During our 1993 Tropical Fish Show, Chris Biggs from Winnipeg roomed at our house and had brought with him a bag of 7 wild caught turquoise rainbows that he was selling at the auction. He needed a place to put the fish until auction day. Before any large auction I clean out tanks and prepare them in hopes of buying fish of spectacular wonders, so he placed the fish in a ten gallon tank with hornwort. Well, my wife Linda took one look at those fish and she just HAD to have them. She tried for the next two days to BRIBE Chris into selling them to her but he just couldn't because they were already registered for the auction. Leave it to Linda to have the paddle at the auction because sure enough, those fish came right back home with us and right back into the same tank they were in in the first place.

My first effort was to pair two of them up and spawn them. I noticed early in the morning 3 of the fish would get a bright yellow glowing stripe down the centre of their body from nose to tail and would turn an even darker beautiful turquoise colour. Not knowing much about these fish and having no information on them I took the advise of Gail Krohn and placed one with a bright stripe and one with out in a ten gallon tank 3/4 full of water with lots of floating plants and a bare glass bottom. I kept the temperature at 74 degrees with a corner bubbler and a constant incandescent light on for 24 hours a day. I fed the parents flake food once a day and after a week I noticed small, almost hair like fry darting in and out of the hornwort. I immediately netted them with a fine net and placed them in a five gallonrearing tank that was 1/2 full of water and hornwort floating on top trying to simulate the environment they hatched in. Doing this for a number of days I had quite a few fry swimming around. I fed them live shrimp brine and APR rotifer once a day for their first 2 weeks. Eventually they started on crushed flake food. They grow very slowly and eventually I counted about 40 fry. I traded some with Linda's mom but that's about all Linda would let me get rid of. I always try to sell some of my fry in our club auctions sothat our members have the opportunity of experiencing as many different kinds of fish as possible. I'm still working on getting Linda to part with a few. For not having very much information on this fish, I think we did very well. I enjoy this fish very much, especially how they turn the colours they do.