Ricefish Fry

[Jerry]

Hello Everyone, 

I moved 16 platinum Ricefish from my 20 gallon bucket to a 150 gallon stock tub. They were in the 20 gallon bucket for 14 days and I found fry about 12 hours after removing the adults. When will it be safe to add the fry back with the adults and will I be able to colony breed them in a 150 gallon without intervention or should I keep playing musical plants. I want to breed enough to sell locally and invest in another tub but I don’t want to breed more than I can keep and sell. 
 

thanks for your input,

Jerry

[Daniel]

As fair as I can tell the Ricefish out in my summer pool are not eating the baby ricefish or at least not many. There is plenty of other stuff in the pool for them to eat including Daphnia so maybe that's it, but I never see them look a baby ricefish.

There are very few places for the baby ricefish to hide in my pool, so if you have floating plants, I bet those babies are safe in with the parents.

My ricefish numbers are growing exponentially.

[Jerry]

Hey Daniel, thank you for the information on your experiences, I’m happy to hear your having good success with them. I had six in a 20 gallon tub with plants all over for months and never saw a fry but there were also dragon fly nymphs and I thought they’d take a few but not all of the fry that’s Why I thought it may be the parents predating 

[Aubrey]

I have some platinums in a 12g and some daisy's blue rice fish in a 20g and I've never seen an adult go after fry. I have, however, seen larger juveniles go after the very small fry when they are out in the open. I'm not trying to breed them, they just make more, so I'm glad that the numbers don't get out of control. I don't have any experience with keeping fish outside, so you might be on to something with the dragonfly nymphs. I know Rachel O'Leary uses Summit Mosquito insecticide for mosquito larvae, but I do not know if that works on dragonfly larvae or how safe it is. Killing off all the micro fauna would seem counterproductive for breeding outside, since I assume you want the fish to get all the free foods from the environment.

[Jerry]

Hi Aubrey,

thanks for your response happy to hear they don’t go after fry in your experience. I know Rachel Uses a Kyten(not sure how it’s spelled) inhibitor against nymphs But I want to keep cherry shrimp in my tubs as well so I might treat one or two of the tubs but not all of them.