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How often do we have fry and don’t even know?


Daniel
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Just this week on the forum we have had several posts about unexpected fry. @Sliceofnature found hill stream loach fry, @Dawn had surprise babies (either danios or rainbow fish), and @Hamaquatics had guppy babies sooner than expected.

My guess is our fish breed more often than we are aware of. And you don’t see what you don’t expect to see.

Yesterday, when @Brandy and I were messaging, I said that I wished my Apistogramma would spawn. At the time I said that, it is likely they already had and I hadn’t even noticed. Probably what kept me from noticing was just the assumption that they had not spawned.

1645533755_Apistoeggs1.png.7bee8735f1536609a4db73bc51b9df08.png

One of the lessons is to assume less about what is going on in your tank. When something is different, don’t blow it off, figure out what the cause might be. And realize that the fish don’t read the books.

My Apistogramma nijsseni are said to prefer to spawn at a pH of 6 – 6.5. The source of this information (the ichthyologist Uwe Römer) is impeccable, yet my pH was 7.38 at time they spawned. Fish don’t read the books.

So maybe the default assumption should be that fry might show up at anytime.

This is good a reason to keep planted tanks and even a bit of a floating plant like hornwort as this provides cover and first food (infusoria). It also is another reason to have a brine shrimp hatchery ready to go at 24 hours notice.

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I've been thinking about this recently too. I'll often notice big round egg bellies on my Rummynose tetras. Tetra are notorious egg eaters so I don't think I'll ever see any fry. I think someday I'll pull a few pairs out and try to raise up some fry. 

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Based on when I had Guppies in the past, probably once to twice a month since there are 4 females and 1 male. My surprise this time was the females were newly purchased and did not look big enough to produce fry as yet. I forgot how small they start.

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When I was quarantining my catfish, I put hornwort from my 29 into the bin, for cover and water quality. Weeks later, the catfish was done with quarantine and I was breaking down the tank. Just as I went to dump out the last bit of water, I noticed little wiggling things in the mulm: BABIES. I panicked, and managed to get them out, putting them in my snail tank. Within a week or two they grew into little baby panda cories. There must have been eggs in the hornwort I didn't see, and they hatched and somehow survived being in the bin with the catfish!

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50 minutes ago, H.K.Luterman said:

...There must have been eggs in the hornwort I didn't see, and they hatched and somehow survived being in the bin with the catfish!

A lot of accidental breeding seems to involve hornwort! Like @Lynze who has a love/hate relationship with java moss, I have a love/hate relationship with hornwort, probably more on the love side. As @H.K.Luterman notes above it makes great cover for tanks without lids, helps with water quality, and is a good hiding place for so many kinds of fry. It is where my pygmy sunfish always like to nest. The only downside is that is grows like crazy in all kinds of water in all kinds of lighting conditions! I have composted my fair share. Now, if I could only start a business based on hornwort production I would have a very sweet retirement plan.

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This happened to me while filming on Sunday. While filming in my fish room you get to see me freak out real time on camera from finding Albino Kribensis babies. In another post on the forum I mentioned how this pair would just not breed for me after like 4+ months. Even though I’ve bred them before, I still get really excited for new fry! 

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I had a tank that I had a group of praecox rainbows in as well as some aspidorus spilotus to grow out. I had a spawning mop for the rainbows in the tank, left it in tank for a week. I took the mop out and put in a separate tank to hatch, which I started seeing little fry swimming after a few days. A week later, I could tell they were aspidorus fry and not the rainbows I was wanting to spawn.

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On 7/21/2020 at 9:56 AM, Hamaquatics said:

Based on when I had Guppies in the past, probably once to twice a month since there are 4 females and 1 male. My surprise this time was the females were newly purchased and did not look big enough to produce fry as yet. I forgot how small they start.

Exactly, I definitely underestimated how small they start

 

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I think this happens quite frequently. I found new fry yesterday I didn’t know I had. I think it happens to me a lot cause I’m busy. When I’m in tune with the fish room not as many surprises. But I kinda set it up so I do get the surprises.

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My wife just told me we have brand new Red Wag Platy fry today. I didn't think the female would drop fry for another week or so but sure enough there's little babies the size of a grain of rice. New fry are always a pleasant surprise.

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I just happened to me too with my guppy tank. Two days back I had my new 29 gallon which was cycling and to my surprise, I found a Golden wonder Killie fish fry survive. I was so happy and the fry is doing so good. I'm new to this hobby but this hobby keeps giving me new surprises every day.

 

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I just found a baby panda cory cat that hid long enough in my 55 gallon to not get eaten. It's crazy because I remove and raise lots of eggs from that tank but it's always my Albinos. Would have loved to have found the panda eggs.

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  • 1 month later...

We started up a 10-gallon tank for cherry shrimp and added some chili rasboras as well.  I knew they were egg scatterers and assumed that we'd never see any fry.  But lo and behold, we spotted a tiny litty fry swimming around near the surface in the tank.

I can only assume that all of the cover we added for the shrimp allowed this one little guy to survive.  I happened to have some Sera Micron growth food on hand.  So I was actually prepared for once!  It turns out that the rasboras love the stuff as well so at least I'm not over-feeding the tank trying to get food to one fry.  😛

Unfortunately, no pictures.  He's super tiny!

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It happens often and Is also a matter of timing. For example I can tell when My angelfish are going to lay eggs by the breeding tubes and check daily. But I’ve seen a fat female, with her egg tube out then the next day the same fish skinny  But no eggs. The obvious answer is they were eatin within my two inspections. If you aren’t keyed into this stuff you’d never even know it happened. 

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Yes I suspect there's more breeding going on in my tanks even than what I catch. 

And I know at least in the last week I've  seen two different tanks have angels spawn, the bronze corydoras have laid eggs, and I've caught the congo tetras spawning. Oh and the rainbowfish are doing their dance every morning because its a big enough school that someone always has eggs but thats just rainbows. Am I actively trying to raise babies of any of these fish? Not right now. So they are being left in community tanks and eggs are getting eaten. Any eggs that make it to fry are also getting eaten. But could some fry make it? Maybe. I mean a few make it in nature so I gotta figure the odds aren't  horrific when the adults are being kept fat and happy being fed daily in home aquaria. 

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  • 4 months later...

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