maddzvk

our form in december had 8 we now hve a few more species to add as well so we should be up to about 15 roughly?

thats actualy just what they look like. grey and white mottled fry cute little thangs

The next victoria betta meet is
MARCH 30

Venue
29 Grant Street, Clifton Hill 3068

Time
12:30 - 4:30 pm

**Educational Meetings**

Speakers from the membership will be arranged to give talks based on all aspects of betta fish keeping.
These meetings are a great way to learn the ins-and-outs of this hobby,
chat with other members,
listen in on Q&A,
bring along items for the trading table or donate it to the raffle table
.***THERE WILL NOT BE A TABLE SHOW THIS MEETING***

Congratulations you have skipped directly to fishkeeping level 5 which was to conscript your spouse to your hobby. You now have 67 levels opened up for you. Good job!

baha what levels are there

welcome to the forum plenty of info here

good luck hopefully you can join us in the ranks of crazy people with fish throughout the house soon enough

or you know just get your 4 tanks going swell and post some pretty pics

get your head out of fish and into shrimp. pretty sure they are both for the darwin algea eating shrimp but people most often use DAE since the shrimp sort of known in context (on shrimp forum etc)

yes pretty sure they are interchangable terms

for algea eating>?? darwin algea eaters yo!!! look up aquagreen

when does ones strain become a strain though... dalmatian, apache, koi, mustard gas....

unfortunatly shrimp arent an allowable import in aus
most non natives have actually been smuggled over illegally or are not in aus.
i know a few people have suggested various natives as a good replacement for amano shrimp (algea eaters which grow to a larger size)
have a look at aquagreen as they have a few of the native species

leopard???
http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?fwbettashm&1393649055#.Uw1zf1U3weg.facebook

not really most of our fish require tannined water anyway
zeolite while it does have some affinity for calcium i dont think it would be enough or easy enough to control if you were using it specifically to soften water.
id be going for RO water if i had a very high hardness

rainwater will change depending on location as adam has pointed out it depends on what chemicals are in the air (just as waters not the same everywhere neither is the air and this shows in rainwater)
yes the age of the water will affect the pH the longer you leave it the more the gases etc in the water will escape which will affect pH and tds
so do test your tap water after its sat for a while

Melbourne has a TDS (total dissolved substances) of less than 100, RO is 0 and weve had shrimp at 1200

like i said test you water and once you know pH and hardness use them to guide you to the best method to alter them to your needs (if they need altering at all).

ah you've got it covered BT.
Don't use uppers and downers for pH as they will fluctuate and cause stress to fish.
best is as Brenton said to test your water hardness and pH and decided the best way to drop pH, drop hardness or both depending on what your aim is.
To lower pH: driftwood, IAL/Katapang/riparian/banana leaves, peat moss, soils often buffer lower pH, cutting with RO water may be needed
To Lower hardness: your restricted to pretty much using RO water atleast partially in your aquarium, rain water or trying products like water softeners.
the two will of course affect each other though.
lowering the hardness will make it easier to drop the pH as well.

we have a few gold spot plecos just to share.

they were living with our unimacs

but have since been moved into another tank.

L066, King Tiger Pleco
Acari Pão (Brazilian), Network Pleco, Scribbled Pleco
we have a pair that are just chilling heres some pics of em

Apistogramma sp steel blue
we got these dudes a little while ago and they bred readily
momma tending the eggs when they were beginning to hatch

unfortunately unrelated adults predate so we had to move the adults to new quarters but fry are going well.
some of the fry shortly after hatching


eating BBS easily they look so cute with thier orange bellies

Yayyyyyyyy!!!!

ill try get some non lonely topics going if youll add the sub forum i have sunday off so i can definately spend some time photographing our non betta fish population (which oddly enough includes discus for the next 2 days....

rigth ive updated diamond eye and chucked alien in its own class as i dont know what it is and the options seem to be in form and colour cheers ash

martin on bettas4all answered a few terminology ones heres his response
"sky hawk - Tall forward pointing dorsal with long first ray


eagle - Generally same as sky hawk in my experience, some people also use 'hawk'

armageddon - Red and yellow patches in the fins


devil - Red fins with black edges



cobra - I think has been borrowed from guppies to describe bettas with fins that have many dots like a cobra guppy. It is also used to describe other phenotypes - but I can't work out why!!!



panda - black/dark blue and white, like a panda - or dark eyes on a white head.




alien - Usually this is used for metallic/Dragon scaling over the eyes, which gives the betta an alien appearance. It is also used for fancy marbles sometimes, but again, I'm not sure why!
"

so we all know basic colours and fin forms even well accepted patterns but every know and then aquabid likes to through a curve ball
so im accumulating some of these odd expressions that arent well known or necessarily well used

COLOUR/PATTERN
PIEBALD AKA MONKEY FACE OR SKINMASK. may also be called monster. - Piebald Betta's have a fleshy coloured face no matter what their body colour is.
MONSTER (marble)- a betta which has a white or piebald face and a different coloured body.
ARMAGEDDON- refers to Muti colored Betta that has both Yellow and Red finnage.
DEVIL- a fish with Red finnage and black Black edging.
COBRA -I think has been borrowed from guppies to describe bettas with fins that have many dots like a cobra guppy. It is also used to describe other phenotypes
PANDA- black/dark blue and white, like a panda - or dark eyes on a white head.
DIAMOND EYE - Usually this is used for metallic/Dragon scaling over the eyes, which gives the betta an alien appearance. It is also used for fancy marbles sometimes, but again, I'm not sure why!
ORANGE DALMATIAN: Orange dalmatian Betta's are not really common. They have a pale orange body with darker orange spots of different sizes all patched around there body. Also known as Apricot Spots and orange dot bettas
SAMURAI - Dragon with incomplete coverage
TUTWEILER BUTTERFLY- This is a very special type of Butterfly. While all multiple banded Bettas might be impressive, it is the unique contrast of the central band that made the Tutweiler Betta so famous! This type of Butterfly has a Clear, or Flesh coloured body, a White inner band, a Red centre band, and a White Outer band. This type of Butterfly is quite rare compared to the other types Butterflies, because of the difficulty in getting fish that have a perfect centre band."

FORM
SKYHAWK - Tall forward pointing dorsal with long first ray, very broad forward sweeping extended dorsals.
possible second meaning/co-trait the extension/reduction that appear on the dorsal and anal fin but not on the caudal which looks like eagle wing tips.( like on the photo oi reposted from martin 19/02/14)
EAGLE- Generally same as sky hawk in my experience, some people also use 'hawk'. (Tall forward pointing dorsal with long first ray)
KING CROWN- has rays which cross at 7 points/crossray crown
KING BETTA - Americanism for a large betta thats not a standardised giant (in Aus we tend to call them jumbos)
BULLET BETTA AKA SHORT BOY AKA PARROT BETTA- Are disgusting. its extensive breeding for spinal deformity specifically to create a significantly shortened body.

UNKNOWN
ALIEN- could be split ventrals, unusual marble patterning or possibly similar to diamond eye. currently unsure

DEVIL




SKYHAWK


ARMEGEDDON

Welcome to the forum myster!

We have a whole forum on wild bettas so should be some useful stuff on there and plenty

of active keepers too

Enjoy :)

hey razzi could we get a few more species forums?
nothing to high tech maybe a catfish and cory's and all things cichlid for starters???
was gonna post my apisto vid but there no category besides the community

Welcome to the forum

plenty of info here

Ash is our coccina ninja

Adam is the unimac complex guru

And me and James just keep a variety

there's Also a few Sydney wild keepers who aren't on here much but are localish to you so may be of help

Ron in Sydney has some amazing albimarginata's, holger in orange runs second nature aquarium and keeps a few species and mil and Mel who are mega involved on SSS also keep a few wild species (mostly unimaculata complex) bug that's jumping ahead a touch

Have a look around and enjoy the forum !

Pretty expensive fish food consider one shimp can cost $$$$