jetajockey
- #1
After today's events, I decided to list a few tips for artificial egg care to help maximize survival rate of fry. Feel free to add if you have any.
-Always use tank water in the egg container, so the water parameters and temperature are identical when transitioning.
-Get the proper tools to help you maintain the eggs, a plastic pair of tweezers are great, and various size medicine droppers to move the eggs around.
-Keep the egg container clean. There is a lot of debris that is picked up when transferring eggs, so keep it clean and take a few minutes to get anything out that doesn't resemble an egg.
-Heat is good, but too much heat makes hard boiled eggs. If your egg container/tank setup allows it, you can fasten the container in the tank to maintain a nice temperature. Another option to this is to rest it above a tank light to give off some warmth. I forgo both of these options and put my egg containers on the very top of my tank rack, since heat rises it's the warmest up there. Whatever you do, do not put the egg container in direct sunlight, or any other unregulated heat source.
-Air flow is great, so put a bubbler in there if you are concerned about fungus. Don't worry about messing the eggs up with the bubbles, the benefits outweigh the negatives IMO. This really applies to sticky eggs as opposed to nonstick eggs, since it's harder to separate the good from the bad. I don't use air on the eggs I collect from the egg scatterer types.
-Use a fungus inhibitor. I strictly use h2o2 (hydrogen peroxide), not only because I'm a cheapskate, but also because it works well at keeping fungus away.
-However, even with these efforts, fungus will still happen, and when it does, pull the fungused eggs immediately.
-In general, the eggs that turn white are not viable, and should be removed before they fungus.
Which brings me to my next tip.
-DONT THROW THEM AWAY unless they are fungused over.
My cory eggs are all very similarly colored, and while pulling white eggs I put them into another container of water since I wasn't near the kitchen sink. I left the container out for a few hours while I was sleeping, and as I go to toss it out, lo and behold, there's 4 or 5 wigglers in there.
So the moral of the story is to separate the good eggs from the bad, because fungus is a killer, but don't toss the 'bad' eggs out so quickly because they might not be as bad as you think.
(picture is of 3 day old corydoras shultzeI (black) wigglers)
-Always use tank water in the egg container, so the water parameters and temperature are identical when transitioning.
-Get the proper tools to help you maintain the eggs, a plastic pair of tweezers are great, and various size medicine droppers to move the eggs around.
-Keep the egg container clean. There is a lot of debris that is picked up when transferring eggs, so keep it clean and take a few minutes to get anything out that doesn't resemble an egg.
-Heat is good, but too much heat makes hard boiled eggs. If your egg container/tank setup allows it, you can fasten the container in the tank to maintain a nice temperature. Another option to this is to rest it above a tank light to give off some warmth. I forgo both of these options and put my egg containers on the very top of my tank rack, since heat rises it's the warmest up there. Whatever you do, do not put the egg container in direct sunlight, or any other unregulated heat source.
-Air flow is great, so put a bubbler in there if you are concerned about fungus. Don't worry about messing the eggs up with the bubbles, the benefits outweigh the negatives IMO. This really applies to sticky eggs as opposed to nonstick eggs, since it's harder to separate the good from the bad. I don't use air on the eggs I collect from the egg scatterer types.
-Use a fungus inhibitor. I strictly use h2o2 (hydrogen peroxide), not only because I'm a cheapskate, but also because it works well at keeping fungus away.
-However, even with these efforts, fungus will still happen, and when it does, pull the fungused eggs immediately.
-In general, the eggs that turn white are not viable, and should be removed before they fungus.
Which brings me to my next tip.
-DONT THROW THEM AWAY unless they are fungused over.
My cory eggs are all very similarly colored, and while pulling white eggs I put them into another container of water since I wasn't near the kitchen sink. I left the container out for a few hours while I was sleeping, and as I go to toss it out, lo and behold, there's 4 or 5 wigglers in there.
So the moral of the story is to separate the good eggs from the bad, because fungus is a killer, but don't toss the 'bad' eggs out so quickly because they might not be as bad as you think.
(picture is of 3 day old corydoras shultzeI (black) wigglers)
