P. pulcher fry questions

[GalaxiePete]

I made some changes to my setups recently (most significantly some strategically placed caves from Evan Rosenthal) because of my desire to try and raise some of the fry from my dwarf cichlids. My kribs have been prolific breeders for a while but they never managed to keep the eggs in my community tank to turn into fry. Well they succeeded.

Their tank mates are a G. rhabdotus, 4 angels, 3 L104 Clown Plecos and a few platies. The tank is a 55 that is extensively planted - dividing it isn't an option and moving them to another of my tanks really doesn't fit. So that leaves me with what to do with the fry and their parents.

The fry are doing awesome. They are about a week old and they and their parents started getting rather brave today. They started bringing the fry from the very bottom of the tank up into the top of the tank. And along with that the parents got very aggressive. They were aggressive enough to keep the rest of the fish away until now but not obnoxious (fortunately I have a lot of water fern floating at the top for the rhab.) Well it is now time to do something.

I have a 5 gallon I could move them to, not cycled and in storage. I was thinking of siphoning off water from the 55 directly into the 5 (along with the fry) and doing water changes off the main tank. I have never moved such young fry not to mention put fish I wanted to keep in an uncycled tank.

Now the questions...
Are the fry old enough to do alright in this kind of move?
I am thinking of leaving the parents in the 55 for now do to the unpredictable behavior - especially in a stressful situation and new surroundings.
How often would you do water changes?
Do the water changes off the 55?
How much water would you change? How often?

 

[tjudy]

The fry are large enough to move, and a 5 gallon is a good starter tank. I would use a cycled sponge filter if you have it, if not I would use a box filter with established tank gravel. If neither of these is possible, do lots of 20-30% water changes adn feed sparingly for the first week or so.

Water changing with the tank water is fine, but not necessary. Krib fry are pretty tough. 20-30% a day for a week or so until the tank is more cycled. If you can put in a cycled filter, then you can change water les often... every thre days or so.

The biggest challange to separating fry from parents is feeding them. WHen fry are placed in tank by themselves, even a small tank like a five gallon, they tend to spread out. You can minimize this with making th tank very spartan and putting in a small piece of driftwood for them to gather around. They will also hover around a cycled sponge filter, as it will have microoranisms they will pick on. Feeding is an issue becuse you will have a tendancy at first to overfeed just to createa food density high enough for the fry to feed a lot... DO NOT FALL INTO THAT TRAP. Most of the food will go uneaten and rot. Use syringes or pipettes to place very small amounts of food right on the fry a few times a day. Err on the side of slow growth rather than overfeeding, or you will lose the entire batch.

The fix to the overfeeding problem is to use an incubator, which isolates teh fry in a very small container within a larger tank. My incubators are plastic food storage boxes with 4 cm long 1 cm tall gaps on all four sides in the middle (from top to bottom) on each side. Each gap has fine mesh nylon window screen siliconed to the outside. The dish is in a ring of styrofoam. A hole in the middle of the dish bottom has a very snug-fitting 3/8" lift tube through it. The lift tube goes to sponge filters in the tank below. Slow air flow drives water into the incubator. The water flows out the gaps. My incubators are about 20 cm x 15 cm x 10 cm deep. I place spawns of 25 - 50 krib fry per incubator until the fry are close to 1 cm long. It gets crowded in there, but the incubator allows me to concentrate food in a small space while still having the advantages of a larger tank of water. I have an 'incubator setup' that is made from an old 30 inch long scratched up acrylic tank that holds five of the incubators.

How many fry are there? I would not try to remove the entire spawn. Just take a dozen or so to raise up and let the parents continue to raise the others in a community tank. If you are looking to become a 'production breeder' then moving the pair to their own 20H is a good idea.

 

[GalaxiePete]

Thanks Ted,

I don't have a currently cycled sponge filter, but I started working on one. Just a good idea to keep one around I guess, I haven't raised any angels in a while so I pulled the couple I had set up a while ago. I did setup the box filter with the tank gravel before work, never used that one before. I'll be doing some moving tonight. I really like your incubator idea - have to make up some. To this point I have been using a pippet to release some golden eggs in the area of the fry as they graze on the organisms in the tank. They are definately into them. (I quit using BBS when I discovered Golden Pearls for my angels.)

There are between 100 and 150 fry, I don't have any more of an exact count - to many plants and too much movement. I will probably be moving as many as I can capture...if the parents would stick to half the tank it wouldn't be a big deal (bottom-top, left-right). At first it wasn't a big deal - only when something would approach them. But now they are treating the whole 55 as thier turf trying to drive off everyone else and really going after the angels (huge targets that don't do well trying to escape in the jungle of plants) and Geo in particular . It is to the point that even when everything is cowering at the far end of the tank they are going after them. The parents take turns between herding and terrorizing.

I don't have any great desire to become a production breeder (or room). I just enjoy fish and try to follow good breeding practices/ethics. The parents are unrelated and both excellent in appearance and health for example. Health and color free of defects...etc.

The only egg layers I ever raised fry of have been Angels and zebra danios. Angels I have always had in thier own tanks when I tried. I never moved the fry always the parents. And the zebras just happened all by themselves actually (lots of java moss). Live bearers are another story - lots of experience with them, but again I never moved very young fry and they were always in established tanks.

I have a couple different Apistos at the moment that are my more "challenging" effort. Just started working on thier water conditions though...

I'll be setting up a couple 10s to for the fry after Christmas so slow growth is just fine with me...

Pete