Rainbow Fish Near Dc Or Mail Order??

Hey Guys! Just wanted to say that there are many private breeders selling and trading bows and mops all the time(me included). Many of whom are on the new rainbowfish forum, rainbow-fish.org.(I hope its ok to post that here??) We are a North American(US) based rainbowfish forum.

All the breeders/hobbyists I have dealt with over the past couple years have had very good rainbows, and are very conscientious about the care and breeding of their fish. Its like a well hidden underground network of pure strain rainbow breeders. lol. We are not all in hiding or anything, its just such a big world, its hard to find everyone with similar interests. We are always looking for ways to get in touch with other rainbowfish enthusiasts.

Anyone interested in rainbows and other Australia/New Guinea native fish are welcome to come and network over there, who knows, you just might find the fish you are looking for?! We are also working on a shipment of bows straight from Australia scheduled for May! Very exciting for us rainbow people!! PM me or go take a look over there if you are interested.

Take care
~Lori

For me, m.bosemani have been very easy to get eggs from! What is your male/female ratio?? What are your water parameters?? pH, dKH and dGH?? Bosemani might appreciate water on the harder side, and fairly high pH(even as high as for rift lake cichlids). This might help to get more fertile eggs--harden the water a bit with baking soda or aragonite. Just make sure to raise any params slowly and make sure they stay stable.

What temp are you keeping them at?? I have my adult bosemani breeders at about 76 degrees. Also, what else is in the tank with them?? Do you have any fish or inverts who could be eating the eggs?? I've also found a bare tank with only a sponge and spawning mop(heater if needed) gets the highest number of eggs in one area(on the mop rather than spread out around other plants, etc in the tank....they might spawn on the sponge filter too! lol) if you have a power filter on the tank, its possible it is sucking up eggs and lowering your overall egg count. Then you can remove the adults from the breeding tank, to make sure you get all the eggs in one place(they might also get some eggs in the substrate, stuck to algae on the glass, etc. Or, you can just move the mop to a hatching container/tank. Just make sure you have the temp high(82d f) and you can add java moss to the hatching container to help boost the number of insuforia for the fry. But, a mop left in a tank for a week or 2 will usually be teaming with critters just like java moss. A couple other things are to make the mops really thick(like 100 wraps around a book) this makes it harder for the adults to eat the eggs......and you can always collect eggs daily(make smaller mops that you swap out in the AM after they have spawned on them, but hopefully before they eat too many eggs. lol)

Another thought, how big are your bosemani?? Especially the females?? The larger the females, the more eggs they will produce. So, the more mature your females(so long as they are not elderly) the more eggs you should get from each female. The size of the males are not as important so long as they are sexually mature(1.75-2inches or larger).

Lastly, where did you get your bose from?? If they are well bred, healthy stock, you should be able to get more eggs from them. If they are LFS purchases(most likely farmed fish) then you might continue to have trouble collecting eggs from them.....

Sorry if some of this is obvious, I just dont know anything about your set up, so tried to throw everything I could think of at you.

HTH
~Lori