d-('_')-b 5 new Phoenix! d-('_')-b

S

Sygoomei

New Member
Well I was at King Ed last week and they had a tank full of 1-2" phoenix; but the tank had a sign stating they were all sold. But I enthusiastically asked if they were getting more and was told to come back on Wednesday. I didn't have time yseterday, but payed a visit this afternoon to find perhaps 10 phoenix of a similar size to last week's.

My current tank has a 3-4" Tiger and an 8" Aro, so 1-2" Fei Feng seemed like a bad mix. As such, I looked at their sale tanks upstairs and found a nice little 10 gallon pexi-glass tank for $60, down from $100 with a heater, pump, hood/fluorescent light. That and a new underwater filter have completed to make a decent looking system on my desk.

So I meandered back downstairs and asked for them to pick out 5 phoenix for me. They didn't want to sell me all 3 males, so I got 2 male, 3 female phoenix. When they grow to a decent size, I plan to introduce them to the larger tank which holds my 2 large female phoenix.

These are exciting times for me, as these are by far my most favourite fish in the world and will no doubt increase my passion for the fish world once again. I've never had a phoenix so small before, so it will definitely be a challenge to raise fish from the smallest size I've ever had one to what I believe will be a 8-10" fish at it's largest size.

I say 8-10" because they have stripes on their top fin. When they're less sketchy about their environment, I'll try taking some pics, so you know what I mean.

I filled the tank through a hose straight from my already cycled 70 gallon tank and in a day or 2 I'll take my eheim apart and transfer some cycled bioballs into the brand new underwater fluval 3 plus. I wanted a small eheim canister for it, but this already ended up setting me back 240 with 100 KW for the aro.

I have 5 new Phoenix!!! YAAY!!! So Kawaii at 1"!!! Yiiipiiii!!

On a closing note, they're already becoming less sketchy after a few minutes of me not moving. If I move an inch, they'll flee behind the filter, but they're out eating the HBH algae pellet and few NLS there+ pellets I put in.

Well goodnight folks. I'll have pic updates and situation updates in the near future.

Pax vobiscum,
Damien
 
A quick video I uploaded to Youtube!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhbG-sT6Ik"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhbG-sT6Ik[/ame]

There's no definite way to tell if a phoenix is male or female; however, generally the females are stubbier--that is shorter and taller than that of their male counterpart. In the video, the one on the left at the beginning, who eventually sucks the bottom into the school is a male. The majority of the school are females.

My theory is that males have VERY straight, long, 'foreheads;' and the females have curvy 'foreheads.'

PS Click the link for high quality. It's much clearer that way.
 
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I know it's rather low quality, but here's at least 'a' pic of the new phoenix.

20080822_5526.jpg


The 2nd one from the left is a male, the rest are female.
 
Very cool,

I have 2 small FF in a 150 right now, they harass each other sometimes but nothing serious. Keep a journal on their growth!
 
This pic has an autolevels in Photoshop

20080823_5532.jpg


The water in the tank is 100% from my large tank that has quite a bit of wood--considering the amount of water I put in it--so the tannins can be seen even in this tiny tank. Eventually I'd like crystal clear water, but I wanted a more or less already cycled tank from the get go.

Last night I added 1 piece of driftwood; a few large chunks of coral to keep my ph up; and replaced the 50W heater that the tank came with (it has a power gauge with no temp readings on it...) a 75W Eheim.

Next is a real air-stone and I'm thinking a plant or 2 would suit the tank well and provide necessary hiding spots for the school. I know they eat plants to shreds, but if they make too much a mess of things, I'll just take the plants away. No loss to me; I've never had plants in my tanks.

PS Both shots so far, have been taken with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. The video is taken with a Lumix DMC-FX33.
 
FF is a bit cheaper at a smaller size but the turnover rate is relatively high.

Personally, I would not take FF less than 6".
 
Perhaps there's truth to Sand madness!

To EEYY I ask: Why not smaller FF? If people like watching an Arowana growing up, then why not a FF? I realise they're not the most hardy fish at such a small size, but their physical shapes--along with their personalities--change dramatically over the course of babies to children and again to adults.

Personally, I like small FF more than big because they tend to be more avid cleaners. Adult FF often figure out that there's good and not so good food and will start eating mainly food instead of algae. A small FF can also get to the tiny corners that others can't get to. In all, FF of any size are welcome with me. I'm more than willing to give up the Arowana hobby in order to take up full time FF exclusively (not likely, but 'could' happen).

Eventually, if i get a house, I'd like to place at least 1 FF in every room of the house. These little ones however, are likely to be gifted to a few select individuals who could really use a small FF in their tanks. I also have a goal to gift one to the VAMSC because their chief of staff regarding the Amazon showed great interest in having at least one FF. She actually wanted a school, but I'm not willing to get rid of my school.

And I mean school now. I went out yesterday and purchased 4 more, totaling to 9 FF in a 10 gallon. Today I'm going to purchase the last 2 FF from King Ed and that'll be that. I'll raise them and start placing them all in the new 100 gallon Tenecor--whilst the rest of my fish head to the 150 gallon Tenecor and I try to find a way to raise frogs in the old 110 truvu.

Anyway, more updates soon. I may purchase a plant or 2 today and see how they survive.
 
Well I purchased the last 2 phoenix at King Ed yesterday and I must say, it was quite worth the purchase/gamble. Upon picking them up, I noticed that they weren't skittish at all (1 male, 1 female) and when I got them back home, acclimated them and out of the bag; they didn't flutter off to the back with the rest of the school. Instead, they stayed up front and when I waved a finger in their faces, they remained, seemingly quite calm.

Now if I did that with any of the others, they all swam to the back and behind the filter. But these 2 new ones seemed 'different.'

I woke up today and after chilling to some Bionic Commando, I did a 50% water change and some minor re-arranging of the tank objects. What I noticed was, the same 2 fish (seemingly at least) came up front to greet my hand and all the others swam away. Then one of them flew back to the school and a few more came up to my hand. I took the hand out and placed a few NLS pellets in my fingers and the 'really' tame one started to nibble at the food in my hand!

This is not the first phoenix to eat out of my hand, but its VERY rare indeed to have one eating from your hand within 24 hours of bringing it home.

So not only was I lucky there, but over the past hour or so they've all started opening up. Now I can place my hand to the tank and most of them chill where they are; instead of running to safety.

This really only brings up more questions than answers though.

Are they able to communicate what's 'sketchy' and what's not?

All 11 showed up in 1 batch. Do they feel more comfortable being in THAT batch?

Would they all have felt more natural if just ANY 2 new phoenix showed up?

Can they remember each other from being separated for a few days?

I have many many many more questions, but since no one can really answer them, I'll leave it there.

Some day I'd like to be a biologist and travel to the Amazon to research these fish exclusively.

I'll post more updates and pics soon. Water quality is on the rise, although there's an 'odd' smell coming from the tank. I'm using Prime, and the smell does sort of smell like sulphur, so maybe that's it.
 
Sygoomei said:
Perhaps there's truth to Sand madness!

To EEYY I ask: Why not smaller FF? If people like watching an Arowana growing up, then why not a FF? I realise they're not the most hardy fish at such a small size, but their physical shapes--along with their personalities--change dramatically over the course of babies to children and again to adults.

Personally, I like small FF more than big because they tend to be more avid cleaners. Adult FF often figure out that there's good and not so good food and will start eating mainly food instead of algae. A small FF can also get to the tiny corners that others can't get to. In all, FF of any size are welcome with me. I'm more than willing to give up the Arowana hobby in order to take up full time FF exclusively (not likely, but 'could' happen).

Eventually, if i get a house, I'd like to place at least 1 FF in every room of the house. These little ones however, are likely to be gifted to a few select individuals who could really use a small FF in their tanks. I also have a goal to gift one to the VAMSC because their chief of staff regarding the Amazon showed great interest in having at least one FF. She actually wanted a school, but I'm not willing to get rid of my school.

And I mean school now. I went out yesterday and purchased 4 more, totaling to 9 FF in a 10 gallon. Today I'm going to purchase the last 2 FF from King Ed and that'll be that. I'll raise them and start placing them all in the new 100 gallon Tenecor--whilst the rest of my fish head to the 150 gallon Tenecor and I try to find a way to raise frogs in the old 110 truvu.

Anyway, more updates soon. I may purchase a plant or 2 today and see how they survive.
Click to expand...


Don't get me wrong. Please feel free to buy small FFs.

One fish store owner told me that smaller size FFs have a much higher turnover rate than larger size FFs. That could be one of the reasons why fish store owners prefer to import larger size FFs.
 
EEYY: I don't mean to seem like I was taking a defensive position in my statement above. I was merely asking the question of 'why you don't like smaller FF's?' If it's merely a matter of turn-over (which I assume means death-toll) then aren't nearly all fish more suspect to dying due to living environment, in relation to their larger counterparts? FF are a fairly cheap fish in comparison to every other fish in this hobby ($20-40 in comparison to IT, ST, Motoro, Aro) so if you were to buy any small fish, then FF seems like the smallest gamble monetarily wise. Personal preference I suppose.

Well I must have been quite lucky, because I haven't had a single fish die, or look like it's going to die yet. The only FF I've had die on my so far was a 3-4," who happened to be my first fish since I'd been a 10 year old kid; maybe 4-5 years ago. I'd recently been given a tank and cycled it for around 30 days before finding him and we were friends (eating from my hand on day 1) for about 3 weeks before he died because I didn't put coral in the filter to raise the ph. There's a story which goes with that, but I'll leave that for another time.

I suppose I've yet to try it yet, but I believe thus far, that FF aren't hard to keep at any size. It just takes a certain sensibility and empathy towards keeping this SUPER UBER easily stressed out fish calm for 6 months before they convert to your loyal friend.

All I can really say as of yet is that they didn't like being separated. The whole school was quite sullen until the addition of these last 2 fish and they're much more active in their environment than previously perceived.

As for today, I came home from work around 8am and everything was as I left it. Sketchy fish with murky water. Dropped a few NLS pellets and a 1 crushed HBH algae wafer in and they munched on it for about 30 min until it was all gone. Chilled, watching them for a while longer and slept. I woke, no more than a 1/2 hour ago to sketchy (*places hand against tank to see if they flee; and some do*) and crystal clear, yellow water. So I'm finally ready to take pics! I've made a new video, which I pray will come out on youtube better than the previous.

Thus far it's been a very enjoyable ride with these fish. Now that I have 11 1/3-3/4" in a 10 gallon tank, I'm thinking of placing them into the new 100 gallon Tenecor tank faster than previously planned. I doubt these will enjoy living in such a small tank for a long time. As of yet, the aggression has been very evenly placed and I'm not in any distress at all about any one fish being picked on more than the others.

I just picked up some new glasses lenses and am finding it very difficult to focus the camera, so it may take a day or two before I try returning them, unless it works itself out somehow. Either way, none of my current photos are in nice focus; so no new pics as of yet.
 
I don't know much about FF, but don't they kill each other when you keep them together in one tank. I always thought that you can only have one FF in a tank otherwise other wise they'll kill each other. Am I right or am I just mixed up?
 
wow thats a lot of FF, damien youre a FF SLUT

arl, FF usually do not get along with each other... maybe as juveniles they do school, and then separate as adults.

Right now i have a large one by itself and 2 smaller guys in a separate tank. The smaller guys do harass each other but definitely no damage. When its feeding time they feed side by side with the occasional "get out of my face" bite
 
I've had much the similar experience as Kenta. Small phoenix tend to get along, but large phoenix (if introduced to each other as adults) kill on sight.

Currently I have a 15" and 10" phoenix sharing a 70 or so gallon tank. I have separated them a number of times due to over aggression--mainly because one or the other would have sucked too much in one place on the other.

My theory as of now is that if you're going to keep a number of larger phoenix together, it must be done like an aro comm; you must have at least 4 or 5 phoenix in the tank to take care of aggression. There's already a bit of aggression in the tank, but other than the occasional quarrel of swirling colours, they generally nip at one and then another if they're going aggro.

Of course my theories could be completely wrong. Currently a lot of the FF info out there is based upon our very own Yuppa's research and articles. I've consulted with this individual and while we generally see eye to eye; there are things that I'd like to figure out for myself.


As of right now, my main concern is the sulphuric smell emanating from the tank. I was much more careful about how much prime made it into the bucket of water today, but it still smells. I thought that it may not be the prime, but the bottle smells just like the tank. So I pose this question (perhaps better suited somewhere else):

Is prime too powerful to use in a 10 gallon tank?
 
A strong smell could indicate an ammonia spike due to adding so many fish so fast, have you tested your parameters?

Also, you can buy a small prime container... i have three sizes of prime, the big 4 liter jug, a medium container and a small one that squeezes out one drop at a time, perfect for dosing small tanks
 
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