Yikes! Live fry in shipment of dead fish... advice please!

[Jawjagrrl]

I broke my rule of not ordering live fish in the dead of winter and sadly the fish did not make it. Well packed, water temp of 63 degrees when they arrived, which should be fine for endlers, so I'm not sure what went wrong.

To my surprise, there were very much alive babies in one of the bags!

I am drip acclimating them right now in hopes of saving them at least. They are quite active! Ammonia at 0ppm in their water, but nitrites very high. 

Advice? I was not prepared for babies here and live nowhere near a fish store to by anything in terms of live food, etc. I do have the AC easy fry food. 

Edited January 28, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[Vanish]

Endler fry don't seem to need anything special, based on my 10g full of them.

[KaitieG]

Agreed--crushed flakes or fry food will be just fine!

[lefty o]

yup, just crush up whatever food you have into a fine powder. bonus points if you drop them into a tank with plants, as they will pick at the bio film for food also.

[Jawjagrrl]

Thanks everyone! This tank was seeded from a mature planted one and has lots of floating plants, mosses and wood moved from another setup, so hopefully they will find plenty to nibble on.

This shipment was also to include a juvenile dwarf crayfish - under 1/2" that was going to quarantine with the adult endlers. Looks like a change of plan as it is fully grown and probably would love fry 🙃

[Jawjagrrl]

Well, it's been a week and I've still got 5 fry! 

I think, though at 8 days old it may be too hard to tell, that we have 3 females and 2 males. Three retain no color and spend most of the time up top while the other two seem a little darker and prefer the substrate. They have lots of live plants, scuds, bladder snails and one of my baby shrimp that reverted to wild type.

All seems well and I hope to introduce them to my red chili Male when they are old enough. The parents of the fry had a more plain lyretail pattern, but I really love this one - reminds me of 50s hot rod striping. He's ready for Thunder Road! Thanks to everyone that offered care advice.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[PineSong]

Sorry your Endler adults did not make it but hooray for fry. I love those red chilis--and that's a very handsome one!

[Jawjagrrl]

On 2/4/2022 at 10:38 PM, PineSong said:

Sorry your Endler adults did not make it but hooray for fry. I love those red chilis--and that's a very handsome one!

He came from an assorted male endler order from AH which included several nice red bars, the ones with a sort of leopard pattern and something similar to a japanese blue. I really like this one and he is ready for companions that aren't crustaceans or loaches! Hope they grow quickly.

[Jawjagrrl]

3 weeks later, we still have 5 fry! They aren't growing quite as fast as I have read they might (as little as 4 weeks for males to be sexually mature?), but they are growing on a mix of fry food, betta flake and crushed dried bloodworm. Perhaps 3 females that prefer the upper areas of the tank:

Two possible males like the bottom. This qt tank was just a super cheap kit and the air stone also provides a led floor show that seems to fascinate one of the males. I often see this one poking around the lights:

Looking forward to them being big enough to make the move into their permanent home. They seem to enjoy (or at least not mind) the young adult shrimp moved from my shrimp setup.

[PineSong]

4 weeks? My endler fry and guppy endler mixes show no color for more like 8 weeks. Love the floor show! 

[Jawjagrrl]

On 2/17/2022 at 12:57 AM, PineSong said:

4 weeks? My endler fry and guppy endler mixes show no color for more like 8 weeks. Love the floor show! 

We make club noises when we visit the tank now 😁 I thought it was the cheesiest thing ever when I plugged it in, but it's kinda grown on us. We have "grown up tanks" too, I promise. 

8 weeks makes more sense based on how these guys are doing. They are good quarantinewise, but how old do you think they  should be before joining an adult male, and the kuhli loaches (full size)? They are fine with shrimp now, but there is also a dwarf cray in their future home who is surprisingly docile after all the negative stuff I've read about them. We feel bad for the solo endler that has been alone since Christmas.

[PineSong]

I've not kept kuhli loaches, so I can't speak to that, but I think a four week old fry is safe from the endler male, especially in a tank that is well fed and has plants in it. I think the first few days are the real iffy times for predation. Maybe @Guppysnail or @lefty o will know about the loaches?

[Guppysnail]

On 2/17/2022 at 10:23 AM, PineSong said:

I've not kept kuhli loaches, so I can't speak to that, but I think a four week old fry is safe from the endler male, especially in a tank that is well fed and has plants in it. I think the first few days are the real iffy times for predation. Maybe @Guppysnail or @lefty o will know about the loaches?

I have never kept loaches but the rule for ALL fish is if it fits in its mouth and it can catch it it will eat it. 🤷‍♀️

[Torrey]

On 1/28/2022 at 9:16 AM, Jawjagrrl said:

I broke my rule of not ordering live fish in the dead of winter and sadly the fish did not make it. Well packed, water temp of 63 degrees when they arrived, which should be fine for endlers, so I'm not sure what went wrong.

To my surprise, there were very much alive babies in one of the bags!

I am drip acclimating them right now in hopes of saving them at least. They are quite active! Ammonia at 0ppm in their water, but nitrites very high. 

Advice? I was not prepared for babies here and live nowhere near a fish store to by anything in terms of live food, etc. I do have the AC easy fry food. 

 

On 2/4/2022 at 11:45 AM, Jawjagrrl said:

Well, it's been a week and I've still got 5 fry! 

I think, though at 8 days old it may be too hard to tell, that we have 3 females and 2 males. Three retain no color and spend most of the time up top while the other two seem a little darker and prefer the substrate. They have lots of live plants, scuds, bladder snails and one of my baby shrimp that reverted to wild type.

All seems well and I hope to introduce them to my red chili Male when they are old enough. The parents of the fry had a more plain lyretail pattern, but I really love this one - reminds me of 50s hot rod striping. He's ready for Thunder Road! Thanks to everyone that offered care advice.

I'm sorry your order on adults was DOA, and thrilled you have the babies.

My males *might* get a dark spot beginning to show up at 6 weeks, and only in the dominant males. My endlers have 'fake eye' spots, and I have sadly mistaken the mid body 'eye' for a female gravid spot developing. I don't know what kind of endlers your fry are, so I wanted to give you fair warning.🤪 I am occasionally a slow learner, and thought I would save someone else the headache, lol.

Your red chili is gorgeous!😍

I have had kuhli loaches eat fry, so if your fry are approximately the same size/diameter as the fully open loach mouth, I would wait to add them. Loaches can be buttheads, and typically will fry snatch at night, so you can't catch them eating sushi.🤷‍♂️

And you already found the answer to healthy fry: plenty of microfauna, and dried food that has been powdered.

Congratulations on your fry!

[Jawjagrrl]

On 2/17/2022 at 11:29 PM, Torrey said:

 

I'm sorry your order on adults was DOA, and thrilled you have the babies.

My males *might* get a dark spot beginning to show up at 6 weeks, and only in the dominant males. My endlers have 'fake eye' spots, and I have sadly mistaken the mid body 'eye' for a female gravid spot developing. I don't know what kind of endlers your fry are, so I wanted to give you fair warning.🤪 I am occasionally a slow learner, and thought I would save someone else the headache, lol.

Your red chili is gorgeous!😍

I have had kuhli loaches eat fry, so if your fry are approximately the same size/diameter as the fully open loach mouth, I would wait to add them. Loaches can be buttheads, and typically will fry snatch at night, so you can't catch them eating sushi.🤷‍♂️

And you already found the answer to healthy fry: plenty of microfauna, and dried food that has been powdered.

Congratulations on your fry!

Thanks for all the useful info. These guys love their cheap QT space/nightclub (hehe), and I don't have anything coming in yet to displace them, so we've got plenty of time for them to grow more. I have berried shrimp in the future home that should keep the kuhlis busy if they feel snacky. I absolutely LOVE the male chili we have - the babies are also chilis, but their parent males didn't have the cool zig zag tail pattern that this one does. My spouse isn't a NERM, but he's enjoying watching these guys grow - and they will be going into "his" tank when the time comes. I'll post pics of that tank here when we make the move 😄

[Jawjagrrl]

Miracle babies are a month old today 😄

They really are taking on a more adult shape, hopefully we'll start seeing color on the boys soon.

[Jawjagrrl]

Moving day for babies! More are arriving from the same source today, might include baby dadd(ies). Drip acclimating them before USPS arrives.

[Jawjagrrl]

All moved in! The male has flared a bit at them, but otherwise settling in. 

[Jawjagrrl]

Just thought I'd share a quick update on these endler fry, which are doing well. The most dominant female fight the eye of the male we already had. But no babies.... until I was doing tank maintenance and saw them:

These are our first livebearer fry! Hopefully I didn't vacuum any up (or new shrimplets.. it's in the air.. water?)

[lefty o]

if you did suck some up, have no fear. in short order they will make more. once live bearers start, they dont stop.

[Torrey]

O love the big, dark eyes!!! Mine look like eyes with a tiny tail until they are 6 weeks old, and then the boys start to show color  and the girls look like 2 huge eyes with a much thicker tail.

The ones with the tiny, needle point eyes go out of the breeding program, along with any who don't carry the proper endler tail...

I love the adorable babies, and if you are worried about sucking up fry or shrimplettes, simply get the silicone paint strainer that Cory uses for incoming shipments at the warehouse (I don't remember which video shows it, I just remember Dean is at the Urban fish farm with Cory in the video). I haven't had a fry end up in the bucket for water changes since I started using it... I just end up with fry leftover in the plants I trim out sometimes🙄

[Jawjagrrl]

On 4/7/2022 at 7:27 PM, Torrey said:

O love the big, dark eyes!!! Mine look like eyes with a tiny tail until they are 6 weeks old, and then the boys start to show color  and the girls look like 2 huge eyes with a much thicker tail.

The ones with the tiny, needle point eyes go out of the breeding program, along with any who don't carry the proper endler tail...

I love the adorable babies, and if you are worried about sucking up fry or shrimplettes, simply get the silicone paint strainer that Cory uses for incoming shipments at the warehouse (I don't remember which video shows it, I just remember Dean is at the Urban fish farm with Cory in the video). I haven't had a fry end up in the bucket for water changes since I started using it... I just end up with fry leftover in the plants I trim out sometimes🙄

I saw one fry before I actually removed water, so I did the water change from the back compartment... and had a shrimp in my bucket! I ended up having to pull everything out of that compartment to net three more half grown shrimp! I'm going to have to glue up some plastic window screen or some such over the filter holes. I found about 8 shrimplets a few weeks ago in the filter floss, so these three I got today have been there ever since.

This is interesting - I had a single chili male from an AH order last fall, wanted to breed him and found a hobbyist with them and the original post was about his first shipment that got delayed and only babies survived. the guy sent me a few more after it warmed up, and they are also chilis. The babies are most likely my male and one of the female he included with the replacement, although the babies are trying really hard to get her attention as well. They got the black first, then the red... but now they have added the green and present more like black bars. I guess that's part of the fun!

My bigger challenge is fry and shrimplets in the duckweed I remove every week - which I pulled out a ton of before realizing I had both in the tank today! I always strain the bucket water (hello, scuds!) but the duckweed often goes out to the chickens 😮 Maybe it needs to go into an empty tank first for a few days to make sure I don't lose anyone. But given I don't even know who made these shrimplets may suggest I needn't worry too much.

[PineSong]

That male chili is a real racecar with that tail. So sporty! I also have had exactly one juvenile male turn out to look more like some other kind of endler --red, black, green instead of either red chili or french blue star. I assume his dad is a red chili because I've had other males that visibly look like red chili plus mutt guppy but this guy is an "only".

[Jawjagrrl]

On 4/7/2022 at 8:20 PM, PineSong said:

That male chili is a real racecar with that tail. So sporty! I also have had exactly one juvenile male turn out to look more like some other kind of endler --red, black, green instead of either red chili or french blue star. I assume his dad is a red chili because I've had other males that visibly look like red chili plus mutt guppy but this guy is an "only".

Yes, that is what my male fry have grown up to look like - the green is a very recent development. I have three more like them in other tanks that were part of an assorted males order I got from AH. 

So is my sporty male suitable for breeding? I had wondered if his little fiery tail markings weren't a bit more guppy-ish? As I said, I'm very new to livebearers, just ordered what we liked the looks of. Be he reminds me of 50s hot rod paint jobs like Travolta's in Grease. 🙂 Hubby named him Fireball.

[Torrey]

On 4/7/2022 at 6:33 PM, Jawjagrrl said:

Yes, that is what my male fry have grown up to look like - the green is a very recent development. I have three more like them in other tanks that were part of an assorted males order I got from AH. 

So is my sporty male suitable for breeding? I had wondered if his little fiery tail markings weren't a bit more guppy-ish? As I said, I'm very new to livebearers, just ordered what we liked the looks of. Be he reminds me of 50s hot rod paint jobs like Travolta's in Grease. 🙂 Hubby named him Fireball.

Yes, he has the traditional "split" tail that my local AS explained to me is the classic sign of Endlers... and warranted me bringing in 2 bags of fish to the Club Meeting for a positive ID... and for several club members to buy.

I'll see if I still have the link that explains all the identification and standards stuff, if you are interested?