I am done.. you take advice for fresh water as well as you did for salt water.. no point waisting my time anymore.. :rolleyes:

Steve

I was about to say the same thing. I was going to say it isnt worth fighting over some freaking fish that i am not even trying to breed. I am sorry for this. Can you please tell me what book you got that information from. I would like to know so i can read it.

Pics and updates added

How'd you make out with building a rack for all the tanks?
Like the web site,but you gotta clean the glass before you take pics(dont take it the wrong way)First impressions are important,especially when selling livestock.Cheers.

Well the back and side glass i personaly like it like that but the front those little green spots just dont scrub off. Any Ideas. The racks worked good. In fact so good somebody payed for wood and labour and bought them off of me so I have to build another system.

A razor blade will take the other algea off.

Captive bred rams do fine in REGULAR TAP WATER. There is absolutely no need to dick around with the water parameters. I've bred both rams and guppies with nothing but good maintanance routines and high quality feedings.

Yes the rams are doing great. I have heard the same about discus when bought young i heard you can slowly get them used to your tap water. May not be good for breeding but one of the LFS here said he had a pair that bred for him monthly and all he did to his tap water was add it to the tank.

thats a pretty broad statement isn't it.. so no matter what my tap water is like they will do fine?

like I said be for they may live heck all fish may live in any water, but we are not giving them they best quality of life. and if you goal is to give the creatures in your care a low quality of life then maybe you should sell plastic fish for those people. and I will state it again they don't do fine, the tolerate it. and yes any captive breed will do better in water it is used to but when you say tap water, if I raised them in my tap water out here I bet you they will still do bad when sent to "your" tap water conditions or vise versa.

I know that the idea of a fish store is to make money (or there wouldn't be any) and I also know one of the best money makers is pretty fish that have a OK success rate, if they have a heck of a survival rate then no one buys more. if they have a horrible rate no one wants more as they keep dieing, but if you only lose about 50% (or lose them slowly one at a time) then you will buy more. look at us with blue chromis :rolleyes: look at neon tetra's two prime examples. I have had rams for years, my last one only recently kicked the bucket after having him for 4 years and I would say that I have lost about 50% of them (all wild) now this was due to a few factors, one being fish compatibility. I stressed out a bunch of them to the point of death and I didn't even know what was going on. once I figured that out I started having success.

Steve

IMO the whole reason for being in this hobby is because I enjoy it. I enjoy looking at the fish, corals, what have you. Yet, I also have a certain responsibility to the livestock. I will provide these animals with the best conditions, living quarters, I can. Surviving is not good enough. I want them to thrive. When animals in your care are thriving, there is a lot more enjoyment from the hobby as well as a greater sense of satisfaction.