Spotted Congo Puffer First Fry

[nabokovfan87]

@Cinnebuns This might be of some help for you!

Very cool project, nice results.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

I pulled5 spotted congo fry from the first version of my auto egg harvester german breeding ring combo when i was resetting it today. I decided to add in paramecium and a few syringes from the copepod tank to the initial grow out ring i moved them to. Hopefully some of the food in there suits them and they get to growing quickly. There is a selection of snacks to pick from now. 

The ring that is attached to the harvester. For scale the nylon mesh on the bottom is 153 microns (0.00602 of an inch)...ao we have a ways to go

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

At the very least they are feeding on newly hatched copepods at the moment. That dart up to the left is always fun to capture

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Breeder of the year award 2023 coming your way soon! 😂

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

The use of copepods and rotifers to back up paramecium seems to be working.

I am feeding a large volume of paramecium twice per day and use the copepods/rotifers mix of various sizes to sustain them between feedings on this learning experience.

I siphon 5 seconds through an airline tube out of the copepod culture into a rotifer sieve. I then rinse the copepods rotifers and whatever else is the sieve with tank water into a container and then feed that into the german breeding ring housing the puffer fry.

There is hopefully enough food in the ring of various sizes to try and provide unlimited opportunity to feed daily and also to try and document the feeding preference progression as they grow.

Im pretty sure this one was giving that deal of equal size a try.... That fry ought to do just fine if thats the case. The faint barely visible white lines are likely the paramecium due to the level of zoom this required. The white rice grain looking things are in the copepod mix culture.  

My idea is that the extra food either makes it out of the ring and into the 40 breeder or the puffers eventually eat it one way or another. I feed a ton of extra paramecium to make sure the puffers get enough and to potentially feed the copepods who then feed the bigger puffer fry (in theory anyway).

The spotted congo puffer fry all day buffet style of feeding strategy

 

 

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Have you been co-authoring stuff again @mountaintoppufferkeeper??😅 

Nice Job! 
https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/top-10-pufferfish

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@TheSwissAquarist no but they had me at pufferfish of course 🙂

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

The system of paramecium and rotifers/copepods seems to be working . Its hard to appreciate the size of these fry. Everything you see in this photo is microscopic. The balls moving across the bottom are seed shrimp i believe

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

That pond snail really puts them into perspective size wise 

 

 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Today there is a noticable size increase in 3 of the 5 fry this run. I took a decent clip of copepods being on the day 11 menu. Top back spotted congo must have zeroed in on a tasty one there. 

 

[nabokovfan87]

See @Chick-In-Of-TheSea much better than worms!

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

@mountaintoppufferkeeper you need to stop on by

and add a post 🙏

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

On 7/14/2023 at 2:57 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

@mountaintoppufferkeeper you need to stop on by

and add a post 🙏

Definately. Posted 🙂

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Today was day 1 if brine shrimp. The 4 remaining from 5 should raise up using the usual puffer foods now. 

Edited July 15, 2023 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[nabokovfan87]

Have you ever tried small shrimp for the puffers? Especially neocaridina shrimplets are so small it might be a really good food for them. I'm not sure if you've ever kept shrimp?

Really interesting to watch them do their thing.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@nabokovfan87I have had shrimp in the past. I never considered shrimplets as an option for fry of appropriate size until you mentioned it. I think that could work 🤔

[nabokovfan87]

I'm not sure of the nutrition compared to the BBS. I would imagine you could feed the shrimp to preload them with vitamins the same way they do with bugs for reptiles. Spirulina brine. Etc.

Interesting, but just depends on the shrimp colony.

Edited July 16, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

You are getting such great footage @mountaintoppufferkeeper!  They are so cute and curious.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@nabokovfan87 Variety, the spice of fry life maybe. Im not too sure on nutrition values either but I bet it would be some benefit. The shrimplet sizes matching the puffer could be a challenge. 

@Chick-In-Of-TheSeaThanks kindly. The photos and video are primarily why I replaced my older phone with a Samsung S23 Ultra . My intention was to get better video and photos of fry (if I was fortunate enough to have more fry); it gets much more use as a camera and "handtop computer" than it does making or recieving calls. 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 7/15/2023 at 11:39 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

Today was day 1 if brine shrimp. The 4 remaining from 5 should raise up using the usual puffer foods now. 

That last GIF is a bit like me chasing duckweed. 😂

Congrats on getting them this far! 

[Preston John]

@mountaintoppufferkeeper get job. I’ve only ever lost one between this point and 55 days old. It does get a little more tricky when you’re raising 600 at a time, but not too hard. 

 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

On 7/17/2023 at 2:52 PM, Preston John said:

@mountaintoppufferkeeper get job. I’ve only ever lost one between this point and 55 days old. It does get a little more tricky when you’re raising 600 at a time, but not too hard. 

 

@Preston John much thanks. Im getting there slowly on the food size timeline for my setup here.  I figured once to eating BBS reliably it would be the same process as the Pao palustris from then on.

Ill have improve my paramecium, rotifer, and copepod culture skills a bit more for 600 at a time. They have been very rewarding to learn from to this point of growth. 

[mij]

@mountaintoppufferkeeper any tips on hatching the eggs?  my puffers started dropping eggs this summer, every 2-3 weeks.  I put the eggs in a container floating in the main tank with a few drops of methylene blue.  I've had 4 batches and nothing close to a fry, the eggs always turn white after a few days.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Puffer signal recieved @mij. I defer to @Preston John for all things spotted congo but i have had decent success having just one bunch of plants and putting those plants and eggs in the plants  in a breeding riing to hatch naturaly no MB.

 

When I have done the container and MB it was with palustris. I ran an airline and rigid tube to keep a little flow and break the surface tension. I also added cube of the badness absorbing polyfilter cube (to absorb any badness) 12 to 24 hours after starting it for a visual on water quality and add a new cube every 12 hours and pull the oldest one about every 24 hours (or as needed) while eggs and fry are present. 

Polyfilter cube after 12 hours ish

Polyfilter cube corner air flow about 1/2 way up the container works for me and about that rate of bubble

 

[DanielBlub]

Hello guys, 

my name is Daniel and i am from germany. Pls excuse me for my bad english, but i try my best.

I try to breed the puffer fish too. Currently I managed to get 7 of him big on the first try. These are now 8 weeks old. On my second attempt, I only got 2 large larvae out of over 300, they are now 4 weeks old. I also feed parameciums in lagre quantities, but i think that still wasn´t enough. Do you habe a trick for geeding a lot, wihtout polutuing the water too much? The pichtures shows how i try to breed them.