Ben C.
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Posts posted by Ben C.
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Pictures didn't go through so here's some, in their container and then full tank shot:
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Well, that's a wrap for this journal! First group moved in to their permanent home today with their parents! Second group will move in a month from now.. While I wasn't as successful as I would have hoped to be, I now have 11 danios all together to be one happy family, successfully recovering from the initial bad shipment of 10 (disease reduced it to 4) that I got of them. It was super rewarding watching them go into the aquarium and immediately join up with their parents, see them check out the other fish, and settle right in. Guess that's what it's all about! Thanks everyone that followed this and helped out!
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6 weeks today. First batch look like mini full grown fish now - spunky lil guys. About the size of a chili rasbora. Will probably give them another week or two and move them over to their permanent home!
Second batch is stable and eating baby brine. Not much really to report anymore, will continue to show their growth but I won't deliberately spawn any new ones. Thinking to set up shrimp or endlers next, something easier...
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@Torrey a lot of work but sounds totally worth it! Even smaller danios means bigger schools of em!
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On 7/30/2021 at 6:23 PM, Torrey said:
Apparently, zebra danios are really close to humans in a lot of genetics?
So close that they are used in research, including research on anxiety (freeze/faint, fight, flee etc)
When I went to catch the fry in the net, 25% of one female's line fainted. If there was a local research team, I would ask if they wanted the line.
It's a double recessive gene, like the nacre gene for color. It means two things: it showed up because I crossed grandsons back to the original female to double check any possible genetic problems (which showed up only in the fainting gene), and the offspring have a cellular memory of nets being traumatic from their grandmother being caught.
Which is actually pretty cool, from a research perspective.
Not so cool to take fish that go belly up when they get scared to the pet store though 😅
This is why responsible line breeding requires so many tanks to separate out fish, and so many tables / spreadsheets to keep all the breedings straight.
It doesn't *have* to be done that way.
It's much easier to identify potential problems if it is done that way.
That's actually really cool, while unfortunate for the fish, very cool. Would've never known haha
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On 7/30/2021 at 12:36 AM, Torrey said:
I just took ~ 10-15 fry to my lfs for more plants.
I discovered one of my females carried the fainting gene, so her fry **did not** go to the LFS.
Since I am working on a dwarf line, I kept the smallest fish to breed for my 6th generation. I need to bring in a fresh, longfin melanuestic (sp?) so I don't end up with an inbred line.
Shockingly for an unplanned spawn, 90% of the fry made it.
New lfs manager was thrilled with quality, size and coloring.
Since I am going for a smaller version (my breeding adults are now 3/4 of the length of typical zebra danios, and the ones I kept are half that size) with flashier coloration, even my "not quite there yet" fish turned out pretty nicely.
My trick to improve fry survival is catch wrigglers with a nasal syringe, or use a bit of airline tubing on an infant medicine syringe.
Suck babies up, and place in the specimen holder with the nano foam filter in it.
Use a Ziss air diffuser, and use a valve to control air flow. For the first two weeks, turn down the air flow when you feed. Turn it up sufficiently to create a mild flow, but not enough to throw the babies about.
In quarantine last year, I made fry specific sponge filters with airline straight into a prefilter fine foam. Requires very little airflow to do the job for up to 10 fry, and if well seasoned first, provides enough bio film to feed the fry for almost 3 days.
Use a medicine dropper to feed the fry, and only give one drop at a time. Anything not finished in 5 minutes, use a nasal syringe to remove.
Discharge the nasal syringe into a betta cup, and check for fry before dumping😅
you really have this down to a science! I gotta get me some more equipment haha. That's really cool about the dwarf line - sounds really interesting! What is the fainting gene though?
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5 weeks old today, got all their fins and they're beginning to fill in. Beginnings of more active behavior!
A little disappointed though as the second batch failed - not sure what went wrong, but the fact that they were so spread out I believe was the issue. It was hard to target feed them, leading to more wasted energy swimming around, and me overfeeding. Just carelessness I suppose. I've caught out the final 3 remaining and moved them into the Co-Op's specimen container until they get bigger.
Fortunately, if all of these fry make it, I will have a nice sized school with the adults that spawned them added together, which was my ultimate goal. These are really not a "for profit" fish - the labor of all the feedings, etc. does not add up for a fish that regularly sells for $1.99 or so...
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One additional outcome of all of this is I've really got my baby brine shrimp "recipe" worked out - I was using my tap water or aquarium water, and being Texas water, it's just so incredibly hard. I realized that adding reef salt, with all the additional minerals was causing a ton of dead shrimp before I could even collect them. Now that I'm using RO water (my brother does saltwater tanks so I just grab some 5 gallon buckets from him) and adding the reef salt, plus a dash of Prime both when I set it up and at the 24 hour mark, and it's night and day. Great hatch rate, and little waste. Experimenting with adding garlic oil, vitachem, spirulina powder, etc. for fun, but it's nice to know I can use less eggs to get more shrimp now!
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First batch is now 4 weeks old - their eyes are the most radiant baby blue, along with a matching stripe right down their body. Hard to believe this is what they look like as youngsters - I'm going to miss it! Still impossible to photograph with my phone, but alas.
Second batch is about 10 days old now, feeding micro foods 4 times a day. Hard to monitor in such a large space, but if I walk away with more than the first, I will be happy.
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I teach in my home studio, and I have an aquarium in both rooms I teach out of. So if the day isn't going so well...I just gaze wistfully...feeding time though is probably the most fun. Once you get a confident group of fish, they all come running! er....swimming.
edit: forgot to add my fry tanks are on the ground of a spare closet. So I spend also a lot of time just laying on the ground and watching...the cats have learned that they also can come lay on top of me and watch too. It's very hard to stay awake after that.
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Are those crypts? Pretty normal to have die back on them at first, even with submerged growth just going from tank to tank even. Most of the crypts I buy will melt back, and then I will see distinctly different (submerged growth) leaves growing slowly after that. But it's a slow process with them. As long as they still have strong roots, they should be fine. Are these from the Co-Op? If so, I believe they are snail free from the get go, but someone is welcome to correct me!
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They grow up so fast...
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On 7/14/2021 at 10:04 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:
The smaller wild mouthbrooder bettas were fun ; might be worth a look if you need a different kind of betta if /when you try betta again
On 7/14/2021 at 10:45 PM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:@Ben C. or maybe try female next time. I actually picked a female this time not so much for the aggression thing (since they can be too) but more for their shorter fins. My theory is they'll be less prone to the fin problems their male counterparts tend to get from being all puffy chested all the time. So far so good 😉
Definitely will try either a wild type or female someday. Thanks for the suggestions!
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On 7/14/2021 at 9:47 PM, Guppysnail said:
If you are keeping them that long I was adding prime (so they didn’t die of ammonia poison) and vitachem after 24 hours HOPING to vitamin load them a bit and spirulina powder. Not sure if it does help but I was in the same boat and hatching too many for all my tanks to consume before I just cut the recipe back to a ROUND TEASPOON. Im new to bbs too only a few weeks so my efforts may have been ridiculous but hey worth a shot.
I didn't think of the vitachem, that's a great idea! Definitely going to try adding the prime too. Thanks!
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Greatest Surprise: Doing less sometimes means more. I was messing with my aquariums too much - doing 30% water changes, religiously cleaning the everything, testing all parameters, trying different co2 things, yada yada yada....once I just...stopped, things took off. Plants are doing amazing, fish are more confident and happy now, and plot twist, it really doesn't get that dirty once it's settled.
Greatest Disappointment: Bettas. Got in the hobby to keep some, and they just ended up a mess. Maybe I just got super unlucky. Too aggressive, all couldn't be kept with any other fish, and one couldn't even be kept with snails as he flared at them so much that he ripped his fins constantly. Maybe someday I will try them again, because I loved having the "wet pet", but they just caused so much frustration.
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On 7/14/2021 at 4:31 PM, tolstoy21 said:
I don’t think you can feed it too often, but you can definitely feed too much at a time.
I feed it almost exclusively to small fry that will take it, until they are large enough and willing to eat crushed flake and nano pellets. Then I feed it along with that food.
If I don’t have a ton of fry, I’ll hatch 1/4 to 1/2 tsp a day. Anything left over I’ll feed to adults in other tanks.
Thanks for the response! Yeah I'm definitely going to tone down how much I'm hatching - with how much was coming out, it was enough to feed my two tanks full of adults 3 hefty feedings, at 24 hours, 36 hours, and 48 hours after hatching...I've been mixing hikari first bites between brine feedings, and will hopefully move onto the Co-Ops fry food soon.
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Question to the hive mind of those that may be following - as these new babies are hatching out, I'm worried about flow being too high. I'm currently using an aqueon air pump 10 with a sponge filter in a 10 gallon aquarium. As they are taking their first little swims, they're being blown around, which worries me - I also worry about them ending up too spread apart to make feeding simple. I've turned off the pump for now, but will that negatively affect the water or their development? For reference, it's a bare bottom, been seasoned for 8-9 months now, with the water surface covered in a variety of floating plants, plus with hornwort for nitrate control. Thanks y'all!
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On 7/14/2021 at 6:29 AM, BrineShrimp said:
Has a seller of brine shrimp and many other diploid The Artemia franciscana (brine shrimp) are a pretty decent source of nutrition but very good for fry and some other smallish fish, I noticed with clown fish it really does help with starting the process of breeding. As a matter of fact, if you take the same wet weight of brine shrimp and compare it to the same wet weight of most flake foods, the protein levels are comparable. The problem is that people compare the dry weight statistics of flake or frozen foods, to the wet weight statistics of live brine shrimp. Live brine shrimp, however, can be gut loaded to make that food, weight for weight, higher in nutrition than most other food we use in our tanks. In addition, your fish will enjoy chasing down their prey, getting much needed exercise in the process. The most comprehensive writing on brine shrimp has been done for the United Nations with regards to aquaculture, an industry that makes extensive use of brine shrimp as a major part of the mariculture industry raising fish/shrimp etc for the food industry of the world.
Thank you for a very detailed response with a very apt username! Thanks for clarifying. I have heard of gut loading, such as with spirulina, for herbivores, and may have to check it out. My brother keeps a marine tank with a couple young tangs that may appreciate that anyway...
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On 7/14/2021 at 3:35 AM, Guppysnail said:
I cut the recipe to 1 tsp of eqqs in the ziss. It works great. I use a hobby Artemia sieve from Amazon to strain and rinse so it’s not affecting the water so much. I use the extra as a small treat for all my other tanks each day and still feed regular diet just a bit less. For the fry I use bbs as every other feeding throughout the day. It seems to be working well but I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks.
just a rounded teaspoon creates a lot of bbs.
I'm realizing the sheer amount of BBS it makes now...I have the sieve too! I got it because I really don't do any water changes - and figured the salt would build up sometime, even if years from now...makes it that much easier. Plus my water is already so hard. Thanks for the input!
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On 7/14/2021 at 2:00 AM, Bru said:
Judging by the way Dean feeds his fishroom on youtube I’d say the answer is definitely no! lol (Just keep your water quality up) I see nothing wrong with spoiling the fish as long as you enjoy making more BBS.
I personally like to feed a variety of baby brine, powdered fry foods and have a culture of microworms. Since one batch of baby brine is more than I can feed my few tanks I just end up freezing them in mini ice cube trays and feeding them out over time to tanks with fry. (Just make sure you mark the trays as baby brine or someone might be having an interesting drink)
Thanks for the input, particularly the ice cube trays 😂 I've already taken over some of the fridge for frozen food...and some of a cabinet for microworms..I'm sure nobody will mind...right?
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On 7/13/2021 at 11:13 PM, CT_ said:
I don't have any evidence to say for sure it's okay but days to a couple weeks is surly fine. Many people use a bbs heavy diet to trigger spawning. There's a chance bbs are nutritionally incomplete but I think that's pretty low since babies grow up on it and aren't deformed. Maybe "not deformed" is a low bar though. If you want to feel safe you could add something else in a few hours later here and there. Variety is always the safer option since determining if one food is "complete" is a pretty hard task.
"Not deformed" I love it 😂 yeah, my mantra so far has been variety is key, so I feed a huge blend of foods normally...I'll cut back on how much I hatch out and mix in my usual stuff for peace of mind.
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I would recommend netting out the inhabitants before pulling everything out. Who knows what might be under that gravel, and I know some anaerobic bacteria can take hold in denser substrates, and when you disturb the covering, it will gas your tank basically.
When you do switch it out, I recommend putting at least some of the gravel and maybe the gunk that was with it as a first, bottom layer, and then topping it/covering it with the new stuff to make sure the organics that you've built up already get transferred over. After that, give the water enough time to settle, as free floating silt/particles can bother the fishes gills, and check for ammonia to make sure nothing spikes. Hope that helps!
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Hello!
As the title says, I'm raising up fish fry so I have baby brine hatching every day. It feels like a waste to hatch out just a tiny amount to sustain the few fry I have right now, so I always make some for my other tanks. They're happy as all can be eating it every day (and so is the hydra...), but am I keeping them on a permanent "cheat" day? I still feed veggies to my tetras to balance that out, but it's been about 3 days of straight baby brine and I'm wondering if I should cool the jets... thanks!
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To add to the list, I have leopard danios (just a color morph of zebra danios) with some endlers, and the endlers follow them around all day like little brothers 😂
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First Breeding Journal: Longfin Leopard Danios
in Fish Breeding
Posted
And a video of them meeting their parents: