experience raising Daisy rice fish anyone?

[Fishfur]

I have a pair of these charming little fish, and they have been spawning all summer long. The female has new eggs at least every two or three days. They are an oddity, because the female sticks her eggs to her ventral fin for some hours, swimming around with them. At some point she either deposits them onto plants or they fall or get wiped off. Not sure just how that works. Eggs are crystal clear, tiny 'bubbles', for lack of a better description. They are utterly invisible once they're on the plants.

They are said to take 3 weeks to hatch. I moved the pair to a 5G tank, because the tank they were in had too many possible egg eaters in it, pygmy cories among them. So it's been nearly 3 weeks since I switched them over, and they carried on spawning as if nothing had changed, much to my relief.

Does anyone know what the babies are going to look like after they hatch ? I've never raised any egg layers before and don't really know what to expect. I have lots of almond and oak leaves on the bare bottom, to provide infusoria for the first few days, but the tank is pretty full of ambulia and moss, both for the female to put eggs on and hopefully to provide hiding places. Daisy rice fish are not known to be egg eaters, but they are known to prey on hatchlings.

If anyone can tell me what I should be looking for, I'd be grateful. I would very much like to raise some fry if at all possible.

 

[Autumnsky]

Congrats on having such a happy pair! I was looking for this info a while back and didn't ever get any responses. Our lfs has them some time.

I would imagine if you could get a start of vinegar eels or some other live food you success rate would also increase!

Do you have any pics of the fish, set up and or eggs?

 

[Fishfur]

I have to say, I was amazed when I first realized the female had eggs stuck to her. I'd only seen it in pictures and having only the one pair, I never imagined I'd get them spawning. So that was a nice surprise.

I have a few, rather bad, pics of the female with her eggs. She is seriously camera shy, and so is her boyfriend, and now with 5G to play in, they are not often in sight. I tend to call her Bubblebutt when she's carrying her latest eggs around. I will see if I can find the pics.

Haven't taken any pics of the tank yet, but I can do that. It's nothing fancy.. a 5G, AC mini filter with a cover on the intake, a big chunk of wood covered in a thick layer of tied on java moss, nearly as long as the tank is. Also some fissidens moss patches on mesh and free floating java and some other mosses, and a lot of leaves on the otherwise bare bottom, with a couple of bunches of ambulia and few hygro difformis. I took almond leaves that had stopped leaching tannins out of the betta tanks and plopped them in, along with a handful of oak leaves, in hopes it would provide enough infusorial food to get the fry past the first few days.

I used a few trimmed down weights [ I cut them lengthwise to make them thinner] to keep the stem plants from floating, or else tucked the stems through holes in the driftwood or tucked them underneath the wood. I also have some frogbit offsets & Asian floating water fern, but the frogbits are too small & the fern is just starting to grow its floating leaves, so it will be awhile before either of these plants would have dense enough roots that are long enough to maybe appeal to this female for egg deposition or to feed or hide fry.

This pair seems to spend most of their time near the bottom anyway. The only info I could find suggested dense fine leaved plantings, like mosses, so that's what I put in to start with.

I've been looking for vinegar eels, but so far, no luck locally. I have micro worms, hopefully they'll suffice, if I can get any fry past the first days.