Hello, I have a Sunburst wag that I believe to be pregnant. I think she is close to giving birth and I have a 5 gallon tank I can move her to by herself. I have a breeding cage also. My question is if she is pregnant and close. If so how close and what is the best way to set up this tank I have plants rock new aquatech 5-15 power filter. If I take five gallons from my 29 will it be like a instant cycle. Pics provided of empty tank and platy. Please help any Randall advice is greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Shon
Hey Shon. You have a few options. You could move her to the 5g. You won't instantly cycle a tank with water, if fact there is very little BB in water. It is all on the hard surfaces, rocks, glass, decor, substrate, filter/media. If you could take some media from the 29 and put it in the new filter, some pads or rings. Even if you have gravel in your 29, if you put some in a mesh bag, you could put this in the new filter close or beside the new media to transfer some BB to the new media.
You could leave her where she is and use the trap. When you say breeding cage, is there a separate compartment for the fry at the bottom. If so, you could use this. This is probably what i would go with first. You could still set-up the 5 and when the fry are a week or so, put them into it. You'd still have to transfer some BB but because the fry produce so little the amount needed for now would be small. The BB will grow as the fry grow and produce more bio-load(waste). This is what i done very recently for my guppy fry. I use a 15g tank and have only lost 1 fry out of 50+ in the last 3 weeks.
A good idea is to get a cory cat for the fry tank. I have one in mine and he/she looks after any food the fry don't eat.
If you going to move the mother to the 5g before birth, be very careful. She could get very stressed and abort the birth. Make sure you test the new tank regularly, the fry will be super sensitive to any changes in the water, temp, quality....
She looks very pregnant by the way!!!. It's very hard to guess the time left by pics but she's not square yet so i would say at least a week..The signs i look for apart from squaring or boxed is, hanging around the bottom or heater/filter not moving, not really eating(she might take a flake and spit it out), her anal passage becomes pointed, like bulging out....
I hope this helps..... Ian
