Jump to content

Anyone keep endlers?


NoGi

Recommended Posts

Love to see some pics when you get a chance. I'm only just starting out with endlers and learning the basics at the moment. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have endlers and even though i love their colours and activity, what I hate about them and its now driving me balmy along with running out of room is the sheer numbers of non stop babies they produce. I have resorted to introducing some much larger rainbow fish to the tank of endlers (its a 4ft so the rainbows arent being squished into a nano tank), to try and "naturally" reduce the numbers of endlers making to adulthood and further breeding.

On a side note I have discovered that pacific blue eyes are particularly good at keeping endler numbers in check. In one tank that for over 6 months has had 2 mature female endlers and a very active male endler not 1 endler fry has been seen.

Some of mineP1010099_zps6217588f.jpg

This was my favourite boy, notice his love heart in the tail.

P1000842_zpscf0c8424.jpg

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

May I suggest selective breeding, keeping only fish with your favourite traits, and culling the rest. Shops would usually accept guppies as they are a high selling fish. If you could produce a line of that first fish you'd be onto a winner

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I was trying to be selective in which males I kept and get rid of the ones I didnt want but the endlers didnt sell so great at my local pet shop so they really reduced the numbers they where willing to get off me and the frequency. Of course that delay just enabled the endlers to keep producing more and more babies that in turn where near impossible to move on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Probably really obvious but how do you sex endlers? And is it normal for the young (fry?) to be colourless?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

males can be sexed first in my experience - by appearance of colour. u csn pick the females by the gravid spot on their bum :-) fry are always colourless as are the mature females. love n peace will

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Young males should start to show the beginings of colour fairly early, but you can also sex them the same way as male guppies with the gonopodium, which will also start to elongate fairly early in their development.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

So the females are always colourless? Can you mix females from different breeds or are they usually genetically similar to the males in their colony?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hey nogi I've seen female endlers with patterned tails (black/brown markings) but never a coloured one.

not to say it isn't possible though.

ps not sure if this answers your questions but all guppies can cross with each other, endlers or otherwise. and i read that even some other live bearers of different species can interbreed but one or another cross will have sterile offspring (cant remember which out of mollies guppies and platys)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

not sure, still a little confused lol. When all the females look the same between variants, how do you tell them apart visually if they are not coloured?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i'm pretty sure there isn't a way to know visually. people have problems distinguishing female endler guppies from regular female guppies!

i know im not being helpful when i say this but you could also tell them apart visually when you see what their male offspring look like ;-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@NoGi I seem to be following your trend! I have just gotten back into livebearers starting with the wonderful endlers!

Some of the girls from different strains do have different colouring to them.

looking forward to many many pics from all the Endler breeders.

heres one of my favourite pics at the moment. French Blue Star endler.

image.thumb.jpg.a22b5a452d4e5d96bd3cc4e1

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I've got the blonde endlers and red chillis.... Love them just as much as shrimps! :D

I have them together with my ninja and red cherry shrimps. =)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I picked some up last week, loving them so far and in a week all my females are pregnant, they really do breed like rabbits.

they were sold as Chilli endlers but one of the males is clearly a black bar, I should pay better attention at the shop!

image.thumb.jpeg.08525dd394477b160696cfeimage.thumb.jpeg.ede99fe2bb639835e60880bimage.thumb.jpeg.393875cd4b36b38cdf9767b

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
On 1/22/2016 at 10:53 AM, JacksonL said:

I picked some up last week, loving them so far and in a week all my females are pregnant, they really do breed like rabbits.

they were sold as Chilli endlers but one of the males is clearly a black bar, I should pay better attention at the shop!

image.jpegimage.jpegimage.jpeg

You should get that Black Bar out of there - or better still, toss the females - if you're wanting to keep the Chilli line pure. I've heard endlers and guppies are one of those fish where a male that has previously mated with a female can have his traits carried through in the offspring of the female and another male, so it's not just a matter of getting rid of that batch of fry. Mind you, I had some of the best (by "best" I mean fish that looked most like the variety) Opals I have ever seen come out of female Opals that had been contaminated with a stray male of a different variety, so it's not a bad thing in terms of the phenotype. It's only something you need to worry about if you are really serious about having pure lines. I love that Black Bar, by the way! I've never been able to get the black outer edge of the tail fin that evenly distributed on mine - I always end up with a few blotches. 

Edited by Cryptocorynus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

A big problem with keeping the lines pure when an unwanted male has been in with the females is the ability of female to apparently hold onto packets of sperm then use that to fertilise their eggs at a later time. From what I read this was natures way of enabling females to to not fertilise their eggs in time of drought and low food supplies and then fertilise the eggs once the rains came. This also accounts for the talk of changing sex when people are sure there have not been any males in their colony yet suddenly there are fry in the tank. I think I read it in Herbert Axelrod's book on guppies and that should apply to Endlers too. I believe this can apply to mollies and swordtails as well but I'm not 100% sure.  Axelrod was one of the first authorities on keeping guppies and wrote extensive books on them the books might be a bit old fashioned now but they are still being published  .He advocated feeding little and often and back in those days copious water changes but that was before the modern filtration we now have. I'm not sure where Endlers and Guppies stand as far as genetic make up or how close their genes are but they are very similar..

As to sexing by colour alone that no longer applies as there are strains of Guppies where the females have large colourful tails so I would think that would apply to Endlers too?  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, ineke said:

As to sexing by colour alone that no longer applies as there are strains of Guppies where the females have large colourful tails so I would think that would apply to Endlers too?  

I've found that small enndlers can be successfully sexed by looking for colour on the body. Females with body colouration are very rare. I have done this without ever having any issues. As @ineke says, some female endlers (just like some female guppies) have tail colouration (female Black Bars come to mind) so sexing from tail colouration alone is definitely not a reliable way to sex these particular fish. 

 

zxhzCOG.jpg

One of my female Black Bars, showing that tail colouration in endlers is possible. Also, notice how the colour is contained to the tail and dorsal fin with no colour on the body. 

Edited by Cryptocorynus
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Hi Nogi

I have been playing with these Magenta crosses for a while now

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4 November 2015 at 7:52 AM, NoGi said:

@newbreed yeah very dangerous to get into, just as addictive as shrimp.

Agree overrun by these at one stage then somehow crossed with standard guppies and traits went out the door, became great feeders for my Saratoga.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Join Our Community!

    Register today, ask questions and share your shrimp and fish tank experiences with us!

  • Must Read SKF Articles

  • Posts

    • beanbag
      Update to say that after a few gravel vacs, front wall scrub, moss / floating plant trim, that the condition seems to have improved.  My current theory is that it is due to waste / debris management, where "stuff" like that brown mulm accumulates in the substrate and behind the HMF filters.  Maybe some tanks can somehow deal with it, but mine can't.  Also another experienced shrimper suggested that maybe those "shell bugs" don't just live on the shrimps but also in this debris.  Maybe this is the reason some tanks fail due to "old tank syndrome" where all they need is a good gravel vac? Also, I am guessing that plant trim helps too because now more of the nutrients and light go into growing algae instead of more plants? Well anyway for this tank I will try weekly water change and monthly gravel vac / plant trim.  For my next tank, I'm thinking of something like an under-gravel system where this mulm can fall down and I vac it out.
    • sdlTBfanUK
      Good to have an update and good to hear you are getting shrimplets, so hopefully your colony will continue and you may not get to the point where you have to cull some to stop over population. These type of shrimp only live 12 - 18 months so the adult deaths may be natural? If you have the time I would do weekly 25% water changes, adding the new water via a drip system and do some vacuuming clean of the substrate each week, even if only a different bit each week! See if that helps in a few months and if it does then stick with that regime? It should help reduce any build-ups that may be occuring!
    • beanbag
      Hello again, much belated update: The tank still has "cycles" of 1-2 month "good streaks" where everybody seems to be doing well, and then a bad streak where the short antenna problem shows up again, and a shrimp dies once every few days.  I am not sure what causes things to go bad, but usually over the course of a few days I will start to see more shrimp quietly standing on the HMF filter, and so I know something is wrong.  Since I am not "doing anything" besides the regular 1-2 week water changes, I just assume that something bad is building up.  Here's a list of things that I've tried that are supposed to be "can't hurt" but didn't prevent the problem either: Dose every other day with Shrimp Fit (very small dose, and the shrimp seem to like it) Sotching Oxydator Seachem Purigen to keep the nitrates lower Keeping the pH below 5.5 with peat Things that I don't do often, so could possibly "reset" the tank back to a good streak, are gravel vac and plant trim, so maybe time to try those again. One other problem I used to have was that sometimes a shrimp would suddenly stop eating with a full or partially full digestive tract that doesn't clear out, and then the shrimp will die within a few days.  I suspected it was one of the foods in my rotation - Shrimp Nature Infection, which contains a bunch of herbal plant things.  I've had this in my food rotation for a few years now and generally didn't seem to cause problems, but I removed it from the rotation anyway.  I don't have a lot of adult Golden Bees at this point so I can't really tell if it worked or not. Overall the tank is not too bad - during the good streaks occasionally a shrimp will get berried and hatch babies with a 33-50% survival rate.  So while there are fewer adults now, there are also a bunch of babies roaming around.  I guess this tank will stagger on, but I really do need to take the time to start up a new tank.  (or figure out the problem)
    • jayc
      If that is the offspring, then the parents are unlikely to be PRL. I tend to agree with you. There are very few PRLs in Australia. And any that claim to be needs to show proof. PRL genes have to start as PRL. CRS that breed true after x generations doesn't turn it into a PRL. Neither can a Taiwan bee shrimp turn into a PRL despite how ever many generations. I've never seen a PRL with that sort of red colour. I have on Red Wines and Red Shadows - Taiwan bee shrimps. So somewhere down the line one of your shrimp might have been mixed with Taiwan bees and is no longer PRL. It just tanks one shrimp to mess up the genes of a whole colony. 
    • sdlTBfanUK
      Sorry, missed this one somehow! The PRL look fantastic and the odd ones look part PRL and part Red wine/Red shadow in the colour. They are still very beautiful but ideally should be seperated to help keep the PRL clean if you can do that.  Nice clear photos!
×
×
  • Create New...