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
Today In The Fishroom~9/26/11 F0 A. hogaboomorum
Whenever they start the breeding process the male will begin with a "dueling match" with the male's squaring off and displaying.
It almost appears as if the female is looking on to watch the confrontation.
Despite the active displaying, ALL of the fish manage to keep those beautiful trailers on their fins.
The male on the left (non-breeder) is about an inch bigger than the breeding male. I can only imagine that energy that would normally go toward growth is diverted to breeding. This seems to be the case for all of the breeding cichlids I have kept. Any time I have multiple fish of the same species, the breeders always remain smaller.
You can see from the picture WHO is actually gaining ground. Note the direction of the pelvic fins. He's swimming backward in retreat. I have a half dozen photos of this scene...each with the same. He would advance, then rapidly retreat.
Look at those beautiful trailing fins! The other male is just of camera to the left as the male displays.
Once the male is satisfied that the competition is quiet, he will turn his attention to the female...chasing her around the breeding area, often t-boning her pushing her sideways. The female doesn't seem to avoid this attention.
The pair always breed in the pot on the far left bottom. Almost always she will play this "peek-a-boo" game with the male...with her head coming out of a much smaller area that the male can't access. You can see that he is interested.
Eventually they will end up in the breeding pot. This will happens in a few days. Looks like they are taking a break to pose for my camera.
All photos were taken with the D300, and three flash units. One of the units was placed in front of the tank at a slight angle pointing up to fill in the bottom. Some of the photos the fish were just out of the flash area...giving a more dramatic lighting effect.
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Valerie
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