Corydoras Haraldschultzei A Month After Purchase

I recently rearranged and added a new HMF style filter to the 20Long that houses my C. HaraldSchultzei.  They were very spooky in the previous set up so figured I couldn't go wrong by rearranging. 

They are already acting more confident about feeding and being in out of the plants.  They seem to enjoy hanging out near the HMF foam toward the front.  In the video I had just placed the filter in and they were investigating the back glass.

Mosquito larvae, week old otocinclus fry and colored up Cory fry

Both the C. trilineatus spawn from 7/14 and the C. aeneus spawn from 8/02 are in adult coloration now and right about the same size.  Amazing how quickly the aeneus fry caught up with the 2 week older trilineatus.  The trilineatus were slower to hatch AND slower to grow.  Its like aeneus is the "super" cory.  I think I have right around 150 fry (kinda hard to count.....) and should be ready for them to find new homes in another couple weeks or so.

I've been harvesting mosquito larvae from the "toxic" swamp (aka green water growing receptacle, aka stolen kiddy pool) to feed my breeding pair of Killifish.  She has a voracious appetite for anything that squiggles and moves!  I also ordered a huge bag of Java Moss for the breeding tank which basically covers the entire floor.  My home made fluidized filter is working like a charm, very pleased with how quickly the 10 gallon tank cycled.  I will let the Killi's spawn for a few more days then removed the adults and see who hatches :)



The one week old Otocinclus fry has been out and about ever since I threw some Daphnia in his shoe tub with him/her.  I keep adding green water for the Daphnia and some Repashy soilent green for the misc. snails.  There are also some mature floating plants and a sponge filter.  Anywhoooo the little guy is grown and now very active.  I did a 50% water change on the tub last week and remove water to add green water each day, so far all looks good.  Interested to see how fast the little guy grows.  Meanwhile in the parents tank some eggs obviously hatched around the same time he did as there was a whole lot of activity in there from the corys.  Real doubtful there was survivors!  I will eventually move the otos in with the cherry shrimps where they can all reproduce to their hearts content ;)



Keep your eyes open for the grand opening of Finatics Tropical Fish in Kennewick, WA!!!  The countdown starts!

Daphnia

Daphnia arrived yesterday, two big bags of nice red ones of all sizes along with a few scuds that must be in the ponds of the grower. 

Pretty excited that I finally get to use the green water I've been culturing in the "toxic swamp".  You can see I'm floating the daphnia in some green water.  I made sure to keep the bags separate and make two different cultures in case one crashes.

This is the second culture in a plastic tub.  I ran a airline to both cultures and added some fresh water to the green water  to bring the water level up.  You could see quite a few scuds swimming in the bottom of the plastic tub culture.  I saw no real dead daphnia, the live rate after shipping was excellent.

Then today I harvested some more green water from the swamp to add to the newly put in free pond that the boys and I dug into our dirt pile last night, also planting some gooseberry, currant bushes and some mint.  Next we need to add rock to the hill and some more plants.
 

Hoping the culture takes off when it warms back up a bit, meanwhile I kept the other culture inside as a back up and I'll possibly start another culture in a different container.