Post by paddysdaddy on May 7, 2012 13:33:55 GMT -6
I'm having buyer's anxiety here, need a lil support! I've never spent this much money on this few fish!
Just sent the money for my dream fish, Hemisynodontis Membranacea-AKA the african moustache cat (not the tanganykan one, those are available) after a lengthy search. Dave Schumacher of Daves Rare Aq Fish in San Antonio got in 5 approx 7" ones and they will be here Wednesday. I've literally searched worldwide for these for 3 years now. None of the wholesalers, retailers or importers that claim they are available have ever fulfilled my standing order.
The only other group of these I saw was in 1991, while at Segrest Farms buying fish for my shop, I found 9 pitiful specimens in a dark tank in a corner. They were bone-thin and had terrible bumps or bulbs on the hard spines and I had to beg several higher-ups to sell them to me. Treated them for parasites several times and tried EVERYTHING to get the dang bumps to reduce in size. Finally, a friend and a spectacular reptile vet told me to clip off the affected spines and hope they regenerated. 2 of them died from shock or trauma from this, the remaining ones grew into spectacular adults, finishing at 8 to 15 inches. The females were so rotund, sassy and cute, the dominant male was huge, streamlined and quite the jerk. They would battle ferociously, rolling and spinning and splashing and biting and you could even hear their grunts as they seemed to battle to the death. There was almost never any damage, they were just wrestling! I tried every trick I could steal to get them to breed: water quality-both stable and spiking the relevant variable (temperature, hardness, PH, etc), every food ingredient and combination I knew (was manufacturing fish food at the time, so used tons of my practical research from regular diets), social variables (MFM, MF, FMF, group), aquascaping and even mimicked rainfall, a travelling "sun" (MH light and full spectrum bulbs) and moonlight over their pond. Nothing, not one danged spawn attempt that I saw. My ex #1 killed them "accidentally" during our divorce.
So, now, many years later and hopefully a bit wiser, here we go again with Moustache Catfish!
I now know where, what, how much and how often to inject a certain "encouragement" into the fish and may or may not do that to generate the first ever spawning in captivity. But the important part for me is getting to observe these clowns in my living room, letting them train me into hand feeding them.
Thank God I don't have a wife to lie to about the price of these drab brown catfish!
Just sent the money for my dream fish, Hemisynodontis Membranacea-AKA the african moustache cat (not the tanganykan one, those are available) after a lengthy search. Dave Schumacher of Daves Rare Aq Fish in San Antonio got in 5 approx 7" ones and they will be here Wednesday. I've literally searched worldwide for these for 3 years now. None of the wholesalers, retailers or importers that claim they are available have ever fulfilled my standing order.
The only other group of these I saw was in 1991, while at Segrest Farms buying fish for my shop, I found 9 pitiful specimens in a dark tank in a corner. They were bone-thin and had terrible bumps or bulbs on the hard spines and I had to beg several higher-ups to sell them to me. Treated them for parasites several times and tried EVERYTHING to get the dang bumps to reduce in size. Finally, a friend and a spectacular reptile vet told me to clip off the affected spines and hope they regenerated. 2 of them died from shock or trauma from this, the remaining ones grew into spectacular adults, finishing at 8 to 15 inches. The females were so rotund, sassy and cute, the dominant male was huge, streamlined and quite the jerk. They would battle ferociously, rolling and spinning and splashing and biting and you could even hear their grunts as they seemed to battle to the death. There was almost never any damage, they were just wrestling! I tried every trick I could steal to get them to breed: water quality-both stable and spiking the relevant variable (temperature, hardness, PH, etc), every food ingredient and combination I knew (was manufacturing fish food at the time, so used tons of my practical research from regular diets), social variables (MFM, MF, FMF, group), aquascaping and even mimicked rainfall, a travelling "sun" (MH light and full spectrum bulbs) and moonlight over their pond. Nothing, not one danged spawn attempt that I saw. My ex #1 killed them "accidentally" during our divorce.
So, now, many years later and hopefully a bit wiser, here we go again with Moustache Catfish!
I now know where, what, how much and how often to inject a certain "encouragement" into the fish and may or may not do that to generate the first ever spawning in captivity. But the important part for me is getting to observe these clowns in my living room, letting them train me into hand feeding them.
Thank God I don't have a wife to lie to about the price of these drab brown catfish!
