Dissapearing Cac eggs and wigglers

[Corie Dora]

I have a breeding pair of A.cacatuoides in a ten gallon tank. The tank is thickly planted with potted plants and java moss, has a fine sand substrate, and is filtered by a box filter. The water is primarily RO water, though I'm unsure of the exact parameters. There are 5 small black neons as dithers. I have experimented with temperature, as I thought that was why I wasn't getting fry, and have tried temps between 75 and 80.

The pair have spawned at least ten times now, and I've yet to see any fry. The eggs would just slowly dissapear, or dissapear alltogether after 3 days. the female always remained yellow for almost a week afterwards, which leads me to think that maybe there was wigglers. I saw wigglers once, and also noticed that the female had been digging in the cave at the same time. I never saw her dig before, and haven't seen it since. I'd really like to get some fry from these fish, and am becoming discouraged, as I thought I was doing everything 'right'.

Any ideas?

 

[Discus Man]

A guelph apisto fan? If you're in Aggie town shouldn't you be keeping aggies?

It takes three days for the eggs to hatch. Any egg that turns white is dead or unfertilized and would be eaten. After three days the eggs should hatch. If they don't hey were unfertilized and will be eaten. On the third day, if you shine a light on the eggs you will see twitching inside of a live egg.
If no twitching then I would say either your male or female is a dud (sterile).

If you read my agassizi post you will see that when I disturbed my 10g tank the female ate a batch of wrigglers. I guess she got spooked. This time round she moves the wrigglers at least twice a day from cave to cave to protect them from the male on the other side of the divider...
these nutty, overprotective moms might simply eat the eggs/ wrigglers thinking the male or tetras are going to eat them...

 

[Jason]

It takes 10 days for little cacs to start swimming. After they hatch but before they can swim the female may move them from one spot to another sometimes more often than twice a day. If your female is bright yellow try to check where she spends all her time and chances are she is guarding her babies there.

 

[Corie Dora]

hmmm. Well I definately saw wigglers the one time, so my fishes 'parts' must be in order. They were on the bottom though, not stuck to the sides of the cave, like I had expected them to be. I've never noticed any eggs fungussing. They're always a peachy colour. She has a really large clutch right now actually. This time she dug out all the sand from the bottom of the cave. Should I try removing the male, or the tetras? I also have a 35g tank which is fully planted, but I've yet to add any fish. Does anyone think they'd do better in there? There's a lot of planaria and other zooplankton type critters in there, so I had wanted to get some fry out of the pair before adding them to that tank, in case the zooplankton ate the fry.

hehe on the aggies-(UG 02A here :lol: )....I'd actually really like to try them too, but I'll have to master the cacs first.

 

[Corie Dora]

Its been 48 hours and the eggs are almost all gone again.

I'm starting to think about artificially hatching the next batch. I don't want to perpetuate 'bad breeding' genes though.

 

[aspen]

what are your water parms? i have done well with cacs in gh 4, kh2. a little softer might be even better. make sure that you leave a night light on. a 40 watt lamp on the other side of the room is plenty.

what other fish have you got i there? try pulling a couple of the tetras. even 1 other fish is enough for the pair to develop good guarding skills. do you have any snails in there or any other egg or fry predators?

rick
(toronto)

 

[Corie Dora]

SNAILS?????? omg. 8O I didn't know snails were egg predators. I've got tons of snails. In fact, I love snails, I have them in all my tanks. I guess I'll be getting rid of the snails, eh.

I've been leaving either the tank light on, or a light in the room. I don't actually know the water parms either , I don't have a tds meter, and I don't put a lot of faith into the chemical tests. Last time I checked my RO system (with someone else's tds meter) it was making water that wasn't perfect, but was of amazon quality....I'm able to grow delicate plants that are intolerant of hard water in it....but I am using all RO. Maybe I'll dig the chem. test kits out tomorrow and see what they say.

 

[aspen]

not all species of snails eat eggs- some do. cories will swoop in and clean out a spawn of eggs though. tetras, if they are fast enough will all eat eggs and fry, but this depends on the species of apisto and the tetra, as to whether they can defend the eggs from them. the only fish i've found that won't actually eat eggs or fry are some small plecos, (royal plecos will though- even discus can't defend their eggs from even a small royal pleco) and oto's. planaria will clean you out too, and the fish don't seem to even try and kill them, ime. breeders use bb tanks to ensure the saving of as many eggs and fry as possible. it is the only way that you have any degree of control- or even see what the heck is going on most of the time.

you need to have some idea of what your hardness is. even simply a gh, kh and ph kit will tell you if it is possible to get eggs hatching in your water.

rick