LA
Pic
A hobby staple, black skirt tetras lighten in color at warmer
temperatures. Keep 'em cool.
LA
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White skirt tetras are the same fish. Both come in a long-finned version.
LA
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Somehow, Oriental fish farmers can't resist dying white fish.
LA
Pic
So these guys now come in grape, raspberry, and so forth ...
LA
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Here's a young male and female (top
with short fins) -- our stars in this film.
LA
Pic
You need fine-leaved plants to catch the eggs. Hornwort works.
They're scoping it out.
LA
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Separate your sexes till the females fill with eggs. Males are
ready most of the time.
LA
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Females tend to display to males (behind her) and vice versa.
LA
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Males are usually a bit smaller but not necessarily.
LA
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They twitter their fins at each other too fast to capture on film.
LA
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She lures him (longer fins) into her boudoir.
LA
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They sidle together a few practice times. They lay their eggs when the sun
comes up.
LA
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Plenty of egg-laying equipment here. We'll try to capture them in the
morning.
LA Pix
Still twittering. He's the blur behind her.
LA
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Day three. We missed the spawning. She's skinny and chewed up.
LA
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Three days later we found a few smaller than eye lash fry (too small to
photograph) on the the tank
walls. Because of their miniscule size, we'll feed them this green
water filled with Euglena (a smaller than infusoria microfood).
LA
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At one quart per day, you can see why breeders usually start with
half-filled aquaria.
LA
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We tossed in some temple plants. The fry are nearly invisible.
We'll feed them daily. Not enough fry to fool
with. We'll spawn some others in a bit.
LA
Pic
What the heck. Here's a pile of them. LA
©
2004 LA Productions

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