Firemouth fry! What do now??

[bosk1]

[bad grammar intentional ] I have basically a single species tank of firemouths. I was going to go with a small school of 4 to 6, but the LFS I bought from only had 4, and the guy who was on duty could only manage to catch 3 of them, and halfway destroyed the tank just getting those, so I figured that would be a good start. I have had them for a couple of weeks. Got a call from my kids yesterday afternoon saying we no longer have 3 firemouths in the tank. Now, we have about 100+.


I have read that firemouths are excellent parents (although they may eat the first few broods due to inexperience), and mine seem to be doing very well, being very protective of the little guys. What I do not know and have not been able to find a consensus on is: What do I feed them? Anything else I need to know to take care of them? So far, I am increasing the feeding frequency for mom and dad, and best I can tell, it looks like they are grinding up the flakes in their mouths and spitting them out so the babies can eat the tiny fragments. But I'm not sure whether it is working or not. Any help would be appreciated!


Also, I have a HOB filter and was a bit worried about them getting sucked in. The intake is on the other side of the tank from where mom and dad are nesting, and the babies don't seem to be straying far from there, so I may be okay for now. Should I be worried about that?


Here are a few pics. You can see mom (smaller one) and dad (bigger one) with lots of tiny babies swimming around the flower pot area. Dad especially was getting VERY annoyed at me hanging out close to the tank snapping pics, and was flaring his gills and showing other aggressive behaviors toward me (see especially the last pic).

 

[DragonFish71]

They are very good parents, rarely do they eat their first spawn. The aggression is normal. My pairs are vicious lil buggers. You need to decide if you want to keep the fry or let nature take it's course. Once the fry start swimming off from the parents, they will be easy prey for the other firemouths.

The parents do eat and "mash" the food for the fry. Once they fry are larger, they will pick at the food themselves.

As for the HOB, again it comes down to if you want to raise the fry or not. If you do, then you can put a clean (rinsed in water only, no soaps) piece of pantyhose over the intake of the filter. That will keep them from being sucked up.

 

[bosk1]

Right now, the only other fish I have in the tank are a much smaller firemouth who hides on the other side of the tank because my pair always chase him around when they catch sight of him, and a small pleco. I suppose the smaller firemouth could try to eat the fry if he wanted to.

I would like to keep and raise them. I figure once they mature a bit and get to a size where others may want them, I can check with a few different LFS's and trade them for supplies, and maybe keep a few for myself.

 

[bosk1]

Your suggestion regarding the filter was a good one. I wasn't thinking it was too incredibly urgent just yet, since the parents are keeping the little school of babies far away from the filter. But when I got home last night, I noticed that some are starting to swim off by themselves at times, so I got right on that. I may have already lost a few, unfortunately. But at least this will help.