Apisto breeding for busy people.

[P.W.]

Hello

Due to my work, I have to travel sometimes and stay away from home for one or two weeks.
At this occasion I just had newly hatched frys of Ap. Commbrae in one of my community tanks (they were hardly freeswimming). I really wanted to keep some of those frys and raise them to adults. The problem was that I had to travel the next day, and stay away for almost two weeks.

To at least take a chance of saving some of the frys, I took about 5-6 of them from the community tank and put them into an emty 40 litre tank. Which hadn´t been cleaned for about two years or more. The tank was over grown with javamoss and algaes, and there was a lot of "dirt in the corners".
I really had no expectations about this "experiment", but it was the only option I had at that moment.
When I put the fry´s into the tank, they just disappeared into the thick layer of moss and dirt, and I thought that it was the last time I saw them.

But to my surprise. When I returned home and looked into the tank I could count 5-6 well fed apistofrys that were scouting around among the javamoss. I was really suprised!! The amount of protozoans in that tank was appearantly well enough for those frys to feed on, during my absence.

So, try to have a emty tank (if you have the space) with a lot of plants and years of dirt, standing ready for these kind of situations. I have tried this experiment two times now and it works fine.

Best regards/ Per

 

[ed seeley]

I've got 30+ cardinal tetra babies that for their early stages had no food in their tank at all. Just fed off the infusoria that must have come off the large amounts of Java moss in the tank. I didn't feed them at all until I saw them and they were clearly free-swimming then and had been for a while! Then they just got a really good powdered and granular feed I use.

I'm adding clumps of Java moss to the tops of lots of my cichlid spawning caves now so there's food right on the doorstep!

 

[STOKER]

Have done the same thing in breeding killifish , if they are delicate to breed instead of collecting eggs just leave a pair in a natural set up tank with plenty of floating plants a sponge filter and a few clumps of java moss with a good covering of mulm . There may not be a large number of fry but the ones that appear are usually good healthy ones.



Mike

 

[P.W.]

Yes, I agree with you Stoker. There´s only a few fry that can manage to survive in a tank (about 40 litres) with a natural amount of protozoans and infusorias. And soon enough they also will need newly hatched brineshrims.