Walt's Official A. thiellei Page

Nightly ritual. this was following some rather aggressive tail chasing and rock chewing...

 
in my system i didnt use any rock and its 200+gallons i have been toying with the bioball idea too.
i agree if you "forget" about them for a while, they might do something. happened to a few pairs of mine and i was suprised once i went and double checked.

it s a good sign that they are there together. are they together during the night after dark? i noticed when my pairs sleep together in their pot, those are the ones laying and the ones very close to laying when they were not previous laying. i take a flashlight and shine it in the tanks about 3 hours after dark to see who is sleeping together or not. ones that dont sleep together after a few months, then i will swap the males out. for me its a good measure who is paired up.

beautiful clowns. this is one of my fav threads.
 
These two have been inseparable since introduction a couple years ago. They do sleep together. As far as forgetting about them, that was what caused all the algae problems. So now I'm making sure I spend just enough time with them to keep a clean, consistent system. Because they're in the basement and I don't really get what I might consider an excessive amount of face time.

I'm glad you like the thread. I sometimes wonder if people are interested or if maybe this is just so I can keep track of what happened when.
 
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Arrived cold, stressed and sluggish....

IMG00151-20120214-1130.jpg








Put the bag in a warm bath...

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and added a bubbler with 100% O2.

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Perking up nicely now.
 
I worked hard to get you guys a decent shot of the new guy. This was the best of 40-50 shots. There is an interest between this thiellei and the ocellaris in the tank to the right. She is about 3/4" longer than him. So, this is a good test of gender. Though my single female thiellei is the intended mate after quarrantine.

Some ick was popping up so I went ahead and dropped the salinity to 1.009 tonight rather than tomorrow as planned.

His skin is a brownish orange (not accurate in this pic) It's almost the same color as a light brown polymnus. There is a thiellei that shares that trait that I have seen It's not a burnt orange like my other thielleis and most ocellaris in captivity but just a touch of brown.

Anyhow. It's behaving normally for a new aquisition, so I'm not too concerned.

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The ick was more prominent this morning but I'm not sure that there are actually more spots. I think the existing spots might just be larger. I did a linearity check on the SG meter and it was right on. I added a little more FW because it was hard to tell whether it was 1.009 or 1.010. It was probably 1.0095. Anyhow I'll see what it looks like this afternoon.
I was having trouble with my phone last night and was not able to view the all of the pics I took last night. After a reboot this AM, I was able to add a couple others to kind of show the coloration of this fish.


Neighbors...
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The two on the left can see each other.
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The hypo tank.
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Treated with copper last night. I was thinking ick initially because of the sparse spotting but given behavior and reinforcement from MarinaP, I had to go with Amyloo.
I couldn't find Cupramine locally, so I went with Coppersafe.
He looked about the same this morning as yesterday morning but was eating pellet food with gusto and didn't have that stoned look they get when they have amyloo. I don't think he ate yesterday at all and I didn't feed him Tuesday.
He's very curious about the ocellaris in the next tank. The ocellaris pays him little mind. So, I think they will be good candidates for testing his gender either this or next weekend (depending when this mess is visibly cleared up.) I will continue to treat both fish since they are both recent aquisitions and need a full quarrantine anyway.
 
I'm pleased to report no sign of disease tonight. So, I may move the two neighbors together this weekend to see how things go.
 
I'm another one of the interested lurkers...

I dont post everytime because I prefer to either ask a question or contribute to the thread in some manner. But that's just me.

Where are you finding thielli's for sale? I'm just curious. I think they are a gorgeous clown, but I wont be spending what I assume those cost. I'm just curious to see where they are coming from.

I got burned by the exotic rare clown thing not too long ago. I purchased a pair of CB Leuc's that I had for a little over a year before one jumped, followed less than 6 months later by the other....That was $500 the wife gave me hell for.

At any rate, I admire your passion and dedication to obtaining these gogeous clowns and attempting to breed them. Hopefully you are very successful so that I can purchase a CB pair at a reasonable cost some day.

Nick
 
I got two from a retailer on the West coast... One from an east coast retailer and the fourth from another hobbyist. They run around the middle to lower price scale to the leuc market. I've paid $150 - $250 plus shipping for each of them.
I don't want to get too far ahead of myself but if I have my druthers they will be very common in the hobby in about ten years. I have a feeling the first few batches will be very expensive because I expect a high mortality, defects and abberants that will need to be culled. I'd like to be able to get 5-10 pairs going for myself. The first few that get distributed should go to my breeder friends who have been really helpful with tips, followed by hobbyists who already have one and then they can start hitting the market in bonded pairs... But this is all a long way off.
 
Glad to hear you plan on breeding these with an eye to market. IMO, they are better looking than Leuc's, and it sounds like you were getting a good deal on them price wise. I would have thought they were more rare than Leuc's since all the places I know to buy rare spendy clowns like that never offer them. Bad assumption on my part.

I agree the first batches will be close to the same (if not more expensive) than the wild caught ones you have now, just becuase of culling etc. IMO, that is a very necessary, and very important step that seems to be overlooked by manner casual breeders.

Cant wait to see you successful in breeding and raising these clowns...

Nick
 
Yeah, I'm working on my optimism! It's just a matter of time and I'm an impatient person. :D
 
LOL, I know what you mean.

I've got a mated pair of Rod's Onyx and a recently mated pair of Grade B Picasso's. I'm trying to get the eggs from them to a local who has had success in breeding and rearing ocellaris clowns. I personally dont have the time to attempt to rear clowns right now, but the plan is to get the eggs to her to raise, and get enough to buy a box of salt in order to defray the costs of running my system.

She's doing all the work, figure that's a decent trade off. Hopefully, she's successful and can make some money on the fry.

But I wish I could get this rolling yesterday!

Nick
 
I paired thiellei#4 and the ocellaris for a couple hours Friday night and for about half the day Sunday. There was some mild aggression and a few dissheveled scales but no tattered/torn fins. I'm not ready to leave them together for longer durations yet and the amount of aggression I saw would not have prompted removal with a more common species. Their is a U tube connecting the two tanks to maintain identical water conditions so they can be switched back and forth. Even when separated, I leave them in full view of one another.

On that note the thiellei is not eating, so I'm thinking this stress might have been a little early. I'm gonna try some brine shrimp tonight and see how that goes.

Regarding food, I am very disappointed with certain commonly recommended foods. None of my clowns are very crazy about PE Mysis, Live Blackworms, Frozen Bloodworms, "Plankton," krill or the listed components of Rod's food. They will eat the other components of Rod's. They also pass up flake food. I'm considering adding some B-12 to stimulate their appetites.

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Odd...
None of my clowns has ever had an issue with eating. They've all been aggressive eaters after a day or two. Even the four Nigripes I had, and those were the most nervous clowns I've ever seen.

Nick
 
I will be posting the following in several locations....




What is this? He appears to have some kind of infection (likely fungal) in and around his anus and he has not eaten in about three days.



I treated with Seachem Para Guard this morning at the recommended dosage. No other medications are currently in the tank, though he was treated with coppersafe several days ago.


IMG00204-20120221-0620.jpg
 
After viewing the shot on my computer (blown up) I'm going to have to agree with a thought by MarinaP (again.) Organ prolapse. I think the mucous is a result of the irritation.
Slowly raising the SG from 1.009 to 1.021 or higher may be the best immediate solution. I may also add epsom salt as I have treated other swelling this way in the past. I will also get a broad spectrum antibiotic on standby in case I see any redness.
 
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