Nico's Nature

02/17/2025

Love this guy's videos, especially the loach ones!

02/11/2025

I have fond memories of catching chubs with cherries in my local creeks as a kid.

02/04/2025

Awesome pictures of Pangio kuhlii in its native habitat.

02/03/2025

01/31/2025

The Mini Greenhouse is doing good in its second winter. Most of the plants seem to be overwintering well and the rice fish love it!

01/30/2025

I had to go to Germany over Christmas and took the chance to visit some memorable places from my childhood.
While I didn't take many pictures, I got to visit my childhood fish store, Unter Wasser Freiburg - Spezialist für Süß- und Meerwasseraquaristik and check out their awesome livestock.
We also visited a public aquarium which is run by the local fish club. It was very interesting seeing the spawning Piranhas build and defend their "nest", just like Bass or Sunfish in the US.

01/22/2025

https://apnews.com/article/japan-ailing-sunfish-aquarium-e7a445c162bfe3ce0d95685d277ff812

"A solitary sunfish at an aquarium in southwestern Japan lost its appetite, began banging into the side of the fish tank and appeared unwell days after the facility closed last month for renovations. As a last-ditch measure to save the popular fish, its keepers hung their uniforms and set up human cutouts outside the tank.

The next morning, the sunfish ate for the first time in about a week and has been steadily recovering""A

11/19/2024

AELIAN: ON THE NATURE OF ANIMALS - BOOK 8
Translated by A.F. Scholfield (1958)
"It seems that even fishes are both tame and tractable, and when summoned can hear and are ready to accept food that is given them, like the sacred eel in the Fountain of Arethusa. And men tell of the moray belonging to Crassus the Roman, which had been adorned with earrings and small necklaces set with jewels, just like some lovely maiden; and when Crassus called it, it would recognise his voice and come swimming up, and whatever he offered it, it would eagerly and promptly take and eat. Now when this fish died Crassus, so I am told, actually mourned for it and buried it. And on one occasion when Domitius said to him 'You fool, mourning for a dead moray!' Crassus took him up with these words: 'I mourned for a moray, but you never mourned for the three wives you buried.'

11/18/2024

11/14/2024

If only I had a single tank with no scratches like them...

11/11/2024

I often see questions about how to tell Mosquitofish (Gambusia sp.) from Endlers or Guppies (Poecilia sp.). So I made this easy chart:
While males are fairly easy to identify thanks to their bright colors, females - especially Endlers - can look very similar to Gambusia. Since color and spotting aren’t always reliable, and can be hard to judge from photos, my go-to method is to check the dorsal fin positioning. In Gambusia, the dorsal fin sits much farther back on the body, making them surprisingly easy to identify. Most other livebearers (I can only think of H. formosa as an exception) have a dorsal fin that lines up or even starts before the a**l fin.

08/16/2024

Definitely can relate...