Hello all,
I picked up a group of linkei and of Betta sp. api api last May. I diligently set-up a tank for each species in what I think would be recognized as normal: water
RO (~
12ppm hardness), pH lowered to around
3.
5−
4 using phosphoric acid. I also setup the tank initially for killifish, plant spawners, using the Midwest method of filling the the tank mostly with long fiber sphagnum peat moss. and I set up some caves using some glass yogurt containers (from the Oui! brand), but I never found the fish using them.
I quickly found fry from both species, although the Parosphromenus I only ever found the one. Anyway, after distributing the fish out I quickly lost sight of all the fish and those tanks have been essentially abandoned for the past year. I still fed regularly and would occasionally see a betta here and there, but the Paros, I assumed I had lost all but a single one. Until this weekend.
I long ago stopped using
RO water and fussing with pH. Heck, I’ve reduced water changes to maybe once a month. My tap water is around
200+ppm and pH around
7.
0. The linkei tank has
2 female killies swimming around now. And yet, I found a linkei juvenile in the tank. Looking closer, I found another about half its size and then another, half again. Looks like the progeny from
3 different spawns given the growth rate, and all recently. It’s been a year since I found the last ones, which leads me to believe that even if you keep them in crappy water, if they’re still happy that perhaps May-July is when they’re more than willing to spawn considering I haven’t found any fry outside of these times. I just checked my betta tank, whose primary occupants have gone missing, and I just found an
1″ long juvenile api api in there, too.
Just some food for thought
EDIT: here’s a video of a couple of the fry I took earlier today: