Question: one month old fry

[WendyKL]

Hello,

I currently have ten apisto fry (one month old). They are in a 15 gallon planted tank by themselves - eating baby brine shrimp, Hikari First Bites, ground up Sustainable Aquatics Hatchery Diet and a couple of the bigger fry are starting to eat my smallest black worms.
I have a few questions: how long can these fry stay together (do not want any in breeding).
If I do set up separate male and female tanks for these fry - what size requirements do I need? I currently have this tank that they are currently in, a ten gallon community tank (could acommodate one more fish) , and another 20 gallon community tank (which could acommodate a couple more fish). I can set up another 10 gallon, but that's about it. I know another option is to bring them to LFS but I'm not super excited about doing this.
Thanks in advance.

 

[gerald]

Remove the males one by one as they start to show male color and fin development. Placed in a male-only tank out of view of the females, they (hopefully) wont fight too much and you can probably raise 5 or 8 males together in a 10 gal tank. I would chop the blackworms on a cutting board before feeding to Apistos smaller than 2". Small fish can sometimes "choke" and die after swallowing whole blackworms.

 

[WendyKL]

One thing that I was thinking - since I have two community tanks up and running (with other tropical fish) - would it work to move some of those other fish around - once my apisto fry are big enough - so that I have then spread out the apistos between three community tanks - depending on whether or not I have more males than females - say -have two of the tanks with male apistos and one of the tanks with the females - does this make sense? BTW - I have zero interest in breeding again (for now anyway) way way way too much work - between water changes, growing bbs, frequent feedings - these fish should cost $100/ a piece - if you figured in the man hours spent on making this all happen - all this being said - I'm totally in love with my babies - I can see how you can get hooked!

 

[Karin]

I couldn't agree more...