How the ****?!?!

[uscamaro]

So I was doing the final testing for my 10-gallon to put my molly babies in there, and as I was about to put the sponge on the filter, I see a baby fish. After 5min of searching, I found 3 baby fish the size of brine shrimp. My question is:

How did they survive when the nitrites (yes, nitrItes) were above 5.0ppm just yesterday?!?!

By some miracle, when scooping up some gravel from my established tank to the 10-gallon to help with the cycling, I guess I got some eggs as well. But how did they survive? Also:

Did they just hatch recently?

Should I expect more to show up/hatch?

 

[Skyrmir]

If they were eggs, then nitrites wouldn't be as much of an issue as ph, which was probably fine. I doubt you're going to see any more appear unless there were a couple sets of eggs in the gravel. Depending on the species, a batch of eggs will 'hatch' within 24 hours of each other. (Fish eggs don't really hatch, they transform into fish) The really wild thing would be if they're Molly fry, since Mollies are live breeders. Occasionally they'll drop eggs, but they're very unlikely to develop.

The other thing is Nitrite kills slowly, I wouldn't be surprised if those fry end up having stunted growth or health problems later on.

 

[uscamaro]

Thanks for the positive comment Skyrmir. Anyway, I found 3 more babies, so I'm up to a total of 8 as of right now. I hope they all hatch soon, I want to transfer them.