Neo. Multi Pics

Orion

Orion

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#1
Feb 10, 2003
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As promised, here are pictures of my new mulites. For right now, they are in a 10 gallon. I will be setting up a 20L for them just as soon as I figure out where the heck I can put it.....

Enjoy!







As you can see from the last pic, that all are juvies except the large male. I dont expect any aggresion out of him twards any of the others untill they start to mature some more and some females come into breeding.

I counted again, and the count went up to 12 multies, so that meens that I got them at $2.50 each, and dropping for every new one I find. :) Cant beat that, it would have cost upwards of $14 each at my LFS.

I actualy wouldnt mind if I were to get several pairs out of these. Gezz, if I do I am going to need my own fish room!
 

Orion

Orion

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Feb 10, 2003
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Thanks everyone.

Taff- unknown to me at the time, I belive I did end up with the entire colony. In the proccess of catching the fish, he wanted to give me several to choose from to make sure that the six I bought were the ones I wanted. Well he was only able to catch six, so he said that he would throw in three shells and what ever was in them for the same price. I didnt know for sure what I was going to wind up with until this morning, and so far I have counted 12. Three shells came with the fish, and I bought 12 more from the same guy for only 3 bucks, so it wasnt a bad deal at all.

There is a possibility that I already have a pair. You cant really see it well in the third pic, but the large male actualy is sharing a shell with a smaller fish. The smaller one is not as small as the ones like the first two pictures, and the stipes are much darker on that one. None the less, this is nothing more than speculation, I havent even had these fish for 24 hours, so Im not going to jump the gun and get too excited untill I see some fry.

Now I just need twice as many shells!
 

T

TaffyFish

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Jan 30, 2003
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yes, Orion, lots more shells is the key IME. You should find that the male deserts the shell once he's settled, he'll be happy watching over the colony from some nearby rockwork and will only dive for a shell (the nearest) when he's startled....like when he gets sold to another keeper! LOL

You got a great deal there. If you have 12 fish then you've a practical certainty of at least one of each species, maybe 99.9995% or something. The alpha male must emerge from however many males you got, easy to ID he'll be the biggest! LOL He'll keep the other males aside and try to spawn with all the females. It is well known that sperm from sneak males do get to fertilize the occasional clutch of eggs.
 

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Orion

Orion

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Feb 10, 2003
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Cool, thanks Taff.

You can see the largest multie in the third pic. As big as he is, I would think its safe to say he is a male. Now, if he ends up being the alpha male for good or not is yet to be determinded, but for the moment, I would say his reign is safe.

In what you have experinced, what has been the average sizes of the males and the females when mature that you have kept?
 

T

TaffyFish

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They all duck when you pick up the ruler! LOL. Actually, if you leave the ruler leaning against the tank they all come across to inspect it.

My alpha male is 1.5 - 1.75", I have 2 further large males (his sons) at about 1.25 - 1.5". The females top out at about 1" and are breeding at 0.75". There are 4 , maybe 5, breeding females in my colony, 4 more adults/subadults and I've lost count of the juvies and fry. 27 shells and still room for a few more....;-)
 

Orion

Orion

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Feb 10, 2003
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Cool. The more 'guidelines' I can go by the better off I will be. I also ran across a post over on CF.com about how you can sometimes tell the sexes by the coloring, so I need to dig that up, and see how well I can do on sexing some of them.

I've up'ed the shell count to 32, so Im good to go there. Heh, I thought I had sand in there before I started....

Speaking of sand, I already have several shells have already been dug out from underneith. Good signs, good signs.
 

Aaron

Aaron

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Sep 15, 2004
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Great looking fish and a great bargain!

I've been trying to get my own tank going for a while but the price almost floored me. The cheapest I found was $20 per fish.

If I bought some now for a ten gallon and then moved them to a bigger tank later would I still be able to add more? I'm just asking because everytime I see these cute little fish I get more impatient. I could afford some now for an empty 10 gallon but I still have a vision for much larger setup down the road.
 

Orion

Orion

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Feb 10, 2003
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Multies are a colony fish. So with just one pair, they will eventualy have enough fry to easily fill a tank.
Just takes time.

Boy I must have gotten a better deal than I realized then by the sounds of those prices. Not sure where you are located, but if you could contact a local fish club, Im almost positive that you could get some dirt cheap like I did. I falied to mention earlier, but all the ones I got were F1's.
 

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Orion

Orion

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#20
You can see in the pot in the third picture. Well, its almost covered up by now. The group of females have litteraly dug all the sand from around there shells and thats the dumping point. These guys are great.

So much digging has been going on in my tank over the past week. With that, many females are biting at the male, so Im guessing that they should start spawning very soon.

Also it appears that my Neo. brevis are attempting to spawn. A female has been consistantly tring to woo a male to her shell.

And I can tell by the looks of my brichardi that they have already, or getting ready to spawn again as well. I have no clue what Im going to do with all these fry (that is, if they make it)! lol
 

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