LIVEFINS
The Place to Purchase Exotic Rare Guppies, Endlers, Shrimp, Snails, Live Plants...
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Mitchell Weintraub, Florida, U.S.A.

How should I care for my new Endlers when they first arrive?

They are similar to care for as with guppies, I’m sure once they’ve adapted they will become extremely hardy and prolific for you. I usually try to feed new endlers/guppies that I receive at least an hour after completion of acclimating with mosquito larvae as a treat to trigger eating behavior in their new environment and to stimulate movement throughout their digestive tract. More importantly, this has a laxative effect for the fish to get them adapted more quickly and get their digestion back in order. You could use frozen as well, but preferably something live.lime_green_endlers_001

What advice can you give me on the care of Frogbit Limnobium laevigatum?

I have had Frogbit, but it ended up melting away/outcompeted as the seasonal lighting changed and the water got cooler. In a static environment it still required nutrient rich water. It did much better in a heavily populated tank with some air stone movement to the surface on one corner of the aquarium and warm water at least 78 degrees. It did not like full sun, I grew it in my tanks in the shaded portion of the greenhouse where it only received indirect light. I use a mixture of Water Spangle Salvinia minima/duckweed/dwarf water lettuce and of those 3, the water spangle is the easiest and most tolerant of diverse growth conditions. Salvinia also can be easily collected from the surface of the aquarium if you need to remove it.

Hi, I’m new to Aquabid so please excuse me if I ask a question you have already answered through your ad. What days do you ship on? How soon after purchase do you mail? And, is it as simple as clicking ‘buy me now’ to purchase or is it easier for you to send me an invoice to my paypal? Thank you for your time.

Hi, Thanks for the inquiry! Welcome to online livefish and plant purchasing. I try to make this as similar to purchasing anything else you have purchased online with a conventional shopping cart. You can either choose my buy now button located in my listing and be directed to Paypal and use your Paypal account or a credit or debit card to check out. The other method is to use the Aquabid checkout system which sends an email to me letting me know you’ve purchased and then wait for a Paypal request for payment. You can also purchase the same items off of my website www.livefins.com . The choice is yours, whenever you are ready to purchase let me know and I can send a package to you on any Saturday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Some livestock can survive longer than others in transit while living in a box. Some livestock needs to be conditioned a day (small fish) or two (larger fish) before shipping, some can be sent the same day (snails, plants). The main thing we (live fish sellers) try to avoid is extra days sitting in the post office over Sundays as this adds risk to the survival and well-being of whatever you purchase. I welcome any questions you may have that will make this purchase enjoyable and easy!
Trio of Tiger Endlers Packed in a Heat Sealed Kordon Breather BagKordon Breather Bag Satchels

Can Scuds and Shrimp be kept together?

Scuds and Shrimp can be kept together, however the scuds can eventually out-compete the shrimp. Short term they can be kept together very well, the scuds tolerate more extreme ph fluctuation and temperature variance and are more prolific for this reason and will likely outperform the shrimp breeding, so they will crowd the shrimp out eventually. But if you are regularly harvesting the scuds only this may work very well for you. The nauplii (baby shrimp) are hard to distinguish from the very young scuds. If you decide to keep them together harvest scuds that are large enough to be certain they are scuds.

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How big are these Scuds as adults? I would like to feed them to Betta fish, & don’t know much about them.

Thank you for the inquiry, These range in size from 1/16″ to 5/16″ in length. Adults are about the same size as an adult brine shrimp. They make excellent food for your bettas. The bettas will eat the smaller ones first and the largest breeders will be the last to go, which enable the scuds to reproduce in their tank.
Here is some additional culturing information:
They do real well in a dirty/green water 10 gallon tank with playsand, naja grass, an airline that lets a bubble per second reach the surface and duckweed being fed an algae wafer every other day. They are much easier to culture compared to daphnia. Scuds are far less demanding than shrimp but similar, so I’m sure you will not have any problem keeping them. They seem to do best with sand substrate to borough with some coarse gravel to provide hiding places not completely covering the sand, floating plants such as duckweed and salvinia and Naja grass throughout the tank. They love algae wafers and eat any type flake food although I provide them with spirulina flake most often. One wafer to about 250 scuds should last 2-days. They feed on mulm, hair and thread algae (not especially fond of filamentous type though). Caution, they may out compete slower reproducing shrimp. They can coexist much like shrimp with smaller fish like guppies and endlers. These have been raised in Florida well water high gh water, fairly low conductivity of 290. The cleaner the tank the more supplemental food for best results. They are more active at night. They really don’t seem to mind dirty water as they thrive in some of my wet/dry filters as well. If you have any other specific questions please do not hesitate to ask.

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Can you tell me if your RREA snakeskin guppies are prolific and do they eat their fry? Have you out crossed this line at all or is this the original strain from Asia you’ve worked with?

The F1’s RREA Snakeskins are prolific now. The F0 parents took almost 3 months until they had Fry. The F1’s are having fry since they were about 3 months old and do not eat their fry.
The original fish I bought from Mokkom and Topshowguppy on Aquabid and the RREA Tuxedo’s were by luck.
Currently, I maintain 3 different lines of them.
Line 1: RREA Snakeskin X RREA Solid Red IFGA Standard
Line 2: RREA Snakeskin X RREA Snakeskin (All Asian)
Line 3: RREA Snakeskin X RREA Red Head Tuxedo (Red Head / Tux Green Body / Red Tail)
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Lines 1 and 2 throw similar looking progeny except Line 1 will throw about 10% solids.
Line 3 Just had their first batch, so I’m anxious to see what they will look like.