newFish

It's a HOB filter, and very little surface agitation. What kind of powder food do you use? I grind tropical fish flakes into powder. I'm not sure they like it very much though. I just tried BBS again but looks still too big. Maybe mine haven't been growing very much so their 3 weeks hasn't made them very big.

Thanks for the feedback. This was my first time with fry, I'm just starting to realize how difficult they are to feed. I started with 12 free swimming fry about two weeks ago. I started them on egg yoke, then transitioned to crushed flake after one week. I think I should've stayed on egg yoke for the entire two weeks. I've lost all but 4 fry now, I think maybe due to them not eating the ground flakes? I saw some eat, then spit out the powdered flake food. I think some fry may have been subsisting on whatever was growing in the planted tank. I have a lot of copepod type creatures and it's an aged tank. Going to try adding egg yolk back to the die to save the four that I have left.

I was so excited to come across this video that Cory did about using plants to cycle a tank rather than focus solely on beneficial bacteria. I started a small betta tank earlier in the year knowing full well that I didn't have a cycled tank, but put a betta in there anyways. Luckily, I had also brought some floating plants (salvinia) from Craig's List and threw that in there along with the betta on day one. I did have an ammonia test kit. I was surprised that the ammonia stay very very low from the beginning, almost zero on most days. I also observed the floating plant grew super fast. It wasn't until later that I realized the salvinia's ability to take CO2 straight from the air and decent lighting were key to keeping ammonia level low. I really liked this method of cycling a tank, even though it was an accident on my part. Fishless cycling is so very boring and takes so long. But using floating plants to cycle a tank encourages observation skills and fosters the ecosystem approach to aquarium keeping. Just wanted to say thanks.

I kept reading that baby brine shrimp are great food for fry, but after trying it out on my zebra danios, I now see that the fry are still way too small. I didn't realize it until they're next to each other in the water and the danio fry swim up to the BBS and just turn away in search of smaller things to eat. The danio fry became free swimming about two days ago. I've been feeding them 5 times a day, egg yolk at first, now alternating between egg yolk, finely crushed flake food, and spirulina powder. They probably eat 0.1% of the food I put in the tank. They're in an aged planted shrimp tank, so there might be other live foods they're snacking on. They seem to be doing well, and I'm really enjoying my first baby fish experience. About how long does it take for the fry to be big enough to eat baby brine shrimp? Are we talking about a few days out? Or a couple of weeks out still?

I just tried newly hatched baby brine shrimp. TOO BIG! I can seem the fry interested and swim up to it, bump the brine shrimp, and swim away looking for something smaller.

I got some surprise Zebra Danio fry that I'm trying to grow out. They are in a 7 gallon planted tank with some neocaridina, no other fish in the tank. Yesterday, they were attached to the glass, but this morning, they are now free swimming. I'm getting the feeling that free swimming takes a lot of energy, and from other research, they probably could use supplementary food beyond the copepods currently living in the tank. Are newly free-swimming zebra danio fry big enough to eat baby brine shrimp? I've read other feeding tips like egg yolk and crushed flake food. I'm not sure the relative size of these things. Is baby brine shrimp smaller than egg yolk or crushed flake? I also have powder spirulina on-hand that I've used for growing brine shrimp, so I can use that too if it's more appropriate.

I have a 7 gallon planted neocaridina shrimp tank (and 1 snail). It's 10 months old, and has lots of little creatures that came with the live plants. Things like these pill shaped bugs that I think are commonly called seed shrimp, and little worm/slug things that I think are called well worms. Here's what they look like. These other creatures have been thriving in my tank because I feed the shrimps and snail a mix of boiled veggies and fish flakes and leafs. I recently tried adding a few zebra danios and decided they were not a good fit for such a small tank, and ended up giving them back to the LFS. In the two weeks the danios were in my aquarium, they managed to have some babies. It would be a really cool experience to raise the fry up in the aquarium and give them back to the LFS when they're big enough. I was wondering if the various life stages of the worms and copepod creatures currently thriving in my aquarium is enough to raise three zebra danio fry until the danios are big enough to eat flake food? Do I need to do any special feeding for the fry to grow big enough for regular flake food? Or can my little ecosystem sustain them? The fry are currently still in the stage of growth where they are attaching to the glass. Not free swimming yet, and I can just make out the eyes. I also have baby brine shrimp that I can hatch. But brine shrimp would die pretty quickly in freshwater, so it's not a very sustainable food. Microscope view of the pill shaped bugs: Here's what the fish fry look like: