CPD Breeding... because why not?

[jwcarlson]

The remaining 8ish CPDs are doing well.  A couple lagging behind, but they are eating well now.  The ones eating BBS are nearly twice as big as the lagging ones.  Hopefully they'll start taking BBS soon. 

 

Spawned a pair again today, focusing on cleanliness, limited handling of the eggs, and got them in methylene blue right away. I was discouraged when I saw the female was slim, but only saw a couple of eggs. 

Then I flipped over the algae and found a jackpot.  

[Guppysnail]

I recently started to get the San Francisco strain of BBS eggs from brine shrimp direct. They hatch out at about half the size of my coop brine shrimp. The adult fish do not go for them much due to them being so small but they will eat them. The CPD fry can eat them much earlier. I have not intentionally hatched CPD since I’ve started using these but I found a few hatchling in parent tanks and the smaller bbs did wonders. 

[jwcarlson]

I've heard that they're smaller, I'm almost surprised that's possible because the freshly hatched ones seem really tiny.  At least some of them do.  Tough to sort though. 😄

 

I'll have to pick some up for my next batch of fry.  Two failure hatches is making me feel like a big ol' failure.  But I think I've got a good shot here on this one.  I think my goal here is that they can passively breed.  I'm not sure there would be a big market for them locally, but I suppose there could be.  This all started because I wanted to make sure the female didn't die from not laying, really.  Though I have found raising them 'manually' to be interesting and not a huge amount of work.  I think I've decided I was feeding fry powder WAY WAY too heavily and also that I was mixing it too well before pouring it into their breeder box.  I think initially that's a good plan, but I think some of them were simply not interested in the powder when it was so well mixed.  I have started just twisting a toothpick with a little on the tip and it leaves bigger chunks and those fish are MUCH more interested in it that way.  They look like they'll be big enough to eat BBS soon.  BBS feeds SO much cleaner.  I've also added 4 MTS to their enclosure to eat the gunk that piles up on the bottom and that seems to have also been a pretty good idea.  They eat all the extra stuff.  And I don't think they'd bother anything as long as I wait until the fry are free swimming.  I could see them eating eggs or the nearly motionless fry.

 

Thanks for the SF BBS suggestion, Guppysnail! I've been a fount of good ideas for me the last couple days. 😄

[Guppysnail]

ORD 😍

my first few failed also but once I got the hang of it it went smoothly. To passively breed I use moss and fine floating plants like guppy grass and densely planted. I only usually see surviving fry when I start feeding sera micron to the parent tank. Then if I look a few times daily I’ll see fry scooting along the edge up top in back. But if I’m not feeding micron to the parent tank I seldom get fry but it does occasionally happen 

[jwcarlson]

Another total failure.  I think the breeder box is too stressful.  I'll have to totally clean the 10 gallon and spawn them in there again with limited vegetation so that I can get back to the original conditions of my first one as that was the only successful spawn at all.  It's pretty disheartening, honestly.  The only thing I can think of at this point is the breeder box prevents them from successfully fertilizing.  Perhaps the male is too cagey or something.  Maybe give it another whirl towards the end of the week in the 10 gallon.  

Still not sure that answers why the eggs just basically... disappear.  This last set did not look like they were fertilized.

 

The first batch has five or six like this and two that just are not growing.  I don't know how they're alive.  Also not sure what's wrong with them, but they're just getting bigger.

Edited April 11, 2023 by jwcarlson

[Guppysnail]

Is it just the lighting or photo that they look clear and pale? My kids look dark from about a week after free swimming. I’ll grab a video when the lights come on if a little one I grabbed out of the parent tank last couple days in March. 
Yours seem to have nice full bellies. My CPD go through a phase right about the same shape as yours that they seem to take forever to outgrow them all of a sudden they look like regular fish shape. 
I supplement with sera micron until they have the full fish shape and lose the fry look. 
add video

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Guppysnail

[jwcarlson]

I've wondered about their color as well.  The main tank has a white background and they're obviously in a clear breeder box.  So I don't know if that factors in.  They never really had much color at all.  The most color they had was before free swimming.  These are about a month from egg lay.  In person, you can see their fins.  But I've still got decent eyes, so sometimes I can see a bit more than others can without being aided by magnification.  There's certainly a color difference (between mine and yours in the video), but when I put the adults in this tank they get pretty pale/light colored, probably because of the very light background.  As soon as I drop them back in their main tank, they color right back up.

Yours does seem to have a bit more color, but it looks slightly bigger than mine as well.  Mine had some mottling about 4-5 days before they started hopping up onto the sides of the box.  By the time they were free swimming there were less colored and now that the ones that are eating are on BBS, about the only color they have is the orange in their belly.  I'm still feeding a little Sera Micron 2-3 times a day in hopes that the two tiny ones are eating something and I'm not noticing it.  I don't know the answer to why they're not growing.  They swim around and look at the BBS and I have seen them mouth them a couple times.  I... think... I'm seeing them eat some micron, but it's tough to tell.  They're the same age as these ones pictured, but they're about 1/3 the size.  I would have thought they'd be dead by now, honestly.  Maybe they got 'sick' or somehow damaged when I lost a bunch of other ones a couple of weeks ago.

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by jwcarlson

[Schuyler]

Have you tried the spawning cup method?

[jwcarlson]

On 4/12/2023 at 7:35 PM, Schuyler said:

Have you tried the spawning cup method?

I did in the main tank and briefly in the spawning 10 gallon.  But was too much other stuff.  I will totally empty it and use some sort of shallow dish, I think.  Otherwise hunting them with a pipette is actually kind of fun.  My daughter had a blast.  Made my eyes ache though. 😂

[Schuyler]

On 4/12/2023 at 7:01 PM, jwcarlson said:

I did in the main tank and briefly in the spawning 10 gallon.  But was too much other stuff.  I will totally empty it and use some sort of shallow dish, I think.  Otherwise hunting them with a pipette is actually kind of fun.  My daughter had a blast.  Made my eyes ache though. 😂

Picking eggs is so tedious... Do you have to pick them out or can you just move the whole container to another tank?

[jwcarlson]

I can do *whatever*.  The struggle with fertility makes me want to go back to the way I originally did it.  So I'm thinking I give the QT a thorough cleaning and then put a small dish with some plants in it and try it that way.  

[Cmike15]

On 4/13/2023 at 6:37 AM, jwcarlson said:

I can do *whatever*.  The struggle with fertility makes me want to go back to the way I originally did it.  So I'm thinking I give the QT a thorough cleaning and then put a small dish with some plants in it and try it that way.  

Seems good, I was thinking of moving fish around a bit and this would give me an extra tank to raise fry too. I had been quarantining fish from seperate places. Years ago with a tank full of java moss i was getting fry all the time but i wasn't as good at feeding them.  Good luck with whichever way you go. 

[jwcarlson]

Tomorrow might be telling.  I have just 7 fry left and haven't lost any since the big die off a couple weeks or so ago.  The five big ones are doing quite well and the two stragglers just today started to take BBS finally.  It will be interesting to see if they ever amount to anything.

Hopefully they and the rest of the tanks in the basement (apistos and community tank) make it.  Our youngest daughter (5 years old in a few days) took a little tube of flea/tick cat medicine and squirted a little bit into the breeder box, the main tank the box is attached to and who knows what else.  I'm exceedingly disappointed.  Not to spiral here, but we adopted this little nugget just before she turned two and had her for at least half a year before that.  We have two other older kids who would have never dreamed to do the stuff this little one does... she wakes up and chooses trouble daily... 🤣  

Here's a picture of what tipped me off.  I had just fed and was about to do a water change/bottom vac on the breeder box and tank it's hooked to anyway.  But I happened to see this.  Poked it with tweezers and it behaved like oil.  Sucked it out in both containers and the bubbles broke and left a sheen on the top of the water in the bucket.  I have no idea what to expect.  The fry seem fine now, but who knows what the next couple days might hold.  *sigh*

She says she didn't put any in the apisto tanks, but I found a lilypad with two holes burned through it like maybe she put a couple drops in and hit the pad instead of the water?  Guess we'll find out soon enough.  😕

I t

[jwcarlson]

No noticeable effects from the flea and tick treatment.  I did lose a huge blue shrimp the next day, but it was probably relatively old. 

I am down to six fry from my first spawn.  I moved the tiny little one that never really grew yesterday into a jungle tank where the parents are.  Sink or swim for him.  He wasn't liking what I was selling.  His tiny buddy started eating and is growing well.  Eating BBS well now.  Can see him in one of the pics. 

I spawned a pair again in the 10 gallon and only got maybe 20 eggs.  The good news is at least a few of them hatched and got beyond the tiny white tadpole stage, but now I cannot tell if they're still there or not.  Tough to tell without pulling the breeder box and that's a pain.  I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.  The eggs appear infertile in large part?  I am perhaps continually grabbing the same male, but that seems pretty unlikely considering there's four of them.  Though I do just catch the easiest one, so maybe that's saying something. 

Last spawn setup:

 

The fry from tonight.  They always seem stuffed with BBS.  

 Can see little fella here.  

I am surprised how "interactive" the fry seem compared to the parents who are very skittish even in a tank I can barely see them in.  A product of being in there feeding them multiple times a day plus a nightly water change?

[Guppysnail]

I pulled a few photos from my journal for you. I do not see an appreciable difference in my hatch tank setup than yours. I kept mine at 75 degrees. I did squeeze sponges from everywhere often. By the time mine took a fish shape it was good and ugly as you can see from the last photo. I encouraged mass microfauna. 

[jwcarlson]

I have good enough eggs that I can tell they largely do not look the same.  There's an "egg" inside the egg.  Two spheres that are visible on viable eggs and most of mine have a tiny little white line at the bottom like that inner egg is collapsed (perhaps because not fertile).

I, too, keep it at 75.  I should maybe give them several days?  Perhaps the fertility is a function of their comfort in the tank?  Though I will say, the male seems plenty excited to have her to himself pretty much right away. 

One other change I haven't thought about is that I think I gave the female a day or two by herself before adding a male.  She looked plump again tonight, maybe I will move her over and let them give it a shot again later this week.  It doesn't really hurt anything. 

I would agree that our setups don't look particularly different.  I might eventually get frustrated enough to do the squeeze in and let it go method, but have been pulling them to a box to monitor.  It cannot be any worse than the now hundreds of eggs that have gotten me zero fry over the last weeks. 

[jwcarlson]

I'm really at a loss here and cannot for the life of me figure out what's going on.  I haven't had a free swimmer since my first batch and that's now been hundreds of eggs.  I'm also down to three fry and another that will be dead within a couple of days probably.  They're just stopping eating.  I think tomorrow I will put them in with the parents and see what happens at this point.  I'm tired of having dead fish, honestly.  

I've still been doing nightly bottom siphons and swapping containers every few days to a week.  Doing 50% water changes on the main tank (with aged, preheated water) once every few days.  Testing water 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, <5 nitrate.  Though this is concerning, I also can barely get eggs to hatch.  The last batch of about 20 that I had got maybe 2-3 to hatch into the clear tadpole looking stage and then it's like the vaporize.  There's nothing in the container with them that's visible with the naked eye.  Though perhaps something microscopic is killing them.  But even then, the fertility rate of the eggs is near zero.  I don't understand what caused the switch to flip.  I spawned a pair again a few days ago, left them in the main tank for three days.  Didn't mess with the egg container, but I have zero feeling that anything viable will come out of it.  I only saw an egg or two, but I didn't move any of the moss around to look in it.  Logically this won't make a difference.

I just cannot figure out what the deal is.  Part of me wants to say it's a genetic issue, but that's extremely lazy.  I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong.

I've got some guppy grass and a few MTS in the box with them... maybe that's a big no-no?  The snails keep the bottom very clean.  Perhaps they've also vectored parasites?  I don't think that answers the issue with the eggs, though.

Guess I'm just bummed.  I went from "what am I going to do with all these?" to "well, I'll double my adult numbers" to "not a single one is going to survive"... kinda stinks.

Anyone have any bright ideas?

[Schuyler]

Maybe the female needs more alone time?

How many females and males do you have?

[jwcarlson]

In the main tank it's no good.  Four males and one female.  I don't know that she really lays in the main tank, though it doesn't seem hectic for her.  But I can't watch it every hour, obviously 🙂

That might be a good point though... everything is cloudy at this point, but I do think I initially gave the female the tank to herself for a day or maybe even a couple days before I put a male in with her.  But I might be confusing attempts.  

It wouldn't be a bad idea for me to put her in alone for a week and then see what happens when I drop a male in after some stretch.

 

I think I'll give that a shot.  Maybe she's not receptive to the male and she might be laying in spite of him, but not... spawning with him.  That's certainly worth a shot, thank you!

[Lowells Fish Lab]

On 5/2/2023 at 6:42 PM, jwcarlson said:

Anyone have any bright ideas?

One of the first times I bred CPD's I was doing well with a young group of 40-50 and then overfed them and caused what was measurable as a nitrite spike. Over a week or so I lost every one of them, even after cleaning up the water. I have a better understanding now of what happened and how I could have dealt with it but at the time I was devastated and convinced they were the hardest thing in the world to breed. They aren't, not at all, but it can feel like that when things go wrong. My best advice is to take a pause, let the tanks stabilize, let the fish relax, and try again in a few weeks. Breeding fish is a lot of fun but it's emotionally taxing when things don't work out. No one wants to care for living things and then watch them die despite their best efforts. They will spawn again, eggs will hatch again, and I'm betting the next time you get a good group growing, it will turn out better. If your intuition says "last time I fed too heavy," then go a little lighter next time. Trust yourself. you're paying attention and you're learning, even if it doesn't feel like it.

[jwcarlson]

I ABSOLUTELY overfed at one point and lost a good number kind of all at once.  I hadn't thought that those effects would still be "shaking out".  So that actually makes a lot of sense.  It's really hard for me to know how much to feed with the fry powder.  

Appreciate the reply!  My failing usually makes me more determined.  It really bugs me when I "senselessly" kill a bunch of creatures and that makes me want to make amends for my mistakes, if that makes any sense.  

[Lowells Fish Lab]

On 5/2/2023 at 7:16 PM, jwcarlson said:

I ABSOLUTELY overfed at one point and lost a good number kind of all at once.  I hadn't thought that those effects would still be "shaking out".  So that actually makes a lot of sense.  It's really hard for me to know how much to feed with the fry powder.  

In my opinion, absolutely they can still be shaking out. If it's any solace, though I would categorize CPD's in hindsight as one of the easier fish I've bred so far, there is something about them that is really irritating. For the most part they refuse to eat off the ground or the water surface. They want to eat out of the mid column which makes a dry food almost the hardest possible thing to feed them. It has to be right in front of their face and to make things worse, you need powder in front of tens of faces simultaneously. All that adds up to necessitating routine overfeeding that you then have to clean up after and hope you don't kill them in the process. The nitrogenous waste, the bacteria blooming all around the uneaten food, it's really a fine line to walk. You can find that line, get into culturing infusoria, or prep a smallish space full of plants and mulm and let that environment grow infusoria for you. There's many ways to approach it.

Another thing I'll mention, albeit cautiously, is my opinion on nitrite poisoning. I say this just hoping I have the "science" right. As I understand it, nitrite binds to hemoglobin and essentially ruins the fish's ability to oxygenate its blood. As opposed to ammonia spikes which can kill fish quickly, nitrite poisoning can kill them slowly over many days. They can still die on you days after you've removed any measurable toxins from the water because it's still bound to their blood. I've also read that methylene blue can be used effectively to treat nitrite poisoning, and have done so myself with very positive results. I don't dose methylene blue directly, I just do a water volume appropriate dose of ich-X that contains some amount of methylene blue. I use ich-X all the time in quarantine. I know a normal dose won't kill fish, I haven't found it to kill my beneficial bacteria, so I just capitalize on it having some of the chemical I want. I don't personally know how to dose pure methylene blue into a tank in a safe dose. I've carelessly messed with filtration on a tank of cichlid fry and then caused a nitrite spike. I went from losing a few fry a day to an absolute halt in deaths immediately after getting some ich-X in the water. The fry grew up fine, no stunting, it was a big relief. Again, I say this cautiously because I don't want to steer you wrong. It's just my understanding, my anecdotal experience, and maybe something to keep in the back pocket. If anything, just take away that in my experience, a mistake made two weeks ago can absolutely be killing your fry today. That, and failing with early batches of fry also drove me crazy and is probably the reason that fish now run my life. 

[jwcarlson]

The three fry got plopped into the parent tank a few days ago.  They're doing well, they started pal-ing around with the adults right away and they're not being harassed.  So far so good.  

 

Female is by herself in the a separate ten gallon, will give her a week or so and see if they breed again.  

Thanks for the support the other night.  I do not get "depressed" even if things go poorly, but I do not like... Failing.  I don't mind the failed spawns, but losing the fry has really bothered me.  Though, I think I have learned a bunch and the Ich-X knowledge bomb will be very helpful should I ever need it. 

[TheSwissAquarist]

How has the CPD breeding worked out @jwcarlson? 

[jwcarlson]

I never really successfully raised fry other than my first batch.  For some reason, the eggs never really hatched again.  I cannot pin-point what the problem might be.  I tried iterations just leaving the parents in a tank alone for a few days and not messing with the eggs.  Then separating them again.  Absolutely no luck.  I did get like... 3 tiny ones at the wall clinging stage.  I was leaving for a bit so I sucked them into a pipette and put the parent tank, which is a total jungle.  I mean, I went about 3 months without really seeing a CPD.  The good news is... some have survived outside of my efforts.  So there's now at least 10 or more in the parent tank now.  At best, I contributed three of those.  There's at least a few more, but it's hard to see them.  

I went down to idle on basically all my tanks, not really burned out.  But certainly bummed out with the continued CPD failures.  And my apistos have also been total failures.  I'm planning on trying to find some people looking for male Hongsloi.  They're beautiful fish, but of the three pairs I bought, I got only one female.  I've had three in a 55 and they actually get along really well.  They're neat fish, but I'm really wishing I had another pair... what if one of these is sterile or something?  Either way, I wanted to give them a big break, so I cut the BBS and just let them recover.  They're ramping back up now, though I do not think they've spawned yet.  But the female is in breeding colors and has a beautiful rose colored belly that she's showing off to him a lot.  Also found out my male is way to big for "apisto caves".  So I added a small terracotta pot and chipped a bigger hole in the bottom and she seems to be favoring that cave and they're both in there sometimes.

Anyway... CPDs, I haven't really done much with since the last post.  I idled down all of my BBS hatching too.  In the last month or so I've gone back to one BBS hatchery going again so feeding all the possible breeding fish BBS twice a day about four days a week.  And been doing lots of cleanout of the CPD breeding tank which was just a plant catch-all for the past several months.  I believe one of the babies that did survive is a second female CPD now since I only had one before.  So I'm hoping that two females with one male will end up being better for fertilization/breeding.  They seemed to harass each other quite a bit when it was just 1:1.  

Thanks for asking, @TheSwissAquarist 🙂  I haven't given up, but I did absolutely settle everything down.  Hope you're doing well!

Edited October 27, 2023 by jwcarlson