Congrats, good luck with this batch. Some say it takes the parents a little while to get it right. In my case, the parents where ok, it took me a little while to figure how to care for them. I still think the hardest part is getting the fry to eat after the yolk sack goes away. I start feeding the fry about day 3, just before they go free swimming. Once they go free swimming, I usually start my first batch of BBS. Please let me know if I can help.
I think im going to feed them the frozen rotifiers for a couple days, get them to grow, then see if they will eat the BBS. Ill try and pick some up tomorrow.
I think they got it right, right from the start. They are SUPER protective! i put my hand in because i dropped the little water tester tube in the tank. duh! they were both trying to bite me hahaha.
you were talking before about taking the female out? when did you do this, and for what reasons?
You won't have to feed the babies until day 2/3. Prior to that they will be getting their nutrition from the yolk sack. I believe the frozen rotifers were the reason my latest batch have been so active. If you start a batch of BBS on day 3, they should be ready by day 5/6. By the time your BBS are ready, your fry will be big enough to eat them. I have had to remove my female, as my male suddenly gets violent with her after about a week or two. I would just watch for aggressive behavior closely.
its still a little vibrating mass of grey in the pit mom and dad dug out. a couple have been able to swim a couple inches away, and mom or dad gobble them up, and spit them out into the middle of the pile. theyre fantastic parents!
I picked up a container of hatched BBS. keep in the fridge and it should be good for 2 weeks. hopefully they like them as the little 7.5 gram container was $18 !!!!!! oh well, if not ill have to hatch them, and give them the rotifiers for an extra day
they're swimming! these darling little blue rams and swimming. parents still hate me for trying to feed them. They dont know, they are just going on instincts. i net them, put them in the opposite corner, and then i can feed the babies. works pretty good.
i made a video of the parents swimming with the babies, but youtube is down. ill put it up tomorrow, and post it.
Wow! congrats! please do keep the thread updated . I still have 2 that are14 days old. Mom and dad have eaten the last two batches even though they are in the tank alone these two have moved from eating frozen Rotifers to frozen cyclops.
Carol
update - babies are gone. the dad ate the rest of them over night (about 10)
both parents are back in the community tank, going to do a couple things with the breeding tank and see if they will breed again. shouldnt be a problem, they seem happy to be back together. this time once they are wigglers, im going to take the parents out. im confident i can raise them.
Question - Do most of you with breeding fish keep the tank bare bottom?
Sorry about the babies, it takes a little time to figure out when to remove the parents. In my case, it is our female that was caught red handed eating our babies. I do not keep bare bottoms in my breeding tanks. I try to create a nice comfortable breeding environment set up where my viewing is not impeded. Your pair will spawn again, and the more they do it the easier on you it becomes. My breeding pair is spawning about every 3 weeks. I had Angel wigglers that I placed in the my grow out tank, and my 3 week old Rams destroyed them all today. Unfortunately, that was the only place I had available to put them. I would normally get them to free swimming in a 2.5g, but that has a six week old Ram housed in there until he is big enough to move.
I still have 1 six week old baby, 25-30 three week old babies, eggs that should hatch tomorrow.
I didnt really want to go bare bottom, but its a pain vacuuming up the rotifiers and uneaten BBS off the sand. Im going to remove the parents as soon as I notice free swimming babies, and drain some water out so they have a better chance of getting to the food because it floats up and away.
should be a week or 2 till the spawn again. ill be more ready this time. I want to put a low-light plant in the breeding tank, one that stays small.
I didnt really want to go bare bottom, but its a pain vacuuming up the rotifiers and uneaten BBS off the sand.
My breeding tanks are heavily planted and decorated just like the show tanks but my fry tanks are bare for just the reasons you named. It's much easier for me to do huge water changes everyday If I'm not stirring up sand or stuff out of the gravel and I can tell whether I've got all the excess food and poo vac'd out. But everybody does things a little different, so whatever works for you
Carol
parents are showing nice bright colours, cleaning off their spawning decoration. females breeding tube is very much visible. I should have some eggs by tomorrow night at the latest.
going to remove the parents right after the fry go free swimming. thats about when they started to disappear. Plus, Im going to keep sand in the tank, and just complain about vacuuming everything up haha. I added a plant in one corner of the tank. Just a Java Fern.
What does everyone use over the intake of their filters? i had a piece of a panty-hose cut and elastic band on, but i went to rinse it off and it just ripped. Any good ideas? ill go pick something up tomorrow for it.
I have a Aquaclear bio-sponge, which I slit and slipped over my filter intake. I then used a zip tie to secure it at the top. I rinse and sqeeze it out in tank water about once a week. In my experience, removing the parents too early resulted in a massive mortality rate. You may want to remove the female once they go free swimming and leave the male for a while longer. Male cichlids tend to do more of the fry rearing than the females, and he may have ate the previous babies because he thought they were threatened by the female. I hope you have better success this time.
Also, are you target feeding the fry? I usually melt a cube of rotifers in some tank water, and them squirt a little at the fry with an eye dropper. I do not have any real accumulation of waste in my sand. Once they get bigger, I feed live BBS three times a day. The leftover could stay alive for about twelve hours, but it's hard to escape my little ravenous Rams for that long.
Last edited by dking271; October 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 AM.
I'm going to do everything you just suggested. Thank you again and again. Ill remove the female after they go free swimming and hold off on Removing the male until he starts chowing down on babies.
I'll pick up the sponge and a bbs hatchery tomorrow.
So i picked up the hatchery, and I found these little vacuum filter bags, that will work perfect!!!! they about 3" long, and 1" around so it fits perfect on the filter tube.
everyone is moved into the 10g breeder tank. I couldnt move them last night, so I left all the lights on in the room overnight to help with stress. It worked well, they didnt eat the eggs overnight.
Last edited by 04_si; October 3rd, 2008 at 07:41 PM.
Don't be discouraged, it often takes many spawns before they get it right. Are you moving them into your breeding tank before they lay or after? My last batch of eggs didn't make it either. It was the first time my pair had spawned with a school of Cardinal Tetras and a few Oto's in the tank. They must not have felt comfortable, and ate the eggs before they became wigglers.
Thanks buddy words of encouragement are always good.
I moved them about 20 hours after eggs were layer and the next morning (today) they were all gone. I'm going to try leaving them in the tank to see if that will help with spawning. They've been spawning every 14 days like clockwork. Hopefully it helps and if I can catch the mom eating them she can go back in he big tank
Don't give up. Hang in there. I still have 2 if the second spawning but my brats have been eating the eggs/wiggles of subsequent spawnings also. I think I'm going to pull the next batch of eggs as soon as they get through spawning.
Carol
let me know how it works out, im really curious to know. dking was saying he had a huge mortality rate when he did that..
Read that and would really rather Mom and Dad did their job but their not
I have had good luck in the past hatching angel and cory eggs so figured why not Anything is worth a try until my Brats straighten out
carol
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