Ok, now for an update on the rest of them.

I have been having some issues with our well water here, and lost quite a few fish about a month and a half ago. Only the strongest survived, which made it easier to decide what strains to keep.

The Blue/Multi Grass Ribbonfin line - These fish are doing exceptionally well. They are tough prolific fish, and not to mention gorgeous. They will stay here forever. I did lose my ribbon female after she dropped, but it seems she dropped a ton of ribbon fry for me to work with. I have about 8 new ribbon females growing up in my breeder tank now! I lost my breeder males, and am waiting now for some of the younger ones from the ribbon female to color up.

Full Reds - these guys have started dropping fry and are really beautiful. I love the way they contrast the green of the plants in the tanks. The line seems to throw a pretty even number of males and females which is nice.

Red Cobras (leopard) - Finally got some fry from these guys. Of the 3 Red Cobra lines I have, this is my least favorite. I may end up selling these to make room for the other lines.

Red Cobras (blonde) - We have lots of fry here! I am still very happy with them, and hope the tails and body patterns improve over the next few generations. The females are beautiful, and the males have nearly perfect matching dorsals. These are a favorite of mine and won't be going anywhere.

Red Cobras (albino) - We have fry here as well. Some are albino and some are sired by my other 2 cobra line males. Only time will tell on what they end up like. I split them into their own tank and added a pretty Blonde Yellow lace snakeskin male. I love these, and hope to keep working with them for a long time.

Full Yellows - I have 2 different lines of these that I am combining into one, in hopes of improving both and increasing the yellow intensity. These are a project I want to keep up with. I love yellow and the IFGA breeders just do not have a well developed line yet. One of the lines I am using has exceptional sparkling gold color and fin shape, but the size is very small. The other line is nice large fish with so-so color. Maybe by the next Michigan Guppy Breeders show I will have something worth showing in the yellows.

Blue/Green Moscow - These I got in a trade originally and they grew on me. I lost the male after the female dropped, so I still have plenty of youngsters to work with. These seem to be slower to mature than some of my lines. With the addition of the Blue/Green Moscows that I picked up at the auction last weekend, I may keep them going. I am not going to devote a ton of tank space to them however.

Japan Blue reds - This line suffered from the water issues, and I only have 1 pair left. That may be the end of them here.

Golden Cobra speartail - I lost the female of the pair, but the male lives on. I gave him an Albino Red Cobra female on the off chance he produces something. I will keep him till he dies, because he is so neat.

Leopard/Tiger endlers - These I have going in my community tank with some mixed Guppies and 4 female Bettas. I am just going to let nature do it's thing in that tank for now.

Blue Snakeskins - This line suffered the greatest setbacks. I am not terribly pleased with the remaining fish so I will probably scrap the whole bunch, except a male or two, and Bubble's grand daughter. I may toy with crossing the nicest males to a couple extended dorsal blue grass females.

That's all of them I think.

New fish!

Ok, well I admit to having a fish problem. I really do need to cut back, but how on earth could anyone decide which ones to let go?! I set out for the local fish auction last Saturday with the plan to bring home JUST the 2 pair of RREA Platinum Yellows that I was picking up from someone else who was also attending the auction. That was my excuse anyway. I came home with 4 foam boxes (one was HUGE and hubby has claimed it as a camping cooler), 2 5.5 gallon tanks, and over 35 fish.

So here is the run down on the new additions;
RREA Reds
Blue Moscows
Green Lace Snakeskins
Tiger Endlers
a Colony of Red Tailed Goodieds
Albino Longfin Pleco
RREA Platinum Yellows

Now some of these will be used to help improve lines that I already have, some were just too good a price for some incredible fish that I could not help it. lol All of the Guppies are from excellent show lines (mostly the Mouseau's).

Now for the disappointing part. I ran out of tanks and have to keep some of them in buckets for the time being, and I can't find the batteries for my camera so I don't have any pictures to post! Sorry about that! Pictures to come soon I promise!

Decisions, decisions...

Alright well It has come to the point where I am deciding what strains I want to continue to work with, and which ones I need to part with in order to have enough room to do what I want to do. Hard stuff!

I just got 4 pair of Japan Blue Reds from a trade, so I have these lovely fish to work with now. I am so excited, so those guys are staying.

It seems like almost every breeder has great Full Reds though, and since I like the unique stuff, I think I will probably end up parting with these. I might keep a couple just as an out cross to my Red Cobra line, which I am keeping. The Blonde Cobras have been upgraded to a 20 gallon tank from a 5 gallon, and I added in the Yellow Snakeskin, RREA Red Cobra, and Red Blonde snakeskins that I got from a few other breeders as well. This next generation should be really cool!

I am keeping the Full Yellow/Full Gold lines to continue working with. I love the color yellow.

I am also keeping my Blue Snakeskins and Blue Grass Extended Dorsals (and wondering if I can cross the Extended Dorsal genes into my Blue Snakes......).

The Speartails have not produced any fry for me so they will be going into the community tank shortly.

I am still debating on the Green Moscows. They might just end up in my community tank as well.

So I will be parting with quite a few fish over the next few weeks. Keep an eye on my Aquabid Auctions! I have been listing many auctions. If there is something you are interested in buying, please let me know!

Sold some fish on Aquabid!

I took the plunge. I have sold some fish on Aquabid now. :) I ran an auction for 2 trios of reds and one for 2 trios of blue/red grass. The grass auction went pretty well and ended up around $25. These were for fairly young fish, so they were good prices. I just need to thin out a few tanks a bit.

So if you are on Aquabid.com and want to see if I have any auctions up, my name on there is Banty. I will be adding a link to the side of this blog so that they will be easier to find.

I still have plenty of Blue and Red Grass Guppies if anyone wants any. They are $15 a trio or 2 trios for $25. Shipping is $15 priority and $30 express.

It's been a while!

Ok I have been pretty busy this summer, so not too much time to do the blogging thing. The Guppies are all doing well but I discovered that my GH issues were causing a rapid decline in fertility. I think I have that fixed now, and the girls look to be plumping up like little sausages again. :)

Now for strain updates...

Blue Grass -
I have a bunch (and I mean bunch!) of these growing up now. Had a few red grass in the bunch as well. I am selling off any that are not extended dorsal, as that is one of the reasons I love this line. Everyone else will be kept and some shipped to the October show. The original females are HUGE again with dorsals larger than my male guppies bodies. Just amazing!



Blue Snakeskin -
I sold off my Solids except for Bubble's offspring. I kept 1 of her sons, and a few daughters. They all have semi-variegated tails and will be bred back into my variegated line to improve body type, size, and tail shape. I culled VERY hard the offspring from my original trio to keep only the best patterned males. Many had a lack of black patterning on the caudals or dorsals. I would also like to breed out the 'saddle' marking. Here are 2 of the males that I kept. These boys are in with my variegated girls as well as the Bubble daughters.

Red Cobras -
I have split these into 2 lines. The first being the original intent of Leopard tailed. The second is these beautiful Blonde Red Cobras. Both need adjustments to their caudal size and shape. I ordered some Albino Red Cobras to add to both, and have my albino full red female in with the Blonde Reds for now.



Yellows -
I lost one of my Yellow females due to dropsy over a month ago. Besides that the tank is doing very well. I did have to remove one of the 2 males because there was a lot of fighting going on and he kept getting beaten up. The other female dropped for me and there are lots of nice little fry in there now. I still have the Sunrise Ribbon female in there. I still want to work on the yellow intensity on these, and am trying to get some other lines to combine with them.
Blues -
I have a few little Moscows now, from 2 lines, as well as the solid blues that pop up out of my Blue Snakeskin line. I had no real intention of starting to work with Moscows but these just kind of fell into my lap so I put them in a tank.

Leopard Endler Project -
The male is in the outdoor 30 gallon tank with 2 goldfish, 3 blue snakeskin females, the Leopard Endler Hybrid female, and an IFGA HB Yellow female. No I really have no clue what will end up coming out of this tank in a month when I bring them in, but it should be interesting. lol

Full Reds -
Almost forgot about these guys. That female I got from the show dropped over 50 fry. They are starting to color up now and looking beautiful! I hope to have a few of these guys to send to the show in October as well.


I think that's about it. I have a few other varieties here and there but they are meant mostly as additions to others, or are just looking pretty in my tanks. I currently have too many projects and will probably cut back a bit more as fall hits, still deciding what I want to continue working on.

Reds

The Red female, that I bought at the show last month, dropped about 45-50 fry for me yesterday! I am so happy to have a nice big bunch of fry to pick from when they grow. I would never have guessed she was carrying that many fry though! When I checked on her in the drop jar yesterday I saw about 8. She looked like she was done and was eating some food so I took her out and put her in the female tank. Then I took out the plants I had in teh jar and came back and thought, wow there are like 20-30! Then I took a picture of the jar later to post and counted at least 40! And that was with some of them down by the gravel where I could not see. Not bad!

Now I just hope my RREA Red female is hit. She's still not very round, so I am losing hope there. I have her in a drop jar anyway just in case!

I got my rack all set up, though I still have a few tanks to seal. I did get 3 ten gallon tanks set up on top, and all my drop jars on the wall shelves. It's slowly coming together!

Fish Updates

Still working on my rack. It is all built but still being modified and tweaked. :) I did decide I want solid shelves on it to accommodate my slightly odd shaped tanks. And I am still working on working out the lighting.

My fish from the show are all doing great, except that I did lose one of the HB yellow males. The other two are doing wonderfully though they seem to be freaked out by girls. Once I get my rack set up I will put both in with a few girls and maybe the fact that they have competition will get them going.

I am still trying to decide what strains to keep and which to part with. I do want to focus on my Blue/Green Snakeskins and my Red Snakeskins. Blue Grass are staying for sure, as are full reds. And I would like to work on a line of full deep yellows, so I am keeping a few Micariff, the HB yellows, and I just bought a pair of Yellow Deltas that will be arriving next week. Plus I have the Hybrid Endler project and the Speartails. That means that I will probably part with the Solid Blue Snakeskins. They are nice hefty fish, from several well known lines, but I just don't care for the color. Bubble was the exception and I will keep her daughters till I can tell if any will end up like her. If they do I will breed them to my Blue Snakeskins.

With all these projects going I really should cut down a bit more but gosh I just love them. lol We will see this fall which ones have done well for me and which will go.

Building a rack!

OK the time has come. I MUST build a rack. I found some plans at livebearers.org and have modified them to fit my needs. My space is only 36" wide so I had to shorten it. Here are my plans and instructions. I hope to add progress photos as I go to get some of you, who may not be so inclined towards carpentry, to give it a try!

The supply list for mine includes only 8 2"x4"x8' boards and approx 70 3" galvanized exterior screws.

The cut boards are labeled on the drawing. Their lengths are listed below. Now I only have a 36" wide space to use so I will not be able to fit 3 ten gallon tanks on the lower two shelves. If you want to make yours hold 3 tens on each shelf, extend boards A and E two inches longer. This will give you a tiny bit of space between each tank as well. Alternately you could put fifteen gallon talls on the top shelf just as easily as tens. I don't really care for the added height though.

A - 33" need 6
B - 48' need 4
C - 16.5" need 8
D - 4.5" need 4
E - 30" need 3
F - 21" need 6

When cutting the boards, figure out the best use of each 8' board so that you do not have much waste. Here is how I will cut mine. Yours may need to be different depending on if you have spare boards laying around or if you choose to extend the rack the extra 2" wide. You will need to be precise. If this is your first project, it may be wise to purchase or find an extra board or two just in case.

2 - cut in half for two 48" boards each
3 - cut two at 33" and the last piece will be 30"
2 - cut four at 16.5", two at 4.5", and the last will be 21"
1 - cut four at 21" and put that last 12" piece away and save it for a future project.

Lost my Bubble

Alas death finally over took my dear Bubble, and she is now helping my Dalias grow. I am glad I have many of her offspring, but it is just not going to be the same. Hopefully some of them grow up to have her incredible blue tail. below is a snap shot of the young female tank. Can you tell which of the three pictured is Bubble's daughter??


And if the pattern continues as it has.. I should be expecting fry in the next few days. It seems every time I have a tragedy of this sort, within a few days there are new fry to ease the loss. Those Solid Snake girls from frank Falcone are starting to square off, and that new red female was so cranky I had to put her in her own 5 gallon bucket. So we will see.

Back from the Michigan Guppy Breeders show!

I had a GREAT time! Wow. The fish and people were amazing. I got to meet Laura Barrasso and chit chat with her. She brought me some beautiful fish! A trio of Gold Snakeskins, and 3 of her HB Blues. We are hoping the HB Blues are a trio. The male she brought with them did not make the trip. Fingers crossed for one to be a male! I took a painting for her that I did of one of her beautiful Lace Snakeskin males, and about 10-12 of my Red Snakeskin fry. Hopefully she likes them, and can work with them. I will post pics of the fish I got from her later today hopefully.

I got to meet so many other wonderful Guppy loving people at the show I don't know if I can remember them all. They sure seem like a fun light hearted bunch. :) I look forward to getting to know them better at the meetings.

The judging got off to a late start due to a computer issue but Saturday was a good day of learning. I shadowed the judges as much as I could to absorb any tidbits of knowledge that I could. My oldest daughter, Katlynn, also came to the show and shadowed the judges as they went through. I learned so much! I am so glad I came prior to showing any of my own fish. Now I have a much better idea of what to look for in a show fish. I need to order the IFGA judging guide now so I can get it solidified in my head better.

Ok now for the auction.. I had a great time there too! I am glad I signed up as a cash bidder, and had a limit of the cash I brought or I could have spent quite a bit! I spent about $60 and got a pair of Gary Mousseau's HB Yellows (gorgeous!!), a Red female (1st place novice female), 3 baby Cory cats for my daughters tank, a bunch of plants, and a giant can of color flake food.


After the auction we stayed a little while to help debench fish, and dump tanks. During this we helped pull Gary's fish and found that there had been a slight mix up in which fish were auctioned. He ended up giving us the HB Yellow male that was supposed to be auctioned as well as one from his 1st place HB Yellow male tank entry (as it's tank mate had died)! How cool is that!? I am so thrilled. I just love these fish!


I did not get as many photos as I had wanted to. By the time the judging was coming to a close it was so late and my feet were killing me. I decided to wait till Sunday morning to do pics and ended up getting there after many people had debenched. Here is the album of photos: Enjoy!

Hybrid Leopard Endlers

I found these guys at the local fish store (one of 3 that I frequent). Aren't they cool?! I got 2 pair of them and also added a very pale blue snakeskin female for kicks.


The Guppy show is tomorrow and I am excited to see all the beautiful fish, and meet everyone!

Attending my first Guppy Show!

I am preparing to attend a Guppy show for the first time this next weekend. I am pretty excited to meet so many Guppy people in person and see the beautiful fish. I won't have any old enough to show of my own but I will be handling some fish for a friend of mine. :)

Now an update on my fish...

Solid Snakeskins - I have not gotten any more fry out of Bubble my Solid Snake female from Rod. I think she popped while I was not home and had a large feast. :P The fry from the first drop I got are getting big now at around 6-7 weeks old now. They look just like mom so far.. fat & short bodied little things. Frank Falcone sent me some of his amazing Solid Snake line a few weeks ago so now I have those as well. He sent me 4 females and 1 young male. The young guy is starting to color up now. They are some nice looking fish. Here is the young male.


Blue Snakeskins - one of the young fry that came as a bonus with my original trio from Toni has colored up and is really looking nice. His tail is much more sturdy than the original male I got and I like his pattern a lot. He is also easily larger than the original male which is excellent. I have a ton of fry from the trio and am able to get picky now on who I keep. The first fry I had born in my tanks are from that trio and they are looking nice so far. I hope to be able to show some of them at the Chicago show in August. :)

Spanish Dancers - I have decided to part with this line, so all but one female are in my sale tank. They are pretty fish but I have decided to stick to a few others. It is fully a case of too many strains and not enough tank space! The one female I am holding back has a beautiful spot pattern on her tail and I want to try to use that with the Red Snakeskin line, and see what happens. Hopefully get some Red Leopard Snakeskins.

Tequila Sunrise Ribbon - My daughter decided to do these as her 4H project so I gave her a trio and a ribbon male. I think I had 3-4 Ribbon males, and no ribbon females. The rest were non-ribbon. Hopefully I can keep the ribbon coming from them. They are still fairly young, a few males have started to color up.

Blue Grass Ribbon - These guys gave me their first drops a week ago. The total fry was 5. LOL.. boy I hope next drops for these 3 are bigger.

That is about it I think. The Red Snakeskin fry are getting big and fat, and one of the largest males from my first female that died, is getting his tail spots.

Blue Snakeskins

I am trying to cross my Solid Blue Snakeskin female (aka The Blue Whale) with my Blue Snakeskin male with the full patterning. This will be the first drop of fry that is possibly containing some of the crosses. She was hit by the Solid males prior. I think she should be dropping in about 4-5 days and she has gotten bigger every time I go look at her lately. I can't believe she still has a few days of growing to do!



One of my patterned Blue Snakeskin girls is getting big too, but no where near as round as this girl. I still have a ton of the last fry from her though so I won't be putting her in a drop tank I don't think. Kinda running out of room here. I need more tanks!

Fryday update

I did finally get all those fry sexed! Still occasionally finding a female in the boys, but they are young enough it isn't a problem. If there are any more girls in there, they will just go in the community tank and be sold as pet fish. The Tequila Sunrise were so difficult! It appears as though I have 1 female ribbon of them, and 3 male ribbons. I wish it were the opposite. Oh well. There are about 8 of each for the non-ribbons.

I think I am going to try to sell most of the Solid Snakeskins. I just don't have the tank space! I also seem to have a few extra Blue Snakeskin females.

The red Cobra fry are growing well. the older ones seemed to have hit a growth spurt finally. One of them is quite a bit larger than the rest. I am wondering if the others were too shy with 'big mama' in there to eat as much as they should have. mama is out of there now so they are safe to come out of hiding and they are doing well.

Is it Fryday?

In my Red Cobras, the smaller of the two females dropped her fry early this morning. I think there are around 35 of them and they look pretty good. I did lose the large female yesterday though. She never really adjusted from the move, so I was not surprised. I do have around 15 of her 3 week old fry though.

This strain seems to grow fairly slow which is surprising to me given the huge size of the females I purchased. They have the exact same water temp, feeding schedule, and water changes as the Blue Solid Snakeskins, and yet those are HUGE compared to these guys. Just shows you how much the hybrid vigor does. The Blue Solid Snakeskins are crosses between 2 large lines, and are growing like weeds. I had originally planned to sell that strain and just keep the one female and her offspring but after seeing how well they grow, I think I will keep it and work with it a bit more. At the very least it will be a great outcross where needed for my Blue Snakeskin line.

My Blue Solid Snakeskins and Tequila Sunrise fry all need to be sexed today. They are all getting big. The Snakes should not be too difficult but those yellows are still not showing much difference!

Ribbon Fins!

They arrived yesterday and I am still working on getting really good photos.

The Blue Grass Ribbons she sent me 5 of, which was wonderful. Two non-ribbon females, 1 ribbon female, 1 ribbon male, and 1 non-ribbon male. I have the non-ribbon male in with the 3 girls to get a start on getting some fry so I have a bigger pool of fish to pick from. They are still pretty young, probably 2.5-3 mos old at most I would guess. The female ribbons are so incredibly beautiful. Here are some photos so far.
This is the Ribbon Female.

Non-Ribbon male.

Ribbon Male (cannot breed).

The fact that the Ribbon males cannot breed means you have to use the non-Ribbon males to the Ribbon females(preferable to keep the ribbon gene showing in as many offspring as possible) and to the Non-Ribbon fin females who carry the gene. Since my pool is limited at first I am breeding the ribbon carrying male to all 3 females. When these fry grow I will use only ribbon females to males from the ribbon female. That means that I will have to keep these first drops separate so I know who is who!


I also got 15-20 Tequila Sunrise Ribbon fry. These guys are much younger. Probably between 2-5 weeks old. Sexing these guys is a bit of a challenge as the gravid spots are pink and do not show up well against their lovely yellow bodies. The same breeding guideline will be followed for these as the Blue Grass however I will hopefully be able to start with a greater number of the pairings I want. I have no idea how many males and females I have at this point or which will be ribbon. Another challenge! It is a good thing I like challenges!

Guppies Guppies Everywhere!

I now have 7 tanks and 2 one gallon jars full of Guppies. Well one of the tanks and one of the jars is not currently full but they will be shortly. I ordered a few more fish from Toni Milligan and they should be arriving any day. I decided after hours of oogling her fish site that I wanted some Ribbon Fins. So I ordered a young trio of Blue Grass Ribbons and some Tequila Sunrise Ribbon fry. I am still trying to decide which strains I want to focus on, or which crosses I might like to do, but I have some time yet.

In the meantime the Blue Snakeskins and Solid Blue Snakeskins are reproducing like crazy. I cannot get over how fast the Solid fry are growing! They are at least 2x the size of all my other fry that age. I definately want to use one of those girls as a cross to my Blue Snakeskin male. The Blue Snakeskin girls that were hit already have been dropping an amazing amount of fry for the size that they are still. These girls do tend to be fry hunters though so I am sure they snacked heavily. Next time I will put so many plants in the tanks they won't be able to move! Still with the snacking we have around 25 fry which is a good number. The girls have beautiful full tails so far with lacey black and yellow markings. The Solid Snakeskin girls have long flowing tails rather than the fan shape of the other line.


For my Red Cobra(ish) line, I am having trouble with these a little more. So far we have 1 drop from them, the other female looks like she will drop in about a week. Once she does I think I am going to put the girls and boys back in my community tanks and raise the babies to breed from. I think the girls are in the 6-8 month old range and they are getting a little finiky. The fry from the first drop did not do well. She dropped about 20 of them, within 2 days it was down to 15. Not because she was eating them but I would find dead fry on the bottom of the tank. It could have been from the preventative Levamisole treatment I did but I did not lose any fry in any other tank. None of them flock to the top of the tank for food like the rest of mine do either.

The Spanish Dancers are growing and coloring up nicely. The most colorful male is looking quite pretty now. His brothers who have not colored up as fast are passing him up now for size which I expected. I had to cull one of them tonight for a bent spine. Not my favorite part of animal breeding but it had to be done. It was a pretty severe bend that had become more and more severe over the last week or two. The girls are getting a little bit of color in on their tails now and are getting hefty. They are all still virgin and will stay that way for another month or two till I know which boys are the best.


I think that is everyone for now. I will post pictures when the new fish arrive.

Photos - Red Cobras

These guys are very pretty. Even the girls are pretty. They have a red tint to their bodies that intensifies over their back. The tails are red and yellow with black spots. The girls are also HUGE. They are the biggest female guppies I have ever seen in person. I have heard of them over 3" but never seen one. This girl in the jar is easily 3" long. Her sister is about 2.5" long.


This is my favorite of the males. He has the most spotting on his tail. I want to try to increase that as well as have the snakeskin pattern continue the full length of the peduncle, and increase the size of the caudals.



This is the second male. His tail is longer.

Photos - Spanish Dancers

These are the young Spanish Dancers I got as fry from Toni. I LOVE these fish. They are sooo hyper and flirty! I can't wait to see these boys all grown up.



This one is my favorite so far.


I have 9 girls and 13 boys so I decided to share a little with some local people. One of my friends is getting a pair, and then the local Guppy guy is going to get 2 pair. That will leave me with a good number and enough room to let them grow well.

Photos - Blue Snakeskins

These are my Blue Snakeskins.

This guy is one of the Solid Blue Snakeskins from Rod. Lovely fish! I am selling these guys locally to make room for some others. I really like them but I had to pick my favorites and the snake tailed are it.


This is the Sharktailed Solid Snakeskin female that I kept from Rod. I am hoping to use her as the outcross for vigor reasons. Plus she is large and her tail is lovely. She should be dropping fry any time.


This is my young male Blue Snakeskin from Toni. I love this little fish. He is just so fancy and shimmering. The males of this strain have huge half round tails. He is only about 4 months old so he has a lot of growing to do yet.

Hello! Welcome to my Guppy Obcession!

I needed a website and I thought a blog might be easier for now. Much easier for me to update at least till I get my website finished. I started all this after my father-in-law got some pretty Multi Grass type guppies from a LFS near us. I set up a tank for some of the extras he would have and ended up bringing home some others from the LFS myself. Well long story short, they had camallanus worms and all ended up needing euthanized during treatment. By then I had purchased the fish listed below as well as some show type Blue Deltas. I decided that I was not crazy about the Blue Delta color and sold them to a local Guppy enthusiast.

I currently have the following strains:

• Spanish Dancers (from Toni Milligan of Visions Guppies in CA)
• Blue Snakeskins (Some from Toni and some from Rod of High Desert Guppies in OK)
• Red Cobras (purchased with a community tank from a non-breeder)

I am also hoping to add a couple more so I can do some experimentation. I do plan to stick to the red/yellows more, but I love my shimmering blue snakes. Finding room for them has been the hard part! Our house is not very big and I am having to get very creative in tank placement!

I have had the Spanish Dancers and the Blue Snakes for almost a month now and they are doing great. The Dancers were purchased as fry and are still growing. The boys are just getting colored up now and practicing their aquatic moon dancing. I split the girls into a different tank so they would be virgin.

My Blue snakeskins were a young trio with some fry and they are developing nicely too. The females have both dropped once since being here and look to be about a week or two off from dropping again.

I also added another quad of Blue Snakeskins from Rod. They are solid tailed. After much thought I decided to just keep the largest sharktailed female from the quad and sell the others. I like the shimmery snakeskin tails better than the solids. I also have some of the solid snake fry in the Snakeskin tank so there will be quite an assortment in there in a few months. I'd like another tank for them but am not sure where to put it yet.

The Red Cobras were from a med student that did not have time to do the water changes needed on a 15 gallon community tank. So I bought the whole thing. There were 2 HUGE females (2.5-3" in length!) and 10 males plus some other fish in there. I immediatly removed the females who were harassed constantly by the large number of males. I put them in a 10 gallon with the 2 nicest males. They are still a bit timid and freak out when I turn the tank light on. I have no clue why. They have some fry in there now though which is promising. After I sell the remaining boys I may put this quad back in the community tank and just raise breeders from their fry.

So I think that is all for now. I do plan to purchase some more fish from Toni and the local guy may go in on a combined order to split shipping costs.

Photos to follow!