Clearing out the duds (Summer fish tubs 7.ix.2024)

It's reached that melancholy time of year when I have to begin taking down the summer fish tubs. I generally start with the tubs that seemed to have the least success over the season, since I want a resolution for what happened and also because they are the quickest to process (few or no fish to net out and count). By the end of this 2024 season I had low hopes for my Aphanius sirhani, Gold Barb and Poecilia chica tubs due to not seeing fry or breeders.

The A. sirhani tub ended up being a total bust, which is a bummer since I only received them earlier in the summer after looking for them for several years. I don't think I'll be working with them again. After a moderately productive 2023 season, I lost a bunch of my Poecilia chica indoors over the last winter and then lost most of the rest in the tubs this summer. They produced no fry, and I'm down to one of my original breeder females and two small (stunted?) males that I produced in 2023. I'm not optimistic that the line will continue, big old female livebearers often stop dropping fry and when they do can become cannibalistic. Also, after I finished filming I took down the Gold Barb tub: unsurprisingly there were no fry, since the adults died during the big heatwave of early July. Interestingly, the barb tub has been the only one I've taken down with significant numbers of Odonate larvae, in this case small damselflies. A viewer had noted a damselfly hanging around one of my tubs in a video from earlier in the season, which makes me wonder if the breeder fish in the tubs are preferentially eating the immature odonates.

The disappointment of these loses/misfires for 2024 is tempered by the knowledge that each failure opens a space for a new project. Also, another reason I like to do the duds first is it sets expectations low, so when I get around to processing the tubs that did produce it's more exciting. After all, better to end the season on a high note!

#summertub #summertubbing #aquarium #ponds #fishtank #fishfam #aphanius #medaka #ricefish #goodeid #watergarden