I want to hear more on JoeMCs Weitzmani Tetras

I'm starting this thread because I think these superb fish need a bit of a showcase.....and someone on this forum has them.

JoeMc.....to you (or anyone esle who happens to have them and has some vids or pic or stories of their breeding).

Ian

thats one way of starting a topic
yes i have them,
yes mine have bred, yes i have them at the moment ranging from 1.5 cm unsexed juvies to large adult males topping out at about 5-5.5 cms i have 35+ fish, maybe over 40 i am not too sure exactly how many as they are not the type of fish that swim about in the middle of a tank allowing you to count them!!
i bought 100 young fish
i shared out the fish equally between 5 people including myself, some are members of this forum, some members of the other irish fish forum and some like me are members of both.
of the five groups of 20 fish i know 2 groups all succumbed to two different types of treatment for whitespot in the tanks their owners had them in.
1 salt was added to the tank,...... the fish were all dead within a couple of hours
the other the temp was raised to begin the treatment for whitespot and the fish were all dead the next morning when the tank was checked.
the other three groups of fish are still on the go, the two groups that died will be replaced with some from my tank if i can grow my colony and there is one other fishkeeper who after seeing the fish has asked for some of the young
i will do a few lines on the tank they are in and the things i have noted while keeping them, any questions about them you ask i will answer based on my keeping of them if i can
re the pictures, i will have a root for any that i have, i will ask another fishkeeper that is into cameras if he has any that he has taken in the past of te fish and get him to mail them on to me
there is also a video on this forum that i posted in another thread of the fish feeding. maybe a moderator can shift a copy of it to this thread?

Oops!

Thanks for the info Joe, if there is any ever up for sale put me down for some.
Never seen them before your post awesome looking fish!


Mark

water params ...........temp 24-25C, ph 4.5 KH 1.5-2
the tank is heavily planted with a mix of plants, mostly java fern, moss and anubais
the ph is very low, but that is just this tank and is not necessary to keep this species in my experience as i have two morphos in a 4 ft tank that houses a breeding group of C.cutteri that i am holding for someone params in that tank are temp 21C ph 7.5 and kh 4.5 and the fish are fine

feeding despite reading that they will only take live food i have only ever fed these fish tetra prima grannuals , in the begining i crumbled them down after reading that they will only take very small food items, but i noticed that they went for the bigger pieces in the water so i started to just drop the full sized crumbs into the tank, which they preferred, their mouth is a lot bigger than you would think. if they are hungry they will take food from the surface, otherwise they will take it in mid water, also if very hungry they will try feed from the tank floor, though the females are more successful at this than the males who's very large upturned mouth makes it difficult to feed, they have to turn their whole body sideways to grab the food from the bottom.

tank mates
other fish in the tank are cardinals apistos and checkerboards, none of which i would really recommend and would not keep them together again if i had the option as they prey on the young and eggs.
other fish in the tank that are fine are Brochis splendens, a couple of types of ottos a few small plec species and some bristlenose cats
size
the females grow to about the size of an adult glowlight tetra, though a little bit slimmer.
the males grow much bigger, equal to or larger than an adult female checkerboard cichlid, though slimmer.
breeding
these tetras are unusual in that they are a cave spawning species with the male caring for the eggs until they hatch. The first time i noticed that they were spawning it was taking place in a large clump of java fern and moss which was intertwined and growing through a pile of branches and twigs in the left handside of the tank, later i added some 3-4 inch lengths of one inch pipe to offer more 'caves' for the fish to sellect from as spawning sites, the males took up residence in some of these and only came out to feed or court a female.
i tied the pieces of pipe together in groups of threes with a piece of hort tree gut and stuffed in a bit of java moss between the pipes hoping to get it to take off and make the tubes less visible
you can see some of the spawning caves i made in the video of my planted tank, they are on the lower right handside of the tank
males display to each other when they spot one another, flaring of fins and contorting their bodies in varying positions, head down tail and visa versa, then one will make a short quick jerk towards the other and one will shoot off , that is the end of it, occasionally i see the odd split fin on a male, but never an infection or anything to worry about they heal quickly.
females that are ready to spawn stand out from the other females by how rounded they look
The actual spawning is quite a secerative affair, taking place deep in the planting, only occasionally have i been able to see what i thought were eggs or the actual spawning when it occured in one of the pipes i put in the tank,the eggs were quite large not hugh numbers of them, maybe about 30 and laid on the roof or side of the pipes, these seem to hatch within 2-3 days and the fry were huddled on the bottom of the pipe with the male still in attendance the next stage seems to be the problem once the fry can move they tended to fall out of the tube and to the tank floor where they were quickly eaten by other fish, it is a regular sight to see a shoal of cardinals or checkerboards cruising through the java fern making darting movements, i presume that this is them picking off any exposed recently hatched fry, some survive and at a little over a quater of an inch long can be spotted darting out of the clump of plants about 2-3 inches and then back in again, once they reach a half inch they are more confident and easier to see and come out at feeding time when the adults feed. they grow fast and look exactly like a young female but much thinner.

the young fish when seen in shops look poorly by normal fish buying standards, what i mean is that they have a concave look about them, almost hollow in the belly, making the stripe on their side look very bowed, my fish were like that when i got them and the young in the tank are like that now too, so it is not something that would put me off buying them in a shop as i think it is their normal appearance as juvies
the tank setup is not really conducive to producing a large number of offspring due to the other inhabitants and i would be nervous of moving some of the adults to another tank in case they did not take the move well, so all i have done recently is move some of the lengths of pip so that they are slightly tilted to the back and tilted into a dence clump of java moss, hopefully this will increase the number of surviving young.
I have other thoughts and observations on the morphos, but they are only that at the moment, and i might be a bit off the mark with what i think i see, things like the young males moving away from the group and positioning themselves elsewhere in the tank once their fins start to grow and color up and also changes in the adult breeding males fin shape when spawning, it may just be disfigurement from the healing process after getting split with the displaying and posturing up to each other, but i have noticed the exact same growth( / regrowth) on a couple of the males.

they are not that uncommon spidermonkey, i think most of the sponsor's would have them in on occasion they just don't really stand out when they are young

Okey dokey Joe i'll do a bit of ringing around


Thanks


Mark

joe is the video the one u want move to here the one u posted on the tread called

help needed planning a paludarium

if so let me know and ill move it here for u and if not then let us know where it is and ill move it for u

Sean

Fair play to ye joe
A really interesting piece on real experience
Thanks for taking the time to share
John

I make an insincere apology for putting you on-the-spot, JoeMc, by starting this thread

Great thread with some really good home-grown information from a keeper of these fab, and often not heard of, fish.

Well done JoeMc.

Ian

don't fret about it ian, i am sure i will corner you at some point in the future
taking pics of them is not one of my strong points, i am after clicking the camera about 50 times in the last hour or so, and not a decent pic, so here are two from the photobucket account one video and one still
video of spawning tubes before i moved them, you can see the way they were tilted at an angle.... it must have been like sweets rolling out of a bag to the other fish!

pic of spawning tubes

Amazing stuff Joe, I found weitzmani nearly 5 or 6 years ago in what was then Wackers on the longmile Road and they were in a sorry state due to shipping, they'd only been there a day or two but I had to have them, they never settled and looked starved, lasted 2-3 Days, I 'm so glad you posted this info and will be on the lookout in the coming Months.

While you are on, have you had any experience with these below ?


Royal tetra.



Kev.

WOW, that's what they look like when they grow up!
Had some youngsters, I thought the whitespot had gotten them, but mabye the treatment was to blame!


I found, as you did, they will take other than live food, they also will go for flake, but it has to be red/orange/pink to interest them!
Mine always kept to the top third of the tank. They very rarely went to open waters (outside feeding time), but tended to stay under/near surface plants or roots (They really like complex roots!). The males very much had their own teritories. The females made the most of this.
They are one of the fish who seem to need tannins in the water to flourish.
Embers tend to give them a sense of security. Anything their size, tetra-wise, can scare them. (Glowlights!)
They were happy with ottos and farlowella.
The checkerboards (fillamentosa) didn't seem to bother them, but they kept to the bottom of the tank....

Will definitely get more, once the 400 is up and running.

nope, Kev, i have never kept them, nice fish though
murph , that is interesting that your fish only ate orange/ red colored food, i must offer mine some of other colors and see if they show an interest or not

The weitzmani are problematic to acquire as so many shops simply do not have the experience to settle them (that may sound harsh, but my experience of all of the cave spawning tetras has been the same observation of shops).
Many have come from the wilds, had a rough ride and need the right conditions to settle and survive more than short while.

This is where home-bred fish are just some important to the hobby. Tank-bred cave spawners (the weitzmanni, and Crenuchus spilurus) can do very well.

The I.kerri are superb little fish. That cost nothing when they do arrive in shops.....and grow into stunners. Very much like the vastly underrated emperor tetra (N. palmeri) as well. Stunning and usually a lot of fish for little money.

Another great thing about all of these tetras is their personalities.....really interesting fish.

Ian

Hi Joe,
Try them on tetra min flakes (not too big!). All my hatchets are the same, will only go for the red-ish flakes. They ignore the white/grey/straw ones.

Ian, parnell st had some a few weeks ago.

murph wrote:

Hi Joe,
Try them on tetra min flakes (not too big!). All my hatchets are the same, will only go for the red-ish flakes. They ignore the white/grey/straw ones.

Ian, parnell st had some a few weeks ago.

The weitzmani tetras?

Yes, wietzmanis!

I had seen them first in one of the darker tanks on the left, as you enter the basement.
A couple of weeks later, they had made it over to the bright ones on the other side in sparkling clear water(why?).
Haven't been in since. They may have some left.
I would have taken the lot, but I need the 80l free to home the contents of the 180l when the stand for the 400l is (eventually) made. Then the 80l can go back to its normal brown colour and home some more of them.
'Till then, no impulse buys.

very interesting post, it is good to read of personal experiences with less well known fish such as these, rather than the usual rehashed cut and paste mythology that abounds on forums.
it reminds me of the old days when fishkeepers were working with and breeding new species and sharing information on husbandry techniques.

,thanks for all the kind comments everyone

here are two pics i managed to take last night that show the size of an adult male, the other fish alongside it is an adult female checkerboard for comparison

Cheers Joe beautiful fish, I asked the lfs to see if they can get some for me, fingers crossed!


Mark

I got a few of these the other day very young and i think these pic's are of the female? which are less colourful than the males as you can see from Joes pic's

Shy but amazing






Mark