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thank you
I'm Irene with aquarium Co-op and I've been working for the company for four years this
is my first time ever at the fish store and I am super excited I'm gonna take you along today
we're going to see what cool looking fish I can find that I normally don't see at home let's go
so the first fish I saw immediately when coming in the door is the spotted headstander to me they
kind of look like the opposite of a pencil fish so you know how pencilfish it's a schooling fish
that's kind of diagonal 45 degrees but they Point upwards versus the headstander like its
common name points downwards very beautiful fish very active not shy at all you say I came right
up to the tank and they're not going anywhere right and we got this kind of silvery body has
the spotting black grid like kind of all over its body the solid black line on it as well as
the dorsal fin seems to have some spots on it as well really hearty really easy to eat and one of
the really unusual behaviors is that when you feed them they apparently do this clicking kind
of noise I would say that in general you do want to keep a larger school if not possible and the
recommendation I talked to Brandon was maybe you don't keep them with slower fish or long fin fish
but you can see right here we have them with high fin paleatus corydoras and they're pretty
much leaving them alone so if you're interested in this kind of weird Oddball fish that doesn't swim
horizontal like everybody else give them a shot obviously I could not pass by this Congo puffer
because he looks like a tiny flying potato Spud he's absolutely adorable it and this is I actually
just wrote an article about my top 10 puffer fish I can't believe I didn't put the Congo puffer on
because they are absolutely adorable obviously right now very very tiny eventually it's going
to grow up to six inches and then this kind of tan model pattern will eventually turn into a
beautiful burnt orange color which is what they're known for absolutely gorgeous what makes us more
of a fish for advanced fish Keepers or maybe somebody who has like a fish room with lots of
Tanks is you're going to be expected to keep this fish by itself it is pretty much a fish eater so
you're going to probably aim for a 30 to 40 gallon aquarium and then they really do like live Foods
so things like ghost shrimp maybe some insects insects that you can buy at reptile stores as
well as you could breed your own Guppies or dwarf shrimp as well as go ahead and try bigger meteor
Frozen and freeze dried foods so things like Krill and mice's shrimp now most puffer fish you really
want to be careful about their or their teeth as they grow and grow which is why you normally want
to feed lots of crunchy Foods thankfully with the Congo puffer they actually have like a softer beak
so they don't really need to eat a ton of crunchy Foods they can kind of manage that themselves
so I have actually kept Apistogramma before but never this particular variety this is the
Apistogramma macmasteri 'redneck' and in fact I've heard the super red neck gold version is even more
intense than discoloration with the golds and the Reds it is one of the best selling fish at
aquarium Co-op because of those intense colors I really love apistos they're kind of a bottom
dwelling-ish cichlid comes from South America you can keep them in low 80s degrees Fahrenheit but
what's really cool about them is their breeding Behavior you can see that we have several apisto
caves in here because they are cave spawners and they actually show parental care so the
female will guard the eggs and the fry while the male kind of patrols around and guards the whole
territory now the macmasteri species gets a little bit bigger than some of the normal apisto species
so once they reach adulthood I would recommend upgrading to a coconut Hut just to give them a
little more room when you go to the fish store and you try to get one male and one female to
pair up just remember that those like no one hundred percent guarantee sometimes there's
something called a sneaker male where some of the beta males will try to use female colors to hide a
little bit and then when you take them home you realize you have two males also even if you get
one male and one female they may not necessarily pair up and get along so you can always try again
this is a finish I've never seen before I have kept dwarf chain loaches but this is the pygmy
multi-stripe Loach so it's got that you know typical Loach shape where it has the pointy nose
torpedo shaped body kind of a lighter colored body with vertical striping on it and they're
way smaller too I think the females max out at about 1.5 inches and you can see they're very
very active they say kind of I would say the mid water to bottom of the tank and very very Hardy
from what I've heard even heartier than Rosy loaches because of that pointier snout I would
suspect that they probably go after small really really tiny pest Nails however Brandon our store
manager actually keeps them with his nerite snails and Malaysian trumpet snails and so far they've
left them alone like a lot of loaches they do like that cooler water so you can keep them in
an unheated aquarium but I wouldn't say anything above 80 degrees Fahrenheit so if you're looking
for a really peaceful really hearty kind of schooling fish that lives in the bottom half
of the aquarium definitely give these ones a try because I definitely haven't seen them around now
I know this fish may be not as unfamiliar to many of you but for me since I mostly keep Nano tanks
the dwarf petricola catfish is definitely one of my bucket fish lists I love them they're about
4.5 inches in length in adulthood which means I'm gonna need a 40 gallon breeder or a larger
I really like their unusual patterns and colors so it's got this gray body with black spots all over
it and then the high contrast black and white bins are amazing looking plus they've got really long
whiskers and they're very very active as you can see in fact in adulthood they're going to be even
more outgoing I would say than they are now as juveniles while they do come from Lake Tanganyika
you don't need to add like cichlid salts in there to make sure the pH and GH are really high
I would say pH neutral is actually okay but the GH being higher than normal is pretty important
the coolest thing I discovered about them is yes they are egg scatters but they also do this thing
called brood para– parasitism parasitism where apparently they know to lay their
eggs at the same time as other Lake Tanganyika cichlids there are mouth burners so once all the
catfish and cichlid eggs get mixed together the cichlid mouth brooder comes in gobbles
them all and then once the catfish fry hatch out they eat all the eggs and so the cichlid
ends up holding a mouthful of catfish which is really cool hahaha this may be the last store
tour video we do before the grand reveal of the store expansion so if you need a sneak peek in
the meanwhile make sure to check out this video over here enjoy nature daily [Music]