaches and pair of Blue rams to stock my future angelfish-tank. This wasn't too much of an impulse, I had already eventually planned on getting them. However, as I was going up to the counter, I went by the saltwater section, and there was a six-lined wrasse staring at me from one of the tanks. Oh well, just fifteen bucks I dont have. But that wasnt it. Monday, I went over to a store called Lee's Feed. Okay, so it's a farm store in the middle of the boondies, but there fish section is great. I walked into this place with NO money (this is when it comes in handy to be young with a parent). This place has the greatest prices for fish. I walked out of this place with six small angelfish (6/$12.00), 12 silver tipped tetras (12/$7.00), 3 halfbeaks (3/$9.00), 6 Balloon Mollies (6/$9.00), 3 jungle val (3/$5.00), 5 amazom swords (99 cents ea.), a micro sword bunch ($1.99), and lastly, the major impulse, 6 small koi (6/$15.00). The Koi are going in my pond, the angelfish, silver-tipped tetras, clown loaches, and the pair of rams are in a 55-gallon, the halfbeaks and mollies are in a 20 gallon, and the six-lined wrasse is inn my 30-gallon. Okay, I know I went overboard, but what the heck. I wasn't overstocking and all of the tanks were well-cycled. It was worth it, even though I am know $75.00 in the whole.

 

[Menagerie]

Those are some great fish prices!!! It may have been impulsive, but I think you did well. Keep an eye on the water parameters, with that large bioload, your bacteria may need to catch up, causing a minicycle.

 

[Menagerie]

I am writing this because fish keeping is a learning experience. Please learn from my mistakes and don't try this at home!! (I am not starting a new topic, because I don't want to hear from everybody how stupid I have been~believe me, I am black and blue from kicking myself.)
Trevor and I came home and I immediately noticed we lost another Mbuna~the Rusty cichlid Water parameters are fine, he wasn't picked on, other fish are fine.
Then Trevor goes to the 29 gal where the flounders are and tells me another is dead He goes to scoop it out and it scurries away, only not very well. He netted it out and we see theflounder is ripped up and not doing well. I know who the culprit is. I know I should have taken the convict out of this tank. Over a month ago, I lost all sorts of Celebes Rainbows in this tank and tossed in my juvie convict and 4 assorted tetras since the tank was empty and I wanted to see if they were affected. They all did fine. When I brought home the founder and Mollies, I changed the substrate, put the tetras in the community tank and left the convict because apparently I'm an idiot. He's colored up beautifully and I keep saying he's a juvie (BTW--convict was an impulse buy when we first got to Calgary~I should know better than impulse buy anything!!)
So, convict is going somewhere--need to make some calls. I wish I had room for him, but this place barely supports my 6 tanks and two QT tanks. The other flounder (nipped at) was taken out of the 29 gal and placed in the 2.5 gal QT, salts and melafix were added and now, we will wait.

Let the flogging begin :|

 

[Menagerie]

I was so ready to be flogged--oh well.
FWIW, the one flounder that didn't look so good is recovering. The other two look pretty good. I think they are eating frozen blood worms, but they eat at night, so I'm not 100% sure.

 

[webmoose]

I am soo excited about your flounders... That would be so cool if you could actually keep them... When I saw them in the store I got kinda worked up thinking.. Oh no they didn't get more of those in..

 

[Menagerie]

No, they have LOTS in. I don't think they are selling very well.

 

[TankGirl]

Wow! I am just coming into this thread (I don't check in often enough) and am sorry about all of the trouble. Do you think the marmalade cat brought in something nasty to the mbuna tank?

I like the analogy of the flounder being the Moorish Idol of the FW set - that is definitely what I hear. When they first started showing up around here at PetsMart about a year ago this board was abuzz but finding info was about impossible. I am glad to hear that more is known about how to care for them, but they will certainly be a challenge - and one that you are certainly up to, Menagerie!

Being a new fish owner myself (first time in a good long while) with my peacocks, labs and rainbows, I am saying incantations over the tanks to bring good fortune. I also shipped some Endler's yesterday and I am a nervous wreck about how they are doing - no stress like fishy stress! :?

 

[poikilotherm]

Here's what I could come up with about the freshwater flounder...

There are several similar species sold as freshwater flounder, with Trinectes maculatus (aka hogchoker, formerly known as Achirus fasciatus) being the most common, and Achirus lineatus (formerly Achirus achirus) also found. Both are technically American Soles, related to marine soles and tonguefish, and both are usually "right-eyed" in that the upper face of the fish was the embryonic right side. The name achirus comes from the lack of pectoral fins, although many of the Achirus species do have rudimentary ones.

Differences between Achirus and Trinectes are minimal, with not a whole lot known about either one. WRT both, they reach a maximum size of 4-6" (8" in one case), and are estuarine to marine with occasional sightings of juveniles in freshwater. Distinguishing characteristics between species are inconsistent, with spots on fins and underside sometimes used to distinguish Achirus lineatus (nee achirus) from Trinectes (some pictures of Trinectes show spots on fins, though...). More details of classification are obscure ray and scale counts, I have a few refs for this, but suspect this is too much detail.

The size of fish that you had, Menagerie, indicates extremely young juveniles- hogchokers generally develop to around 4cm (1.6") by 1 year, so yours are probably less than a year old. All of these soles spawn in summer, and are probably wild-caught.

These fish have complex patterns of movement up and down salinity gradients, with attempts to detect patterns mostly failing except for alternate-tide movement patterns. They may need changes in salinity in ways which aquarists would be hard-pressed to satisfy. As adults, they are almost entirely marine and high-salinity estuarine fishes. They all feed primarily on small invertebrates, so may take bloodworms, although smaller (frozen or live) food would probably be preferable.

Another consideration which appears to be mostly neglected in discussions is the fact that they are not tropical at all. They are found from Massachusetts down to Uruguay in waters moderated by ocean temperatures, and the widest range estimate of their temperature range tops out at 24 degrees C (75 degrees F).

From what I've seen, a brackish tank with a temperature around 70 degrees and sand (or finer) substrate is probably your best bet with these guys. Good luck, and I hope your "ups and downs" even out and aquarium satori is restored.

I'm not sure how much more I could flesh this out as a fish profile, but I could try. There is not much online, and what I have here is pieced together from books in the University of Idaho library.

 

[madasafish]

Rock on, poikilotherm. That's awesome info to have. You could pretty much cut and paste that and submit it to FishFreek or Reefrunner69 as a profile. I know I'd approve it. Only thing that'd I'd add is a picture pilfered (and cited of course ) from a fish site.

The salinity gradient point brings up a really interesting issue. It is always possible that juvenile fish that are anadromous (live in the sea, spawn in fresh/brackish water, like salmon) osmoregulate in a particular way that requires them to experience both fresh and salt water, and that this is important to their development. Or that their diet when they are growing up requires that they eat both FW and SW inverts etc. to stay healthy (though that's somewhat unlikely). This may also explain why it's so difficult to raise the fry of so many fish species.

Menagerie, no flogging!

But this is a particularly good lesson for all of us, since it's obvious that not even experienced aquarists can trust fortune to shine on them with new and poorly understood (by the entire fish community) animals.

 

[poikilotherm]

Oh, BTW, my experience with freshwater flounder was this: I impulse-bought a 1.5" freshwater flounder, saw it occasionally (looking fine) for about a month, then never saw it again. Even in death, it was camouflaged (or recycled into the food chain). Needless to say I had no salt and no clue. I never really figured out what happened, but this last round of research helped me understand a bit. Moorish Idol indeed.

 

[Menagerie]

Do you think the marmalade cat brought in something nasty to the mbuna tank?

No, I think the others picked on it to death. Trevor said the body was not good. My fiance is great about taking care of that. I just sat at the computer with my cat and cried.

Well, I don't know what to think about that info, poikilotherm (why couldn't you pick an easier to spell handle ). Thanks for your help.
Hmmm, the gobies and celebes can go to about 72 F. So can the Mollies. I will adjust the temp accordingly and see how things go. Speaking with another member, he said the salinity in his bb goby tank goes from 1.005 to 1.015. As of last night, the tank has 1ppm salt as we slowly increase the salt content. Our salinity meter won't even read it, but Trevor did some calculations while I was on this board (where else would I be?).
The challenge is going to be getting food to the flounders and not let the Mollies and Celebes eat it all. I need to set up the BBS hatchery

 

[TankGirl]

Well what you have here is more than most of us know about these fish, and since they do turn up from time to time I think it would be extremely valuable to have this in the fish profiles section - a lot of folks would pass on them if they knew what was involved, and they're not gonna get the whole story at the LFS, most likely.

 

[webmoose]

How are the flounders? I saw that the fish store still had a few in their tank.

 

[Menagerie]

They are doing well. Once I figure out how to resize a pic that Trevor took, I will post it. Over the last few days, we have seen them eating blood worms. They get more food now that the Mollies are gone.

 

[webmoose]

The mollies are gone! ?

 

[Menagerie]

To the community tank.