When do Fry become juveniles?

[WendiDell]

My fry now 29 days old and doing great. They are growing like weeds, so it got me wondering. When do I change from fry powder to grow food? And when are they no longer Fry, but juveniles?
They are all between a half and three quarters of an inch long.

 

[Hubert90]

My fry now 29 days old and doing great. They are growing like weeds, so it got me wondering. When do I change from fry powder to grow food? And when are they no longer Fry, but juveniles?
They are all between a half and three quarters of an inch long.

U can feed it grow food whenever it can fit in it's mouth! That's what i used to do with my goldfish fry.

 

[HUKIT]

Usually by 3-4 months the fish should reach 1.5-2" and thats when they are started on 1mm pellets, and are considered juvies.

 

[WendiDell]

Thank you, They will most likely be able to start the .5mm pellets in a week or two at their present rate of growth.

 

[T-man02]

i thought they were juvies when they started to color. just to show how uninformed I am.

 

[WendiDell]

i thought they were juvies when they started to color. just to show how uninformed I am.

That could depend on the fish, who knows. But these guys have had very rich colors from day one. And they've gone from being so small they each could hide behind a single piece of gravel, to 3/4" in just 30 days.

 

[Oblivion]

fwiw, ive got 8 astatotilapia latifasciata fry, and since the mum spat em' ive kept them in a breeders cage and feed them NLS with a bit of quality tropical flake.

i use a bowl and an ice cream scoop (or spoon) and gently apply pressure to the NLS 1mm pellets, crush em down to a powder. then i add a small amount of flake and crush it in the mix

only reason i add a pinch of flake is because its a bit softer when wet and easily eaten by the smallest fry,

its probably 90% NLS / 10% flake, and when i feed em i noticed that some of the NLS that didnt crush down quite as much still gets picked up and carried around by some of the larger fry anyway.

theyre probably 3wks old since being spat, maybe 1cm/ 1/2" ? and displaying the typical black bars

 

[T-man02]

what kind of fry are they

 

[WendiDell]

what kind of fry are they

Mom is a Kenyi and Papa is a Red Top Zebra. I know Hybrids are frowned upon, but they are quite beautiful. And I won't be selling them as anything but hybrid.
.
Here are a couple of photos of Mom & Pop of the 1 month old fry. Rainbow, the Mom is carrying in the second pic. so she looks a angry.
The top one is of Charlie (Papa) it shows his beautiful colors but not his face and the third pic. isn't very good but it shows his face.
Charlie is a one yr.old Red Top and he's 6" long he's a beauty. Rainbow is a 1 yr. old Kenyi and she's barely 3" long. But what she lacks in size she makes up for in personality.

We also have a pair of expectant Electric Yellow labs and a pair of expectant White Labs.

 

[T-man02]

From the fry pics they look stunning nice mom and pop too congrats.

 

[toddnbecka]

I have some tiny peacock fry, only released about a week ago, and they do fine picking at .5mm Grow and 1mm Cichlid pellets. I'm sure they also graze on whatever they find on the rocks in the tank as well, they only get fed once daily and never look too thin beforehand. I also have a few larger ones in another tank (All with the adults and other fish, I haven't been tearing the tanks down to net them out) that have grown to 2-3x the size of the newest ones on 1mm Cichlid pellets because I haven't been feeding that tank with Grow pellets.

 

[WendiDell]

From the fry pics they look stunning nice mom and pop too congrats.

Thank you, we think they are kind of beautiful too, but we are very biased. They are our first fry after 7 years of fish keeping.
The Papa of the fry is the largest Mbuna we have. He's pretty spectacular in person, photos just don't do him justice.

 

[T-man02]

Yea i bet

 

[WendiDell]

Yea i bet

We've been trying to get a few Red Top females for him to breed with, but they keep ending up being males and we have to take them back to the not so LFS.
I wish there was some way to tell the differance between males & females when they are young.

 

[T-man02]

Yea i do too

 

[WendiDell]

Yea i do too

it's a PITA, you just get to know the fishes personality and give them a name to fit. The whole family gets attached to it, and oh heck it's another male, back it must go to the FS. And we start over again.
It's one of the very few things I don't like about this hobby.

 

[T-man02]

Yea every one has a down fall

 

[WendiDell]

View attachment 41286

it's a PITA, you just get to know the fishes personality and give them a name to fit. The whole family gets attached to it, and oh heck it's another male, back it must go to the FS. And we start over again.
It's one of the very few things I don't like about this hobby.

Here are a couple of new pics. of the fry. They are eating NLS .5mm Grow Food, and they are growing.
What do you think?
The other little guys are Green Dragon BN Plecos.

 

[mdawg75]

Wendi That is great, and I am glad your asking these questions. I am pretty sure that I have a Orange Blotch Peacock female holding. I think the dad is a Hybrid but looked exactly like a Red top Zebra. I rehomed dad recently because he was Super aggressive to the whole tank.

 

[WendiDell]

Wendi That is great, and I am glad your asking these questions. I am pretty sure that I have a Orange Blotch Peacock female holding. I think the dad is a Hybrid but looked exactly like a Red top Zebra. I rehomed dad recently because he was Super aggressive to the whole tank.

Congrats on the soon to be Fry. They are kind of awesome to watch. We all find ourselves just staring at them quite often.
Charlie the father of these fry, our Red Top is the Alpha of the tank but he's rarely aggressive. He'll chase the others off but I've never seen him actually fight or have any battle scars.
When we first started the Mbuna Tank last year we had a male Red Zebra, Sonny. He was beautiful but a serial killer. We had to give him back to our not so LFS. He killed more than half of his tank mates. If he could catch em and kill them outright, he'd harass them till they'd die.
Sonny didn't care if they were male or female.
Charlie was one of the few to survive the Sonny massacre unscathed. Now he's huge compared to the rest of his tank mates, but pretty mello for a Mbuna.
Although right now no one is very happy since I put in a tank divider for the 2 new females that are holding. Here are a couple of photos of my female Electric Yellow Lab from 2 weeks ago and she still hasn't spit the fry out. I hope the photos will help you know for sure if your female is holding.