Rube_Goldfish Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 I have some Apistogramma cacatuoides fry that I have been trying to feed with Sera Tropical Flake food ground up in a mortar and pestle. I think it's working, at least a little, because they're about a week old, maybe a few days more than that, but if I'm being honest it's hard to tell. It's a community tank so Mom has them under cover a lot, and when I spray a cloud of powdered, ground flake in their general vicinity I lose sight of the already hard to see fry. I tried to culture infusoria using the method described in this video starting at the 1:38 mark: Twenty-four hours in, it smelled sort of bready, because of the yeast. Seventy- two hours in I went to feed it into the tank but it smelled bad, sort of like a garbage can ready to be taken out. Not gag-inducingly bad, but just moderately bad, if that makes sense? Anyway, that spooked me from feeding it in, and at this point I'm wondering if they're too big for infusoria anyway. Should I just toss the culture? I think the community's recommendation will be baby brine shrimp, at least for these week-ish old fry. I've never hatched BBS; is the Ziss hatchery really worth the money over a DIY hatchery? For the next batch of newly-hatched fry, should I just use commercial powdered fry food like Easy Fry and Small Fish Food? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 My note on the infusoria culture smell, is just DONT SMELL IT. It smells like what it is, rotting vegetation. Ive never tried a DIY BBS hatcher so IDK. I do like Easy Fry and Small Fish Food, or a Repashy powder for fry. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rube_Goldfish Posted January 22, 2023 Author Share Posted January 22, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 10:49 AM, Theplatymaster said: My note on the infusoria culture smell, is just DONT SMELL IT. It smells like what it is, rotting vegetation. Ive never tried a DIY BBS hatcher so IDK. I do like Easy Fry and Small Fish Food, or a Repashy powder for fry. Thanks! So it should still be safe to feed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theplatymaster Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 id say look into the culture, if you can see little white dots and worms and whatnot moving around, those are what you are trying to feed, and it will be fine, otherwise you might just be giving your fry water. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rube_Goldfish Posted January 22, 2023 Author Share Posted January 22, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 11:50 AM, Theplatymaster said: id say look into the culture, if you can see little white dots and worms and whatnot moving around, those are what you are trying to feed, and it will be fine, otherwise you might just be giving your fry water. Fair point! I'll have to get the magnifying glass out, then. But at least there won't be anything foul or unhealthy about it, so that's reassuring. Thanks again! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nik_n Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 Regarding DIY brine shrimp hatcheries; they are not hard to make and work just as well. I have used them in the past and got great results, just make sure it's constructed properly. You can use boiled egg yolk as an alternative to infusoria in the early stages of fry development. Powder food works just as well, but BBS are by far the best food. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schuyler Posted January 22, 2023 Share Posted January 22, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 8:49 AM, Rube_Goldfish said: So it should still be safe to feed? That's always my fear. Am I feeding them out just muddying the water? Definitely following to see what other people say Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rube_Goldfish Posted January 23, 2023 Author Share Posted January 23, 2023 For the record, I chickened out on feeding the culture so far. It still looks pretty cloudy, cloudy enough that I can't see any organisms. I'll see what it looks like tomorrow, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tolstoy21 Posted January 23, 2023 Share Posted January 23, 2023 (edited) Apisto fry can take food larger than infusoria right away. I would go a local fish store or petco/petsmart and get some frozen baby brine shrimp. Thaw a cube out in some water and shoot a bit in the direction of the fry with a pipette. That's probably the easiest solution. Infusoria will work, but the fry will want something more substantial soon. And congrats on the fry! Edited January 23, 2023 by tolstoy21 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rube_Goldfish Posted January 23, 2023 Author Share Posted January 23, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 8:26 PM, tolstoy21 said: Apisto fry can take food larger than infusoria right away. I would go a local fish store or petco/petsmart and get some frozen baby brine shrimp. Thaw a cube out in some water and shoot a bit in the direction of the fry with a pipette. That's probably the easiest solution. Infusoria will work, but the fry will want something more substantial soon. And congrats on the fry! ORD but thank you! I've been using the turkey baster to try to target feed the ground flake food, so I guess I wasn't totally off-base. I've got frozen adult brine shrimp, frozen blood worms, and some San Francisco Bay brand frozen food mixes, but I'll try to find the frozen baby brine. And I guess I'll start trying to watch my own! Related to that last point: the other fish in the tank include honey gouramis, sterbai corydoras, and cardinal tetras. Do you know if they're too big to be interested in BBS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tolstoy21 Posted January 23, 2023 Share Posted January 23, 2023 (edited) On 1/22/2023 at 8:33 PM, Rube_Goldfish said: Related to that last point: the other fish in the tank include honey gouramis, sterbai corydoras, and cardinal tetras. Do you know if they're too big to be interested in BBS? Tetras will definitely eat baby brine, in my experience. Not sure about the others. The only fish I've seen ignore BBS are Oscars (for obvious reasons) and Zebra Acara (not sure why, but I have never seen them take any). Every other fish I keep will eat BBS. I feed a little bit of it to all my tanks on a daily basis. Edited January 23, 2023 by tolstoy21 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rube_Goldfish Posted January 23, 2023 Author Share Posted January 23, 2023 Again, ORD but thanks. Okay, that basically settles it huh? Frozen BBS for now, then learn how to hatch my own! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tolstoy21 Posted January 23, 2023 Share Posted January 23, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 8:41 PM, Rube_Goldfish said: Again, ORD but thanks. Okay, that basically settles it huh? Frozen BBS for now, then learn how to hatch my own! What's ORD? Sorry, I'm getting to that age where web/text acronyms go right over my head! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schuyler Posted January 23, 2023 Share Posted January 23, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 5:45 PM, tolstoy21 said: What's ORD? Sorry, I'm getting to that age where web/text acronyms go right over my head! Yeah Google's not much help there either... All I see is that it's the acronym for the Chicago airport but that doesn't make sense in context 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rube_Goldfish Posted January 23, 2023 Author Share Posted January 23, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 8:45 PM, tolstoy21 said: What's ORD? Sorry, I'm getting to that age where web/text acronyms go right over my head! Sorry! This one is specific to the Aquarium Co-op forum: out of reactions for the day. I'd like to click the Thanks reaction but I've used too many in the last 24 hours, so I have to wait for them to "re-charge", so to speak. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAC Posted January 23, 2023 Share Posted January 23, 2023 As an inside joke we should say 'Chicago O'Hare' when out of reactions. Anyway, my old muck jars of infusoria I used to feed small fry always had a funk to them. For little cichlids though I always went straight for the BBS. When I had cichlid fry in community tanks I also dropped in sinking pellets like bug bites. The tetras and others would let that stuff fall to the bottom and the little cichlids could pick at it for awhile. Not sure how well that'd work with the corys I. The tank. Congrats on the spawn! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schuyler Posted January 23, 2023 Share Posted January 23, 2023 On 1/22/2023 at 11:05 PM, MAC said: Not sure how well that'd work with the corys You could probably use algae wafers that way for corys 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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