I have FRY!

[jtd1216]

Well, my n. brichardi do! The other day I was saying to my g/f, "i've had these guys for 3 months and no breeding". After everyone has told me about how these particularly breed "like rabbits". This morning I woke up and looked into the tank and i saw all this "white stuff" floating around, and i though "great, something's wrong". I looked closer and that white stuff was moving! FRY!!! I was sooo happy, as I am a first time cichlid keeper.

There are tons of caves in the tank, do I need to do anything else to ensure their safety? There are 4 brichardi (not including the fry!) in the 29gal. Also, I was trying to search on what to feed them and i could not find much. Any suggestions on what to feed them and when???

I'm pretty excited about this!

 

[Menagerie]

The best would be freshly hatched brine shrimp; although, when my brichardi were breeding, I had trouble keeping a fresh stock of baby brine shrimp. You can get fry bites for the fry at any LFS, or use finely crushed flake.

 

[Sicklid]

I always find that my fry do well in a tank that is REALLY established and has tons of areas for growing microscopic food for the fry in and among algae or on sponge filters... But I am not trying to sell the fry, so there tends to be some die off of the spawn (sometimes 70 percent die) since I don't give them much else to live on and they get eaten by other adults or their own parents after the parents spawn again (which they will). The one time I tried daphnia through a feeding tube, they did pretty good tho. Depends what you want to do with the fry. If you wanna sell them, you will most likely need a seperate grow out tank for the majority of them to reach a sellable size. Have fun trying to catch the little buggers with a turkey baster!!!