Hi Doc, Jules and others (Doc, I feel as if I know you as I've followed this thread for a few weeks now - great stuff)
I'm new to this forum and from the UK
There should be some pictures below of my 'set-up' - a 2 foot x 1 foot freshwater tank with 3 skippers - not sure what type yet - and about 4 gallons of water.
I got my 3 skippers, on a fairly casual basis, a week or so ago, as I had a couple a few years ago and liked them. I had crabs in with them last time, and they took over.
This time I'm just having skippers on their own. However 2 of the skippers have started to try and make nests in the coconut shells (see photo), which I made and put in just for them to muck about in and yes, those are bamboo kebab sticks used to keep them near the surface of the water! (tip if you use coconut shells, run them through the dishwasher to sterilise them or weird 'snotty stuff' grows off them).
Clearly there's not enough sand substrate for my skips to make a nest so I'm going to try something bigger now and take some pics as I go. The set up won't look as good as the Doc's but I too want to see if I can get them to reproduce so we'll see how it goes.
Doc - couple of questions for you. I've read all of what you've written so they should be new questions.
How long do you have your lights on for? Do you adjust for seasons? In the UK its's summer now but the winter can get pretty dark, cold and miserable.
When I was in Oz a few weeks ago (perversely) it got really dark very early, it being your winter, and about 15 degrees.
You, I think, have only 1 male but I've got 2 males and 1 female. Will this be a problem do you think in a 2 footer (I take it that only the males nest)?
Have you any (man-made) ideas on how to help the nest from caving in? Any silt round our shores is likely to be pretty toxic so I've got some really fine sand mixed with courser stuff to try. I know that roots from plants help keep structure so I'll try that as I believe they need some form of air chamber to lay the eggs (and I believe they oxygenate it with air from their mouths). I was thinking of some sort of little upside down cups, randomly dispersed in the hope that the male might use those. Doc. I saw what looked like cardboard under your 'shore' and wondered whether you used this and punched a hole through when skippy wasn't looking and he could do the rest? It would be great if such a chamber was close to the glass of the aquarium so that one could see inside but I think that unlikely. I think someone earlier on this forum tried 'J pipes' to replicate an air chamber but that didn't work.
Does the silt need to need to go through these oxygenated and de-oxygenated stages Doc? Presumably each tide brings in relatively oxygenated water? I'm going to try and replicate a tide too and understand your double timer idea.
How deep do you think the sand/silt needs to be for them to nest?
Doc - have you got any other ideas you'd try, now that you've run yours for a year?
Regards
S