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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

Culling Fry

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17 Aug 2011 19:03 #1 by Jim (Jim Lawlor)
Culling Fry was created by Jim (Jim Lawlor)
how do people go about culling excess fry of various breeding fish?

Presumably good breeders remove all deformed and generally substandard fish - difficult to do when they're very small, but the bigger they get, the more easily deformities can be identified.

But is there an average proportion of survivors vs culled for the various types e.g. catfish, cichlids, tetras?

Does this have an evolutionary pressure on the stock i.e. they conform more to our perception of them? Or if we only keep the biggest and cull the runts (careful how you read that out loud), do they get bigger after a few generations?

Just wondering what people's experience has been.

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17 Aug 2011 20:18 #2 by ceech (Desmond Gaynor)
I feed mine to my oscars i know its mean and not all would do it but i keep only the best of my fry.
In the wild i guess is the same survival of the fittest.

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17 Aug 2011 21:07 #3 by davey_c (dave clarke)

I feed mine to my oscars i know its mean and not all would do it but i keep only the best of my fry.
In the wild i guess is the same survival of the fittest.





talk about opening a whole can of worms :laugh: :laugh:
i'd do the same if i had oscars...
before i got rid of my gt's i had a spawn i couldn't keep so i fed them back to the parents, a bit like "mammy brought me into this world so she can take me out of it :laugh: "

Below tank is for sale

my plywood tank build.

www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php/forum...k-build-diary#137768
Attachments:

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17 Aug 2011 23:45 #4 by JohnH (John)
Replied by JohnH (John) on topic Re: Culling Fry
It's one of those jobs every breeder has to do to maintain good healthy stock - not always pleasant, but totally necessary nonetheless.

In the olden times (showing my age again...) you couldn't visit anyone's fish house without seeing one tank with their 'Dustbin Fish' in.

Mine was a great big Clarias catfish - which more often than not could be found wandering - wel, slithering - around the Fish House floor. Once my brother picked it up and whatever way it managed it, it 'stung' him and his hand and arm went numb for that and the next day...but I digress.
Since I now mostly have much smaller fish my Dwarf Snakeheads do the 'clearing-up' job when called upon to do so.

Not really a very nice subject, but one which faces all breeders at some point.

John

Location:
N. Tipp

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl - year after year.


ITFS member.



It's a long way to Tipperary.

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18 Aug 2011 00:08 #5 by dar (darren curry)
Replied by dar (darren curry) on topic Re: Culling Fry
well feeding them to others is better than killing them and letting them go to waste. wat kill them and go out and buy dead fish that is in most foods? now that is silly

Check out the angling section, it is fantastic

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18 Aug 2011 23:12 #6 by Jim (Jim Lawlor)
Replied by Jim (Jim Lawlor) on topic Re: Culling Fry

well feeding them to others is better than killing them and letting them go to waste. wat kill them and go out and buy dead fish that is in most foods? now that is silly


Its not so much about the method of dispatch (although one little s.o.b. with no gill covers and a bent spine managed to live for a month in the "dustbin" tank)

- more about how to choose which survive and which don't and at what point do you stop and accept some diversity amongst the survivors . . .!

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18 Aug 2011 23:22 #7 by JohnH (John)
Replied by JohnH (John) on topic Re: Culling Fry
Jim,
Here you ask an age-old question.

The answer is really up to each and every one of us...how ruthless do you want to be?

'Diversity' as you put it, can be tolerated by some and not by others.
Angel fish are a perfect example.
I saw a picture recently of some offered for sale - now, most of those ones would not have reached that stage in my (and I suspect other breeders') tanks and you often see them from the far east in a similar condition - they should never be allowed to get to that stage, but commercialism once again rears its ugly head and they get exported nonetheless.
And that's only one isolated example. Malawis...don't let's get started on those...

John

Location:
N. Tipp

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl - year after year.


ITFS member.



It's a long way to Tipperary.

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