Our clubs fall auction was this past Saturday, October 5 2013. It was a great time and the club president reports it was our biggest auction ever. I always have a great time and the variety of fish, inverts, plants and hardware that comes up for auction never ceases to amaze. All that being said, as a keeper of Danios, there is generally not much available in that area to get me fired up. Normally most of the Danios for auction are either my fish, or fish that I am already keeping. Well that certainly wasn’t the case at this auction! Continue reading Devario acrostomus – A Fall Auction Treasure!
Author: Dennis Ball
Life is good!
The past several days around here have been nothing short of fantastic. First, I get an email from Pete Cottle. As the saying goes, Pete is the man who literally wrote the book on Danios!
Pete is one of my fish keeping heroes, and we have communicated over the Internet for several years now. He is always very helpful and supportive when I’ve had questions or problems. Long story short, I receive his email because Pete was asked his opinion on a Danio breeding problem, and he ask for my opinion as well. Talk about making someone feel good about themselves. Thank you Pete! Continue reading Life is good!
Musing of a fish keeper
Just the other night we had our August club meeting, (C.A.F.E.). Rusty Wessel came up from Louisville Kentucky and gave a talk about “Fishes of the Maya”. Rusty usually brings fish to auction after the talk and this time was no exception.
As I watched all the super cool fish Rusty had brought along being auctioned off, I felt a little down that I wasn’t still keeping cichlids as this was a rare opportunity to acquire some very special fish. I soon found myself reminiscing about fish I have kept over the years and what a fantastic hobby fish keeping truly is…..
As a child, I kept a multitude of “critters” in bottles, jars and buckets. All treasures carried home from streams, ditches and local farm ponds here in rural Ohio. In 1965 I started my “official” fish keeping career as I imagine many 8 year old boys did, with a 25 cent turtle from the five & dime store. Continue reading Musing of a fish keeper
Danios… probably more than you ever wanted to know
As beginning fish keepers most of us kept some Zebra Danios, but once we get a bit of experience, we think of them as beginner fish and move on to bigger and better. This is rather sad because there are literally dozens of different Danios available.
The group of fish we call Danios is quite diverse and includes both small and large species. They are peaceful, very attractive, inexpensive, and best of all, very easy to keep. Danios are members of the carp family, and range in size from just under an inch, up to around 6 inches. Danios are split into two main genera, Danio and Devario, but the group also includes some close relatives like Sundadanio, Danionella and Microrasbora.
In the hobby, we collectively call all of them Danios , but this can make things rather confusing if you are trying to talk about only the members of the Danio genus. As all of these fish are members of a minnow subfamily called the Danioninae, pedants (such as myself) think that it’s wiser to call all of the fish in the group Danionins (pronounced daneeohnins), rather than Danios. I believe it was Matt Clarke that first coined this term. I liked it so much that I started a website using the name www.danionins.com.
Continue reading Danios… probably more than you ever wanted to know
Moina – A Love Hate Relationship
Over the summer, my son’s Red Eared Slider has been helping to generate loads of green water for the fish room. With this in mind, I though it would be a good time to venture back into culturing some Moina.
If you are not familiar with Moina, they are small freshwater crustaceans, commonly called “water fleas”, belonging the Daphnia family. I like them because newly hatched Moina average 430 µm and are just slightly larger than the smallest strain of newly hatched brine shrimp. Also, adult Moina are about half the size of common Daphnia with a higher protein content. They are simply fantastic live food for small fish. Continue reading Moina – A Love Hate Relationship