Long Overdue Update
Long Overdue Update
Well, still no "success", but since I am still interested in trying, here is the latest:
Work has been VERY busy. So much so that it has been a challenge just to keep all my fishtanks modestly clean and healthy, not to mention actually enjoying the hobby by relaxing and "fooling with" things like spawning. (At least I have a job to be so busy with. Part of the busy comes from picking up the work of former co-workers who got laid off.)
Somewhere in there I did have time to try and find a dealer to sell me a very small BCB. No luck. Ediaz (sp?) seems to think that is the way to go, but without a supplier it doesn't matter if that method works or not.
My LFS manager did offer to try and select a "male" when he did his next buy. He said he goes to Chicago and often has a pick of 20 or more BCB and is willing to try and get a longer, leaner one in the hopes it would be male. That resulted in me adding a suspected male to my QT several months ago. About the time that I had finished QT and could add the "him" to my tank with two "females" work went absolutely bananas and I didn't want to do it. If anything but perfect harmony would have resulted, I would have been spending precious sleeping hours trying to reslove things in fish tank world. Not to mention, that if they actually spawned, I wouldn't be around to enjoy it or have time to try my hand at rearing.
So, "he" stayed in QT, and stayed and stayed. During that time he grew and his body proportions shifted some and I am less certain that "he" is a male than when I got "him".
SETBACK #8,001 (est.)--Suddenly, for no reason that I can figure, both of the "female" BCB "disappeared". They generally spent all of their time hidden in the rockwork, but appeared pretty regularly for feeding. Maybe once every two weeks one or the other would fail to show for a feeding or two, but I never had both fail to show up for any length of time. It went on for a week or more with neither of them showing up to feed. At first I assumed that something had "startled" them and they were taking a few days to make sure it was "safe". (BCB are pretty "shy" fish, IME). As time went on I became more and more convinced that something more serious had happened. Nothing else in my connected Display tank (BCB are in the "sump") was amiss, but it was just too odd to not see them at all. Despite my busy schedule, I spent a few hours on my hands and knees peering into the crannies between rocks and trying to "shine" them at night, etc. No luck.
Finally I started a tank search. I recovered one very decomposed body. From the size of the remains, and the side of the tank I found it on, I think it was the larger of the two females. No trace of the other was found. The only reason I can imagine that would cause both to die at the same time and not disturb anything else in the tank is a "fight" between them that turned fatal. Very odd, since they had reached a degree of ignoring one another that was almost absolute. Very rarely they would spar over the same bits of food, but mostly one ate on the right side of the tank and the other on the left and they never even acknowledged one another.
It is hard to imagine that they suddenly started to fight and also managed to fight to the death and also managed to both end up dead. But, I have no other explanation except that they both died at the same time for reasons that were not related--equally odd.
So, I have moved the "suspected male" that I am really not at all sure is a male up into the sump that is my BCB "honeymoon suite". I would love to add a very small BCB and see if it would select a gender to compliment whatever the existing fish is, but for now all is quiet on the breeding front. Work hasn't slowed down one bit, but the days are longer and that gives me more energy to imagine having time to actually do something.
Thanks for asking!
