Danio fry!! By the hundreds.

[emilygupps]

First attemp:

We watched a YouTube video and used craft mesh to make an egg trap and put it into our 10g ISO tank with a few fake green plants. Fish: 2 purple passion, and 2 long fin zebra. We were hoping we could cross the purples with the zebras. No one bred. We are positive there were two and two in the tank, and we used mosquito larva to stimulate after adding slightly cooler water. Absolute no one did the happy dance. Every one was waaaaaaaay stressed.

Second attempt: we tried to recreated the circumstances of our first accidental spawn. Added large smooth gravel two plastic green plants. Fish: the original female long fin gold (we call her big momma for obvious reasons), and a blue long fin female ( I was worried big momma might be dried up with eggs we rarely see her spawn any more), and a long fin zebra male solely because he was the only male we could catch before the others took cover. We used frozen brine shrimp since that's what triggered it last time. Sure enough they got busy right away! We took them out the following evening.



We saw these on the third night.

We've added some floating plants.

How long can I keep 100s of fry in this ten gallon? Should we start up a 55 for them to grow out in? They're 4 days old now and mostly all free swimming.

Current filtration: hob tetra pf 10 and two sponge filters.


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[emilygupps]

This will be my journal for this batch.


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[Andy Sager]

I suggest you stop the HOB and just use the sponge filters. As for how long in the 10? as long as you have good clean water ( do small frequent water changes) you can, and I would, keep them in there until they look like little danios and are feeding regularly on prepared foods. Then, you can switch them to the bigger tank to grow out in.

 

[MICEY]

whart are you feeding them , my go to fry food is micro worms , they can live in the fresh water for 24 hours and there is always baby worms for the smallest fry and all tetra size fish love to eat them even the adults

 

[emilygupps]

I suggest you stop the HOB and just use the sponge filters. As for how long in the 10? as long as you have good clean water ( do small frequent water changes) you can, and I would, keep them in there until they look like little danios and are feeding regularly on prepared foods. Then, you can switch them to the bigger tank to grow out in.

Thanks for the advice we turned the hob filter off just now. And as for keeping them there cool deal. There are so many it looks like the water is moving. Last batch we only had about six. This a huge thing and a small mom and pop lfs said they would sell them when they're big enough. So... That takes care of about 50 of them.

whart are you feeding them , my go to fry food is micro worms , they can live in the fresh water for 24 hours and there is always baby worms for the smallest fry and all tetra size fish love to eat them even the adults

We have a few micro worm cultures and brine shrimp hatching but the worms are almost as big as the babies. We tried green water and algae covered rocks. And a bit of powdered first bites. It looks like they're eating the algae. It's hard to say if they're eating the powder though. We can try the worms tomorrow though.



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[Andy Sager]

Thanks for the advice we turned the hob filter off just now. And as for keeping them there cool deal. There are so many it looks like the water is moving. Last batch we only had about six. This a huge thing and a small mom and pop lfs said they would sell them when they're big enough. So... That takes care of about 50 of them.


We have a few micro worm cultures and brine shrimp hatching but the worms are almost as big as the babies. We tried green water and algae covered rocks. And a bit of powdered first bites. It looks like they're eating the algae. It's hard to say if they're eating the powder though. We can try the worms tomorrow though.

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The best food for danio fry is infusoria which you'll get from green water and the live plants/ algaes. Keep in mind that "first bites" is for livebearer fry and if you read the small ( & I mean small ) print, it even says so on the package. It's confusing because it has pics of other fish fry but it's not for a first food for egglayers. I'd keep using the green water and plants and in about a week, you can start adding in some microworms to see if they are eating them. If they are, you can switch to baby brine shrimp once they have grown up a bit more and can handle them. Powdered food, if not eaten, will contaminate the fry water so
use it cautiously.

Good luck with the fry

 

[emilygupps]

Micro worms were a no go. And you're right. After a closer read, I see that it says the first bites are for live bearers. Back to the green water.

This morning it looks like a lot less babies but I can't see any dead ones. Maybe they're stuck to the sponge filter.

I'm going to attempt a water change instead of our usual python I will pull the water out with a cup and inspect for fry and as I find them I will use a spoon to scoop them out and back into the tank and dump the dirty water into a bucket to be inspected again before the final water of the garden. I did this with our first batch of six. When they lived in a bucket. Six was a lot easier to just catch and dump so, we will see how this works.


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[Andy Sager]

Micro worms were a no go. And you're right. After a closer read, I see that it says the first bites are for live bearers. Back to the green water.

This morning it looks like a lot less babies but I can't see any dead ones. Maybe they're stuck to the sponge filter.

I'm going to attempt a water change instead of our usual python I will pull the water out with a cup and inspect for fry and as I find them I will use a spoon to scoop them out and back into the tank and dump the dirty water into a bucket to be inspected again before the final water of the garden. I did this with our first batch of six. When they lived in a bucket. Six was a lot easier to just catch and dump so, we will see how this works.


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It may be that the HOB got them before you turned it off. This is why you only use air driven sponge filters with fry. No chance of that happening. lesson learned
I was appalled when I read the package of first bites. It's one of the biggest cases of misrepresentation I have ever seen in the hobby. Angelfish on the package? Last I heard, they aren't livebearers so they have no business being on the package. I even see that places like Petco describe the product as for livebearers and egglayers while the package does not say that ( at least the package I read didn;t say that it was for egglayers.) So forget the first bites. I've raised plenty of Danios without it.

Good idea with the cup over the siphon. Watch what you throw out. There are always babies somewhere.

 

[emilygupps]

It seems thAt all the fish have died except maybe six. But those seem pretty pathetic.

The amonia wasn't getting high, at least not when we tested but our nitrates were 80. I believe the massive die off was to blame for the spike of nitrate. We have been doing 25% pwc every 3 day with 1ml of prime. We are feeding cultured green water

We need a new plan. Last time we got babies with out trying and dumped them in to an empty kitty litter container at first there was no filter, no heater, and no plants. I changed %100 of the water every day by painstakingly catching each one. We weren't using prime yet so I conditioned the water with plane old API water conditioner.

This time, we did everything "right" and most of them have died. Maybe we can take some out and try the bucket idea again and raise the rest in the 10g and see which is more successful.


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[Andy Sager]

You may have had too many fry for that sized tank. Overfeeding is also a possibility. In order to have nitrates, there needed to be ammonia in the tank at some point so your sponge filter may have been working overtime and converting all that into the nitrates you saw.
Smaller water changes would be better daily than every 3 days. You may need to do them that way since your nitrates got that high doing it every 3 days. I would also try to keep some live bunching plants in with the fry as a food source so that you don;t need to add as much green water. Green water will have a lot of organisms in it so if they start dying off without being eaten, you will get polluted water.
Also, by this time, the fry should have been large enough to be eating baby brine shrimp. Were they? If not, they may have starved out because of not enough infusoriads in the green water. Maybe next time use hard boiled egg yolk as well as green water / live plants to get them more food. Which brings me to this question: How often were you feeding the fry?
These are just suggestions. It's always good to experiment to see what method yields better results.

 

[emilygupps]

You may have had too many fry for that sized tank. Overfeeding is also a possibility. In order to have nitrates, there needed to be ammonia in the tank at some point so your sponge filter may have been working overtime and converting all that into the nitrates you saw.
Smaller water changes would be better daily than every 3 days. You may need to do them that way since your nitrates got that high doing it every 3 days. I would also try to keep some live bunching plants in with the fry as a food source so that you don;t need to add as much green water. Green water will have a lot of organisms in it so if they start dying off without being eaten, you will get polluted water.
Also, by this time, the fry should have been large enough to be eating baby brine shrimp. Were they? If not, they may have starved out because of not enough infusoriads in the green water. Maybe next time use hard boiled egg yolk as well as green water / live plants to get them more food. Which brings me to this question: How often were you feeding the fry?
These are just suggestions. It's always good to experiment to see what method yields better results.

%10 daily you think?

We fed the fry every day from the green water we cultured in the back yard. No, we tried some brine shrimp Friday but the shrimp were still bigger than the baby's head.

I agree. Too many babies. They hardly had room in there. Next time do I "cull" some? If so how? I thought of feeding then to bigger fish but I'm not sure of that will cause the angels to learn to hunt, and maybe encourage the angels to eat their own fry later on?

We had six stems of anarchis floating in the tank and some duck weed. Do you think Anubis would be appropriate for a fry tank?

We did dose the tank once with co2 for the floating plants. Would that kill the babies?


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[Andy Sager]

%10 daily you think?

We fed the fry every day from the green water we cultured in the back yard. No, we tried some brine shrimp Friday but the shrimp were still bigger than the baby's head.

I agree. Too many babies. They hardly had room in there. Next time do I "cull" some? If so how? I thought of feeding then to bigger fish but I'm not sure of that will cause the angels to learn to hunt, and maybe encourage the angels to eat their own fry later on?

We had six stems of anarchis floating in the tank and some duck weed. Do you think Anubis would be appropriate for a fry tank?

We did dose the tank once with co2 for the floating plants. Would that kill the babies?


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I think your problem was 2 fold: There is no need to dose CO2 when you are raising fry. You don;t want the plants to live. You want them to start disintegrating which will lead to more infusoria for the fry to eat. Bunch plants are more like Anacharis, hornwort or any other finer leafed plants even Java fern that has matured in the tank. Anubis and duck weed have very little to offer the fish in the way of food. Better for when they are older and need hiding places.
To be honest, 6 sticks of Anacharis is not very much, I would have used 6 bunches of it for that many fry.
As for culling, you may need to consider using a larger tank than a 10 gal if they are producing that many fry. Maybe a 20 long? Again tho, if there are that many, you will need to move them into larger quarters sooner rather than later. If you don;t have that available, just use a siphon hose and siphon some of the fry out to "thin the herd." As to what to do with them, it's your call. Truthfully, it can start the Angels on a bad course of fry eating but if you artificially hatch your Angel eggs, it's not really a concern. Your other fish will like some fresh fish fry as well. They are a good protein source after all.

So for the next batch, more room, more food and NO CO2.

That's my suggestion

 

[emilygupps]

Starting over. Moved the three surviving babies to the kitty litter container with the smaller sponge filter and all the live floating plants.

Changed the water and vacuumed gravel. Decided to start what we thought would be a long process of catching the fish we wanted.

This time we only put one male and one female, long fin blue in to the breeding tank. Only took 15 minutes to catch the two I wanted. We also caught five others but this method works great! We added the two to the breeding tank and fed them brine shrimp with the storm light setting on.

See you all in a day to two hopefully with some new eggs.


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[Kittykat364]

Hope everything goes well!! I'm following this experiment to see which method will be best when I breed my danios.


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[Andy Sager]

You seem to have the breeding part down. That's half the battle. The other half, getting those little fry to be adults. Keep at it

 

[emilygupps]

Okay! Update time.

I only have 1 lone baby left from the first batch of fry (named it nemo), and we put that baby in with our galaxy rasboras in the 20 long. They could totally eat that baby but they seem uninterested.

We did lose a fair amount of babies from the second batch. But the 30-40 we have left are doing great. I think the first batch starved to death :-/ this time we made a fresh batch of green water from spinach leaves and started a danfnia, rotifer, and brine shrimp culture. So we have lots to feed.

I tested the water for the first time before we planned to change the water and it tested as:
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5

Since the water was so great I decided to leave well enough alone and test again next week, Tuesday, and maybe change it then of the nitrates get any higher. I am hesitant to mess with anything since they seem to be doing so well. But the gravel really needs to be cleaned. This is why I fish my danios would spawn in a bare bottom tank.

Also it looks like all the babies from the second batch are going to be blue (both parents are blue) and the one baby left over seems blue too. The fish that were in the spawning tank were gold female, blue female and zebra male.

That's a picture of our fry tank. I have more anarchis growing in the bigger tanks to add to it for next time. The top is completely covered with duck weed.


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[MICEY]

I would try micro worms also , there easier than brine shrimp and stay alive in the tank 24 hours

 

[emilygupps]

We also have micro worm. The older baby, nemo eats them, but the younger ones are still too small. I really like the Rotifers because they reproduce in the tank. I hate how stinky the micro worms are. Something about rotting oatmeal...


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[emilygupps]

I would try micro worms also , there easier than brine shrimp and stay alive in the tank 24 hours

Babies are LOVING the microworms.

Wanted to show my water chemistry log for this tank. It's weird that it's so unstable. This week I tested twice and there was absolutely nothing in the water.

Ammonia =A
Nitrite = ni
Nitrate = na

I changed %20 last Tuesday and %15 mostly vacuumed the gravel today. The tank is completely covered with duck weed and very full of anarchis. Do you think the plants are using the nitrate faster than the babies are producing waste? Should I start changing every other week?

There are between 10-30 babies in there right now.


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[Kittykat364]

It's GOOD if the plants are using up the waste faster than it's produced, it means that you're not overstocked in relation to the amount of plants you have. If the nitrates are 0, then I don't see the need to do a wc unless you want to replace the nutrients in the water (for the plants).


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