Jewel Eggs Substrate

[Ryanlr88]

Ok, so my jewels laid eggs few days ago. Yesterday they were all gone so I figured they ate them. Today I noticed a lot of little wigglers, so clearly I just missed them yesterday. Anyway, I have gravel substrate and a lot of the wigglers have worked their way down into the gravel. Is this bad? Will they be able to come back up as they grow bigger? Should I do something? Just curious. Thanks. I've never had eggs before, hence my lack of knowledge.

 

[Andy Sager]

Ok, so my jewels laid eggs few days ago. Yesterday they were all gone so I figured they ate them. Today I noticed a lot of little wigglers, so clearly I just missed them yesterday. Anyway, I have gravel substrate and a lot of the wigglers have worked their way down into the gravel. Is this bad? Will they be able to come back up as they grow bigger? Should I do something? Just curious. Thanks. I've never had eggs before, hence my lack of knowledge.

At this point, you would be best to leave them alone. You should be using a sponge filter ONLY in the tank tho so that the fry, once free swimming, don't get sucked up into any other types of filters.
In the future, it's best to breed these fish in either a bare bottomed tank or in a tank with a finer sand type substrate so that the fry can't get "stuck" in the gravel.
If you are going to seperate the eggs from the parents, I prefer to hatch fish out in a bare tank so that I can siphon excess food and snail "poop" without too much trouble. If you want to try and siphon these fry out of their tank and put them into a bare tank, make sure you use 100% of the water they are in now. Once they have made the transition okay and have started to feed, you can start adding some new water ( about 10% of the existing volume every day or 2) until you have filled up the tank. There's no rush to fill this tank so the longer it takes, the better for the fry
Don't forget to get some Baby brine shrimp ready for hatching.

If you would like more direct help, feel free to PM me.

Hope this helps

 

[Hov]

Just to add if you have any other fish in the tank they will eat the fry almost as a sport . Jewel parents are the worst . Mine just had some fry in march and all my other fish were eating them all up to the point I had to remove a hand full to try to save. but don't remove all cause it may cause the parents to kill each other of other fish

 

[Ryanlr88]

Update and question. There are roughly two hundred or more left after a few attacks from my catfish, but my jewels are hanging tough. To make things easier I made a divided for my tank too help them out. Shortly after all the fry came out of their little hut with mom and they are swimming around. Very small still. This is the first time they are out. How long do you wait to feed them? They are so small I can barely see their yolk sacks. I was planning on trying to grow some bacteria or whatever with lettuce. We shall see if that works.

 

[Hov]

Crush up some flakes to where it's almost powder n put it in a bottle with some water ( use a old fish food bottle ) and just feed them that 3 to 4 times a day that should be enough and don for get to feed the mom or she might eat some of her babies

 

[Andy Sager]

Once free swimming

Update and question. There are roughly two hundred or more left after a few attacks from my catfish, but my jewels are hanging tough. To make things easier I made a divided for my tank too help them out. Shortly after all the fry came out of their little hut with mom and they are swimming around. Very small still. This is the first time they are out. How long do you wait to feed them? They are so small I can barely see their yolk sacks. I was planning on trying to grow some bacteria or whatever with lettuce. We shall see if that works.

Once the fry are free swimming, you should be feeding the infusoria so you are already behind if you don't have it already cultured. There are prepared foods like "First Bites" by Hikari but I have not used this food in the past so I don't know if the fry will eat it. Same for the crushed flakes. I always kept a culture of infusorias growing as I needed them for many varieties of fish. You'll also want to get a setup for hatching out brine shrimp ready so once the fish are big enough, you can get them growing faster. (I get hatches in 24 hours or less.)

Hope this helps...

 

[AquaAussie]

My jewel cichlids are on their second family of fry. The first batch there were hundreds and I left them in the big community tank for a few weeks. The numbers halved then halved again to about 50 then 30 then a dozen then 6 until finally three weeks after they were laid, the parents laid more eggs and the 6 fry disappeared possibly eaten. Or so I thought. I found one strong survivor up near the filter tubes to I fished him out and put him in a new tank.



I now have a bunch of new wigglers in my tank and I don't feed them anything special. They eat the algae and food that hits the bottom. There doesn't seem to be as many as last time but I will take half of them out and put them in the new tank with the other one when they are free swimming. Then I'll give them live hatched brine shrimp and crushed flakes.