dmm28

So I have a couple of electric yellow cichlids that are holding at the moment (since about the 15th of May) I plan on stripping them of their fry and then transferring the fry to a separate tank. I just picked up a 20 gallon for the fry and I would like to get it up and running before the day I want to transfer them.

I have aqua clear 110's on both of my bigger tanks and now have a 30 on the 20 gallon. I was thinking of just transferring media from one of the other filters to the new one. My question is this, without any bio load in the tank what are the odds of the filter media remaining viable?

I was also thinking of just running the smaller filter in the main cichlid tank until it's time to transfer the fry, would a week be long enough in the main tank? I would of course swap out some media from the main filter on that tank as well.

Also how would I go about doing water changes in the fry tank without killing any? I'm think of just using a small siphon and just sucking out the water not bothering with cleaning the gravel and then adding water back maybe 2 liters at a time.

Butterfly

You could wait until you are ready to put the fry in and switch the filter with used media over on the fry tank.The beneficial bacteria colonizes on the gravel, tank walls, decor, in the filter and other stuff like that. There's just not much free floating in the water. Frequent water changes are essential in fry tanks as well as gravel vacuums. Food and waste left in the gravel could cause spikes that might kill your fry.
carol

dmm28

Just tried putting the smaller filter on one of my bigger tanks, seems the lip on the bigger tanks is too big to put the filter on to. I just put all the media from the smaller filter into one of the bigger filters to colonize. So if I put say some used filter media and a decoration from the main tank into the fry tank I should be alright?

How would I go about vacuuming the gravel with such tiny little fry in the tank?

Butterfly

Yes you should be ok.
I usually use a bare bottom tank for fry since it's so much easier to clean but with gravel you could use a net to shoo them all to one end of the tank and only vacuum 1/2 each day. I also siphon into a white bucket in case I suck any of them up then I can see them. A turkey baster is invaluable at times like that to suck them up and put them back into their tank
Carol

Angela_96

For african fry a crushed coral or sand substrate with some small limestone rocks directly on the bottom is good. They can hide in the smallest spots in the tank.
I would advise against stripping the mothers unless they hold past the 21-28 day mark. Its very stressful on the females and can kill them.
You could place them in the tank about 5 days before due to spit and watch them closely and they should spit under the rocks and you can put the mothers in the main tanks to feed.