What is your method catching the babies?

[Dirk]

Hi,

I have some tanks for breeding and a big tank for the babies. Whenever a couple get babies I leave them from their parents after 3-4 weeks. I do that with a tube and give the babies enough time for lets say 3-4 hours to get accustomed to the water in the baby tank (which is nearly the same). In most cases it works. But now, after I lost the whole raising of the papagei and wilhelmi I asked myself if I´m doing it in the right way.

Any proposals?

Ciao
Dirk

 

[Neil]

Did you loose both spawns in the same way? Did they die all at once and about the same amount of time after they were taken? Sounds like the method you are using should be sound, but I don't know what the specifics are.
Maybe you could remove the parents first grow the fry out a little more until they are easier to remove.

 

[aspen]

dirk, niel is suggesting the right way to do it imo. fry are very sensitive to slight water parm changes, whereas parents are not. breed in a tank that you can keep the fry for a while, like a 5 or 10 gal. then pull the parents, and grow the fry till they are too big for the tank. then move all of the water and fry to a growout tank, and fill slowly with aged water of the same parms. i use a 1/4 " syphon for w/c's on fry tanks, age water, and am very careful about temp etc.

rick

 

[Dirk]

thx.

Found my fault - I believe. The bucket was too low from the tank and so the pressure in the tube was very high. Damned.

Ciao
Dirk

 

[Neil]

Dirk,
It is still driving me crazy that you have wilhelmi (and fry to boot).
I agree that that is probably your problem! I try and use a tube that is just big enough to syphon the fry without damaging them, but small enough to not have a huge flow of water (regular airline tubing for fry a few days old and on up as they grow). I also try and moderate the speed of the flow by placing a specimen container or some other vessel just below the water level in the tank. That way the water can't build up much speed. I also do not point the end of the tube straight down into the bottom of the container, so that they can slam into the bottom. If you use a long enough tube, you can lay about 3 or 4 extra inches of it in the container so that it is parallel to the bottom or even resting upward against the side. They pop out and swim to the bottom. I hope this helps if you are going to attempt this again. By all means, save those wilhelmi!!!
Neil