Re: [Killietalk] rubroreticulatus

["Nick Ternes" <woodland_gardens at gmail.com>]

Brian,
Thanks for the excellent information.  Have both populations been
distributed in Europe?  I've seen both listed there.

Being that Chad is such a hot and dry part of africa is it possible
that a higher incubation temperature would not only affect the
incubation time, but also the sex ratio?

Nick Ternes
Oostburg, WI
WAKO
AKA

>
> They are around in the US, I know because I have distributed bags of eggs
> that led to successful hatches (other than those at the Tampa auction). I
> also sent numerous bags of eggs to Europe, to the UK, Holland and Denmark. I
> would guess that the Swedish source stemmed from those in Denmark.
>
> As to why they are not more readily available in the US, I don't know.
> However, I could speculate about that. This is not an especially difficult
> Notho but the incubation times can be very long (extremely hot and dry part
> of Africa), the fry are surprisingly small for what is a relatively large
> Notho and, most significantly, the sex ratios of hatchings is terrible with
> a very strong bias towards males. Since we collected them in Chad (December,
> 2005) I have only hatched out two F1 batches. The first was from a spawning
> that I got in the field by placing the wild fish in a small tank with peat
> for a couple of days (at the Park lodge). That hatching gave me more than 50
> males and, if I remember correctly, only 3 or 4 females. I know that others
> have had the same problem. The second hatching was only a few days ago from
> eggs that have been incubating for a bit more than a year. Usually the
> incubation time is somewhat less than that but I left it a bit long. Until
> the recent hatching I had not had the species in my fishroom for more than a
> year.
>
> We actually collected two populations of this species in Chad, Zakouma
> National Park TD 05-1 and TD 05-2. The latter is what was distributed. I had
> the only specimens of the TD 05-1 population that survived the journey and I
> am still maintaining that one as well. However, it is essentially identical
> to the TD 05-2 so I made a conscious decision not to distribute that one. We
> have enough trouble as it is maintaining all the new Nothos entering the
> hobby, and I felt it would "strain the system" to introduce another
> identical one.
>
> ___________________________
> Brian Watters
> 6141 Parkwood Drive
> Nanaimo, BC, V9T 6A2
> Canada
> Ph: (250) 760-0564
> E-mail: bwatters at shaw_ca
>
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