Allan B.

Little bit of a bummer this morning. Looks like the GBR eggs disappeared. I'm not sure if the parents or snails ate them or what, but they weren't on the leaf when I checked this morning. I checked to see if there were any fry, but I didn't see any.

I've got a couple of exciting things to report! German Blue Rams While I was feeding Carl and Marie yesterday afternoon, I noticed that they were sticking pretty doggedly to a little pit they dug in the sand. This isn't all that unusual since they like to hang out there, but they usually swim to the surface when they see me coming. Turns out Marie laid a clutch of eggs on the leaves of a Java fern! Here's picture of the proud papa and his brood (I'd just put BBS in there): And here's a close-up of the eggs: Marie was in the process of laying the eggs when I came in, so I got to watch the egg laying and fertilization ritual for a little while. Pretty cool! My GBR tanks has a large number of Ramshorn snails in it, and I was worried that they might eat the eggs. I saw one crawling on the eggs and it didn't seem to have eaten any, so I figure they won't. I'm planning on keeping the fry their parents. I know chances are high that, like most German Blue Ram first-time parents, Carl and Marie will eat them, but I don't have the space or time to raise them separately. Once they get to be a couple weeks old I'll move them to their own 10 gallon for grow-out. Celestial Pearl Danios My CPD fry are doing great and getting bigger by the minute, and they're now able to eat something larger than fry powder or paramecium. I was able to transition these guys over to live baby brine a few days early by using San Francisco Strain Brine Shrimp Eggs. This variety is significantly smaller than most BBS, so I was able to feed them to my CPD fry three to four days after they got to the free-swimming stage. I still put a little fry powder in with every meal in case any of the smaller fry still need it. But from what I can tell from their big orange bellies, all them are eating BBS! Here's a picture of my fry eating the San Francisco strain: Here's a picture of the San Francisco Strain I'm referring to (it's more expensive than Aquarium Co-op's BBS, which is an excellent product, but I think it's worth it if you're hatching fry):

Everyone’s free-swimming! I haven’t tried to count how many fry I’ve got since CPD babies are so small, but I’d guess there’s 30 I hatched plus 5 I removed from the colony. My last successful clutch of eggs hatched three months ago, so I’m relieved this one has worked out so well. To be honest, I was getting pretty demoralized trying to figure out why my previous clutches were failing—I was even having dreams about struggling to keep fry alive. 😅 As I mentioned in my previous post, all my problems seemed to be rooted in how I was feeding the parents. I’ve had the most success with feeding them live baby brine everyday. After that, my CPDs were breeding pretty successfully on their own and I’ve been netting fry out of the main tank. Everything looks good today! 🤞🏼

Update: CPD Breeding It's a been a good long while since I posted an entry on my progress, and I've been experimenting on a ton of different ways to hatch eggs and raise fry. Here's a couple things I've learned. FEED FEED FEED: The single most important variable in CPD breeding is feeding them a TON of live or TWO TONS of frozen food. CPDs breed pretty readily, so the females will lay eggs every single day as long as you feed them. However, in my experiments, you've got to feed them a ton of food to increase hatch rates and fry survival. I don't know what the science is behind this is, but I've noticed that the more you feed the mothers, the larger the yolk sacks are on the wigglers—which is their only source of food during the first days of life. I've found that live baby brine shrimp daily for a week before collecting eggs is the most efficient way to feed the parents enough to boost survival rates. I've tried adding vitamins to frozen food, but this doesn't seem to have much of an effect on breeding. I also try to make sure there's food present in the water when the fry start swimming. Hatching and Raising Container: I spent a lot of time monkeying with water conditions in different containers. Doesn't seem to make a difference as long as the water conditions are good. I tried using a separate tank to hatch eggs, as well as my usual hanging breeding box method. Water Temperature: I tried 70°F water, 75°F water, and 78°F water (the highest temp I'm comfortable with). The sweet spot seems to be 75°F, which is a little warmer than what I keep the parents in. Water Conditions: My best outcomes came from matching the water conditions (hardness, PH, cleanliness) in the parent's tank. Egg Fungus: I had the best outcomes when I placed freshly laid eggs in methylene blue and floated them in the main tank for 24 hours. This allows me to remove the unfertilized eggs before fungus can grow. After 24 hours, I gently put the eggs in whatever I'm hatching them in with a pipette. If the embryo is visible in the egg, they're fine as long as I'm extra gentle when moving them to the hatching container. I even had a couple fry hatch in the float, and they did fine. Catappa Leaves: I've had the best luck using catalpa leaves in the main tank and hatching container when I want to collect and hatch eggs. The water doesn't have to be too dark, just enough to get the benefits (see photo below). I use 1 leaf per 20 gallons. I'd love to try alder cones, but I haven't gotten my hands on any yet. Other water notes: An air stone is unnecessary until the fry are free swimming, and neither are water changes. Eggs and fry develop better in their early days when the water is still. They have more than enough oxygen, and as long as the water you put them in is free of ammonia and nitrites they should be alright (fry and eggs don't create much waste). Development Timeline: How quickly eggs and fry develop seems to be tied to water temperature—the warmer the water, the faster they grow. In my opinion, faster isn't better, but I have no evidence for that. This is what I typically see for healthy eggs and fry at 75°F: Day 1: Unfertilized eggs turn white (or blue in methylene blue) and can develop fungus. Day 3-4: Embryos are visible in the egg. Day 4-5: Eggs hatch and fry "wigglers" lay on the bottom of the container. Day 5-7: Fry can start sticking to the sides of the container. Day 7-10: Fry start to swim freely. I'm currently on Day 6 of a new batch eggs I collected last week. The eggs I collected on Monday of last week are now fry who are starting to stick on the sides of the container, and the eggs I collect on Saturday are just now showing embryos in them. Everything seems to be going alright so far, and I've started putting cultured paramecium and the tiniest amount of fry powder in the container in case any of the fry decide to start swimming.

I've been experimenting with a couple setups to figure out what's going on with my CPDs' low hatch and fry survival rates, but I haven't had any success. I've tried several methods to no avail. Method 1: Collecting eggs in a deli cup, then placing them in a Fluval hanging breeding box with a constant stream of water from main tank and gentle air stone. Outcome: 75% hatch rate among fertilized eggs, but fry don't survive 24 hours. Method 2: Collecting eggs in a deli cup, then placing them in a Fluval hanging breeding box with a 1 drip/second of water from the main tank and no air stone. Outcome: 50% hatch rate among fertilized eggs, but fry don't survive 24 hours. Method 3: Collecting eggs in a deli cup, then placing them in a 2.5 gallon tank with heater and gentle airstone. No hatching. I'm going to try letting a male and a couple females breed in a 5.5 gallon with a sponge filter next and see if there's any improvement.

Thanks for your response. These are definitely dead fry. I'm still trying to figure out what the issue is. I'm really hoping it isn't something environmental or genetic, because I'm also experiencing really low hatch rates now. I'm going to try taking my healthiest male and putting him in a separate tank with a couple healthy females and try a control test.

Can the CARES community help me figure out why my CPD fry keep dying within 12 hours of hatching? I've been trying to breed my CPDs, but for the last month or so all the wigglers that hatch have been dying within 12 hours of being born. I successfully bred and raised fry from this group of CPDs once in December-January, so I'm at a loss as to why my survival rate has been 0% this month. Here's my setup—I've got a group of 12 CPDs (5 males, 7 females...not ideal, but I bought these a juveniles before they could be sexed) in a heavily planted 20 gallon long. When I want to breed them, I collect the eggs every day in a deli cup with java moss. I transfer the eggs into a .5 gallon Fluval hanging breeding box that's continually supplied water from a powerhead attached to a medium Aquarium Coop sponge filter. I also keep duckweed in the box with the fry, and put java moss in there once the eggs hatch. I also run an adjustable air stone into the box that's turned up enough to aerate the water but not cause too much of a current. I use a chunk of fine filter sponge (instead of the plastic gate that came in the box) on the box's outlet to keep the fry from escaping. I test the water parameters in the breeder box and the main tank, and they match: Ammonia: 0 ppm Nitrites: 0 ppm Nitrates: 20 ppm (I use Easy Green) PH: 7.1 KH: 5° GH: 6° TDS: 419 ppm Temp: 74-75°F I use a light amount of CO2, but not enough to turn the drop checker green. Here's a picture of the breeding box: Hopefully y'all can help...watching wigglers disappear is getting demoralizing. EDITED: Added water temperature.

Morehead State is in Kentucky. The Moorhead State I went to is the sister city of Fargo, ND (they're separated by the Red River that divides ND and MN).

This is the path I'd take. If you can do a water change now and you normally use Prime to dechlorinate, I wouldn't add anymore to Prime to your aquarium since it's concentrated and a you don't want lowering your O2 levels. Sometimes life happens and you can't do a water change right away, so using Prime to "detoxify" the ammonia is a decent stop-gap—again, don't go overboard. Prime's pretty safe to use, but I always feel better following the "less is more" approach to chemical interventions.

I spent many years in North Dakota and Minnesota (Moorhead State alum!), and some of my favorite memories are of times spent on Minnesota's lakes and Lake Superior!

I just got some Hikari Sinking Cichlid Gold pellets from the Coop and only now realized they were 3.0-3.4mm in size. Is that too big for GBRs, or can they pick them apart after they're in the water for a while?

Can anyone identify this stuff growing on some of my aquarium plants?

I agree with you completely about 10 gallons tanks getting a bad rap—I think they’re actually a good tank for beginners if you have hardy livestock because it forces you to learn about filtration, the nitrogen cycle, and aquarium maintenance. There’s nothing inherently “harder” about maintaining a smaller tank—but in my experience, and I’m just one guy, things like ammonia spikes from overfeeding can get out of hand faster in a 10 gallon. That said, the ammonia situation in my 10 gallon aquarium was under control after removing the source (uneaten bloodworms) and doing two water changes—all in all, a pretty easy fix. To say I was “struggling” with water quality was perhaps over dramatic on my part. What really happened is that I’m still learning the feeding habits of a new species of fish, overestimated how much they would eat, and had to fix the resulting ammonia spike. I also need a larger sponge filter for that tank, I think. Definitely not something I’d blame on the tank size.

I'm also in NorCal! I was born in Lemoore in the Central Valley and moved all over the place before moving to Los Angeles then the South Bay where my wife and I are raising our kids. Here's my oldest exploring the tide pools near Pacifica. Here's me exploring tide pools on Guam with my dad when I was a little kid. Raise your kids by a body of water if you can, folks!

I went to high school in rural North Dakota, and once some of my classmates snuck into school and put a Yellow Perch in our Biology teacher's 40 gallon aquarium. The poor guy floated upside-down for a few days, but our teacher nursed it back to health and released it when the waters thawed. I don't advocate trying to replicate this situation—I'm sure it was traumatizing to the fish—but it was cool to see that perch eat live feeders in class.

10 Gallon Blues I've been battling ammonia in the German Blue Rams' ten-gallon tank for the last few days. As you might know from your own experiences, smaller tanks are susceptible to water quality issues because they have less water to dilute ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, etc. Luckily, I've been watching the GBRs pretty closely since they're new and still settling in, and on Saturday I noticed Carl had pretty my lost all of his coloring. He wasn't acting oddly—still very active and curious—but I definitely didn't like how pale he'd gotten. I immediately ran ammonia check with an API Master Kit and used an Aquarium Co-Op test strip to test the other levels. Turns out the ammonia was up to 1 PPM, so I decided to use a 50% water change. I had 10 gallons of RODI water in jugs, but they weren't warm enough to use in the GBR's 83-85°F aquarium. I opted to just use dechlorinated tap water even though it's harder than GBR's like. The Seachem Prime I use to dechlorinate would also help detoxify the ammonia in the aquarium, albeit temporarily. After doing the water change, Carl's colors came back surprisingly quickly. The ammonia was cut in half thanks to the water change, and my hardness levels only went up slightly. I've been following up with smaller water changes every day until the tanks bio filter catches up with the ammonia. Watching Carl through all this, I noticed for the first time that he is missing a pectoral fin on his right side. I mean, it's completely missing. No nub, no damage, just gone. I'm wondering if this is congenital or if he suffered an injury at some point. Regardless, he gets around well enough that I didn't notice it was gone. As for the ammonia spike, I think it was caused by a cube of frozen bloodworm I fed them on Friday. I put the cube in whole to let them feed on as it melted gradually, but they didn't eat much of it in the end and it likely fouled the water. I think I'm going to try target feeding them the bloodworms in the future. They've gotten comfortable enough to approach anything tweezers when I put them in the water, so we'll see if they'll eat from them. CPD Update Batch Three is a no-go. The few wrigglers that hatched over the weekend melted away during the last couple days. It's a bummer when that happens because they just kinda disappear. So it's back to the drawing board. I'm going to reassess how to approach hatching out CPD eggs next and run a couple experiments. Thank you to everyone who has offered advice, it's really fascinating to see the unique ways everyone approaches breeding Celestial Pearl Danios!

German Blue Ram Habitat Improvements I picked up some driftwood a couple days ago and I’ve been using a Dremel tool to grind down some pointy edges and widen some crevasses for the GBRs to use as hidey-holes if they want to. I’ve had them a week now and they’ve been fasting due to a Med Trio bath, but today we wrapped that process up with a 50% water change and had some live BBS and frozen blood worms to celebrate! Here’s a before and after of their aquarium… Before After (sorry about the glare, I had the garage door open) The GBR look great, btw! I think they’re enjoying the BBS more than the bloodworms.

Thanks for the encouragement! This is my second “bad” batch in as many weeks, and there have definitely been moments where I’ve thought about giving up breeding because of the amount of time and attention it requires. But learning and experimenting always comes with bouts with failure, and one of the things I love about this hobby is that it’s an amazing feeling when things work.

Fungus… It’s been a bittersweet morning—I woke up this morning and checked the CPD eggs with my daughter, and we found that a bunch of them had in fact developed fungus. I removed the bad eggs with a pipette and decided to remove the blue Ziploc lid since there weren’t any more eggs to hatch. Lo and behold, there were several wigglers hiding under the lid! Since we were on our way out the door to my daughter’s occupational therapy appointment, I didn’t have time to take an accurate count of how many fry hatched. I’m guessing it’s less than ten. I definitely wish more had hatched, but I’m not doing this to make money so I’ll be thrilled if I can get the few that did to the free-swimming and eating baby brine shrimp stage. Things to think about moving forward Firstly, I need to figure out a way to maximize the number of eggs that are getting fertilized in the harvesting cups. Since I have too many males in the colony, the spawning process is often rushed and interrupted by jealous suitors. When I harvested the eggs this time, I noticed that a lot of them had a clear yolk (instead of a yellowish one) and was worried this meant they were unfertilized. I’m not sure there’s much I can do to address this. Second, I need to do some research into how I can cull unfertilized eggs after harvesting them. Maybe I’ll need to float them in a deli cup and let them develop for a couple days before culling the cloudy infertile eggs, then moving them to the breeder box. Third, I’m very surprised the fungus grew as fast as it did in the Methylene Blue bath. That said, these eggs did spend a couple days in tank water treated with H2O2 and I never culled any infertile eggs. So fungus may have developed before I added Methylene Blue yesterday, and since it’s not really effective at killing existing fungal growths this may have been why we saw fungused eggs this morning. Fourth, I noticed some worms in the breeder box. I’m guessing they came in the tank water as eggs or cysts or whatever, then hatched in the breeder box. There’s also some debris in the bottom of the tank. This could be stuff growing out in the transferred water, but it could also be because I’m using a cheap air stone from Petco that appears to be brittle and casting off dust. In conclusion, I’ll need to pull unviable eggs earlier, and add only viable eggs to the breeder box with Methylene Blue. I’d also prefer not to have worms in the box, so maybe I need to consider using RODI and tank water.

Just a quick update since it’s late. I took my daughter to the Oakland Zoo today, and when I got back about an hour ago I found a wiggler! Unfortunately, I also noticed that a high number of eggs have turned milky white. I’m a little worried that these are unfertilized eggs that would have fungused over if not for the Methylene Blue and hydrogen peroxide treatments. Or maybe I overdosed them in hydrogen peroxide—I can’t be sure since I’m not sure what that would look like. Regardless, it’s super exciting to see a wiggler and several other eggs developing the tell-tale signs of viability—black eyes and spinal column. All I can do now is watch and wait. FYI, the zoo was great fun, but I can’t ID this fish species for the life of me…

Update: CPD fry did, in fact, slip through the mesh of the Ziss breeding box—so if you’ve got CPDs that you think are large enough to be contained by this box, wait a couple more weeks to grow them out. In other news, I have successfully cultured paramecium, so all I need now is freshly hatched fry!

This might be a dumb question, but are you keeping them in saltwater? I’ve never grown out brine shrimp (I always feed them to fish right away), but here’s some guidance from an info sheet about raising them from Carolina labs. “Although most use brine shrimp as hatchlings, you can grow them to adulthood. To do so, transfer hatchlings to a clean container of saltwater. A shallow container with lots of surface area works best for large numbers of shrimp. If you must use a deeper container, adding an air stone helps aerate the water.” “Brine shrimp are filter feeders and remove fine organic particles from the water as they swim. Unicellular algae and bacteria are natural foods. You can also powder fish food flakes and scatter the powder on the water's surface. A yeast suspension is also convenient food for shrimp. Make up a salt solution of the same salinity as the water in your shrimp culture. Stir in enough baker’s yeast to make the water appear "milky," and then store the solution in a refrigerator. Always agitate the solution before use to resuspend the yeast. Feed it to shrimp daily. Alternatively, crush grains of dry baker’s yeast on wax paper, then dust it on the surface of the brine shrimp culture. Avoid overfeeding. The water in the culture should not remain cloudy for more than 15 minutes after feeding.” “Each week, draw off and discard about 1⁄4 of the culture water, then replace it with new saltwater. Brine shrimp tolerate crowding but may require additional containers as they grow.”

The CPDs kept me busy today. Where to begin... Never Wear Black without the (Methylene) Blue Maybe this is a neurotic hobbyist thing, but I tend to stick to what's worked for me in the past instead of experimenting. That said, as you can clearly see my brief experiment with using hydrogen peroxide to prevent fungus growth on my CPD eggs has ended. I decided to go back to Methylene Blue for a couple reasons. First, the eggs were beginning to clump together and I was worried that if fungus did start growing it would effect the whole batch. Second, I've been harvesting and dosing eggs since Sunday, and since I'm only treating the water with H2O2 three times over the course of 36 hours, this batch will be unevenly dosed. Finally, since these eggs were laid over the course of six days, they'll probably hatch over the course of a week (harvesting eggs over several days isn't ideal and I probably won't do it next time). So what's the game plan moving forward? Once the first fry are free-swimming I'm going to wait three days (the manufacturer recommends continuing treatment for three days past the free-swimming state), then do a 50 percent water change with "clean" tank water. Then I'll do another the following day, then another the next, and so on until the Methylene Blue is removed. Once it's all gone, I'll connect a small water pump to a silicon tube and begin continuously pumping water into the breeding box. Take it Easy, Green I generally don't worry about the nitrate levels in my 20 gallon CPD aquarium because the plants do a really great job absorbing all of it from the water (my small CO2 system also helps them process nutrients). However, when I adopted the German Blue Rams from the the neighbor last weekend, I moved a bunch of java fern, duckweed, anacharis, and salvinia to their tank (they L.O.V.E. the plant cover btw). Of course, this reduced how much nitrate the 20 gallon's ecosystem could absorb and I didn't take that into account when using Easy Green this week. So when I checked the water quality today, the nitrate levels were through the roof. Time for a midweek 50% water change! One of my biggest regrets since joining the hobby is buying an electric gravel cleaner. Why this was a waste of 58 bucks is a story for another time. However, for all its shortcomings as a gravel vacuum, it is an excellent clean water pump when you connect a 3/4 inch tube to it! Behold... Yes, a similarly powered submersible pump would probably be less expensive, but I'm not going to complain about salvaging this purchase too much. It beats pouring water into the aquarium, and it's gentle enough to rinse plants and decorations off while refilling the aquarium without causing a tornado of debris. I also used this as an opportunity to remove a HOB power filter with a carbon filter I was using to remove some medication earlier this week. No time like the present to give the old HOB a scrub down. After refilling the aquarium with dechlorinated tap water, my nitrate levels were back under control. I might do a smaller water change on Saturday (I'm taking my daughter to the Oakland Zoo tomorrow). Sidenote: I use a lab test tube rack to hold all my API Master Kit equipment and digital TDS and PH reader. I've been really happy with it, but there's a few modifications I'd like to make to improve it. For another time, though... La Reyna Watch I haven't seen my berried Amano Shrimp in a couple days, so I'm a little worried about her. She's usually front and center, but she has been known to disappear from time to time. I'm sure she's okay, so I'm going to keep doing some research into how to hatch and raise her eggs should they get fertilized.

Oh, wow! Thanks for linking that video! Looks like he's got Nerites in there, too.

I've got a pair of German Blue Rams that I'm planning to move into a 20 gallon long tank soon, and I'm trying to figure out what kind of cleaning crew I can put in there with them that can survive 82-85°F water temps. Unfortunately, my favorite cleaners (Amano shrimp and Nerite snails) max out at 78-80°F. I've got a "naturally occurring" population of rams horn snails in all my tanks, and while they aren't my favorite they seem to do seem to be able to withstand the lower oxygen levels of warm water thanks to being air-breathers. Do you have any recommendations for building warm water cleaning crew?