Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
My current set-up.
I would very happily take a male and a female off you if that's ok?
Yeah, sure. Hopefully all of the suspected males are actually male and not females in disguise!
Those numbers are not too bad. I only ended up with 10 from my last batch of veiltails and they're all males
Well, maybe I've just always been lucky but I've never had a spawn that resulted in less than 40 fry. This was the first spawn that I had done in a while though and it was a first time for the pair as well. I should just be happy that there aren't any obvious deformities in the spawn so at least I wont have to cull any of them.
Interestingly I have one which is looking increasingly like a crowntail with little points developing on his tail which is weird as all the others and the parents are most definitely veil tailed.
I thought the veil tail gene would have kicked the ass of any other genes present in the parents but there you go.
The thing about Crowntails is that they are just characterised by approx 50% webbing reduction on the fins and nothing else. Every Crowntail is actually also another tail type i.e. it's a Veiltail with reduced webbing, a Halfmoon/Super-Delta with reduced webbing or a plakat with reduced webbing.
This is why you have to be very careful with selecting Crowntails. It would totally screw my line if I bred a Veiltail based Crowntail into my Halfmoon line.
The same goes for Doubletails in so far as they are also either Veiltail, Halfmoon or Plakat. To make matters even more confusing you can actually have fish that are Doubletail Crowntails on top of their "real" tail type.
Both the Crowtail and Doubletail mutations are only represented by one (somewhat recessive) gene (while Halfmoon is represented by a complex combination of genes which is why Halfmoon spawns result in mostly Super-Deltas and not all Halfmoons) and therefore can crop up in a line quite unexpectedly.
So it's not really that strange for a fish with reduced webbing to appear in your spawn. I would be suprised if it ever developed webbing reduction to the same extent as true Crowntails but it's possible.
Another thing that could be causing it would be abnormal growth of the fins. The rays growing faster than the webbing, which I have seen once or twice in my own spawns. The fins usually have a normal appearance by the time the fish stops growing (5-6 months).
stretnik wrote:
Congrats on being a Father
Kev
That would be "mother" actually
Don't know many fellas that would have a username like mine
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I have a few Halfmoon Plakats now that I really like and want to breed from but I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in buying them?
Halfmoon Plakats are short finned with a 180 degree tail spread. Here's one of my Halfmoon Plakat males for reference:
I might have a few steel blue Halfmoon Plakats for sale in a while as well as the steel blues from my last Halfmoon x Halmoon Plakat spawn.
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Location: Finglas, North Dublin.
Life
may not be the party we hoped for, but while we
are here we might as well dance.
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