[THE BENTUSI]

hello all,

I just want to share my experience with you all about my macs...
I have 6 CB macs about 1 year old now. I won them on the auction about 6
months ago when they were juveniles. Now after success sexed them, they turn out to be
all 6 males. These WC males are keep in a 55gal tank.

So I order 1 pair and 1 trio WC from Sarawak. They turn out to be 1 pair and a reverse
trio instead. I do understand this happens since these young WC are hard to sex. They
are about one year old as well.

Upon arrival, all 5 WC macs were in very bad shape with internal and external diseases.
I managed to save 2 pairs. One of them didn't make it.

After recovered from the illness. I moved them into a 30gal tank. After about a week,
one pair spawned on October 25, 2007. So I removed the other pair into another 20gal tank.

After one week, I removed the female.

The male brooding for 17 days, he released 18 frys on November 12, 2007.

I was very surprise that a young male, 2.75" length, first time brood had successful release frys.

thank you all for visiting.


ps. I will process some photos to post them later.

This post has been edited by THE BENTUSI: 15 November 2007 - 11:13 PM

[Beyondanytherapy]

I was too out of it earlier this morning to reply, but my caffiene has kicked in now.

That's amazing! I hope to make the jump into Macrostoma one day! Great news for you, especially for a first time dad!

[THE BENTUSI]

good morning. thanks for reply. it's 4:30AM and I'm still at work. I can't wait to go home at 6:30AM to see how my frys are doing...

I heard that other breeders' young male fail many times before he actually release real frys. From my first two spawns, I think I know why. It's the water!

This is what happened.

My second pair of WC macs was moved into a 20gal, and I put in one largest male from my 6 CB males tank to make a trio.

Last Friday the 9th, the trio spawned. The weird thing was that both WC and CB males were holding. But the females keep attacking the CB male to protect the WC male, obviously that she choose to mate with the WC male, but the CB male joined them anyway. They had a successful threesome.

This spawn failed. After the 2 males holding for two days, they both swallowed the eggs.

So the qestion is why the first male successfully brood and released fry while the other two males did not.

I didn't do any water testing, but I know it's the water.

The male that released fry, spawned in a 30 gal tank, which equiped with a trickle-filter that hold 10 gal of water and 5 gal of bio-ball and bio rings that packed with huge colony of benificial bacterias. This tank has the very very clean water. No ammonia, nitrate or nitrite.

While the 20gal that the other two males spawned in only has two small sponge filter.

One other thing that I gain from the first spawn was that the female will be ready to mate a gain in a week. This is the time she start to bother the male, what was why she was removed.

Also, the male did not hold a mouthfull of eggs, there was an air bubble in his mouth, and she shuffle the egss once in a while to make sure they all come in contact with oxigen.

Oh, one more thing. The egg will hatch in his mouth in about a week. Day one to day 7, when he shuffle the egg in his jaw, I could see white thing is his jaw. But after day 7, the eggs hatched, and the fry are in darker color than the eggs.

The eggs hatched and developed in his jaw. The released frys are quite large. They are about the same size as 1 week onle betta splendens.

The thing that amazed me was that how a small male with small jaw can hold 18 frys with that size. I think the frys are small in his jaw, but immediate grow big once released into the water.

I will be off Wed and Thur, I will post some pic and or some videos.

This post has been edited by THE BENTUSI: 14 November 2007 - 06:57 AM

[andywoolloo]

I can't wait to see the pics and video!! Congratulations!!

[THE BENTUSI]

good afternoon,

Today I found couple more frys from the breeding tank. They join in with the brothers and sister and had a first bbs meal.

Here are the photos taken with a EF 35mm 1.4 lens. My friend will drop off a macro lens tomorow, I will take some close up shots of the frys.


THE PARENTS








FATHER AND SON


















thats' all for now. I got many more photos of my two WC pairs, and my 6 CB males.

I will edit some video clips of my fry later.

Oh, my youtube is http://www.youtube.c...ntusitheunbound
One of the old gallery of my CB males couple months ago:
http://vivianstudio.com/proofs/macs

[Cthulhu Bird]

Big congrats on the mac spawn ! Those pictures you took are excellent, so much detail. Even without the macro lens, you still captured those fry so clearly!

I hope the proud parents give you many more spawns to come, if they are this rambunctious already!

[THE BENTUSI]

Big congrats on the mac spawn ! Those pictures you took are excellent, so much detail. Even without the macro lens, you still captured those fry so clearly!

I hope the proud parents give you many more spawns to come, if they are this rambunctious already!

I'm a pro photographer. My website vivianstudio.com; myspace.com/vivianstudio and pbase.com/bentusi.

I'm going to photograph these fry as they grow for documentation so I can use them to build a website later.

[Palor]

Lovely fish and such a wonderful betta to have spawning for you. Great pics too

[Styx]

CONGRATS!!!! Stunning shots of your beautiful fry.

[andywoolloo]

amazing! Thanks for sharing!

[Beyondanytherapy]

The parents are beautiful! Everyone's getting macs these days, I'm so jealous!

Amazing pictures, and what a great accomplishment with the fry! Congratulations!