bolivianbaby

I made a serious mistake this morning and I need help to find out another way of doing this.

I've got con fry that are about a month old. I "stole" some fry that just started free-swimming and put them in the same tank. The month-old cons decided it was time for a massacre and killed every single baby I put in there this morning (within 30 minutes).

Do I have any other options besides taking con babies out when they're at least two-four weeks old or am I looking at setting up another fry tank?

alicem

Is there any way of putting a divider in the tank?
The smaller babies would probably still be able to sneak between the divider and glass, but the majority might be saved
w/o setting up another tank.
Then maybe you could rotate the larger ones out as they grow...

One other thing might be to hang one of those fry net cages in the tank and put the little ones in there.
They are kind of a pain, but could possibly contain the tiny ones for a while...

alicem

bolivianbaby

The net's a good idea. I use one for my livebearer babies, so I'm used to the aggravation of them.

One of my other con females, Cleo (bless her heart) has a batch that was just born. Since she doesn't eat her fry, I can leave hers with her for a few weeks. I'm going to use this live food batch more modestly since she's shown to be a good provider of them. I keep hoping I can get another batch from one of my other females and let her have a break. It's her last batch that performed the massacre this morning. I'm pretty attached to her, so I don't want to turn her into a brood mare for lack of a better term.

I wanted to "rotate" the older ones out, but I made the mistake of promising my daughter that we could keep one or two for her cichlid tank, but they need to be larger before we can add them.

Thank you

bolivianbaby

UPDATE: I went and got about 20 more of her fry. They're in the breeder net in the baby con tank. Thanks again Alicem

I guess I still have a lot to learn about the convict personality

Nick Goody

Hi BB, I made exactly the same mistake with my Kribs a few months ago. Added some new(ish) born fry to the growout tank housing 2 month olds and they killed the lot. I've found that the fry need to be at least a month old until they can stand up for themselves against their big brothers and sisters!

aquarist48

Hello BB. I guess this is an instance where we live and learn. Sorry that you lost some fry. Sometimes trial and error is a necessity.
Best wishes!
Ken

bolivianbaby

With your cichlid experience, that makes me feel a LOT better.

A month old, I can work around that. Thank you

Thanks, Ken. This has been a week of fishkeeping lessons, for sure. That's okay, though, it'll make me a better fishkeeper in the future. Mistakes are fine as long as we don't repeat them, right?