Sterbai Cory spawned

[Fresh Princess]

Well I got my Ziss Box set up, put the eggs and fry in there with some moss with a baby sitter (cherry shrimp). Stopped by my LFS earlier to get a check valve, and a cherry shrimp (and walked out with a pair of Rams too), and I asked them if at some point this works out with the sterbai, would they want some. They said yes, not babies though. 

 

[Fresh Princess]

Well one of my little fry is fairly noticable now, I only see the others when they are moving. There aren't really that many, maybe 4 or 5. They hide well amongst the moss too.

So, here's a curious thing that happened today.... The Sterbai laid eggs again today. I grabbed 6, but had to run errands so the fish probably grabbed some too. I will keep watching though.

Is this gonna happen every week from now on?  This is crazy.....

[Odd Duck]

On 10/4/2023 at 1:38 PM, Fresh Princess said:

Well one of my little fry is fairly noticable now, I only see the others when they are moving. There aren't really that many, maybe 4 or 5. They hide well amongst the moss too.

So, here's a curious thing that happened today.... The Sterbai laid eggs again today. I grabbed 6, but had to run errands so the fish probably grabbed some too. I will keep watching though.

Is this gonna happen every week from now on?  This is crazy.....

They tend to be a bit cyclic, and will lay much heavier certain times of the year.  But when they are happy, they will lay intermittently through most of the year in the aquarium, if they have the right stimuli and conditions.  You don’t necessarily want them to deplete themselves, of course.  I try to get them to lay periodically because the girls will get sooooo heavy with eggs they just look tired and I want to prevent any egg-binding.  But fall storms and spring storms seem to really trigger them a lot.  At least for me in Texas.  Summer time is harder to trigger them because I’d have to buy bags of ice to get the water change cool enough to trigger them.  The amount of ice I can produce easily isn’t enough to get my tap water cool enough even when mixed with cool (72-74’F) room temp RO water.

[tolstoy21]

What does everyone feed their Sterbai fry in the initial days? Are they ready to take BBS from day one?

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 10/11/2023 at 7:11 PM, tolstoy21 said:

What does everyone feed their Sterbai fry in the initial days? Are they ready to take BBS from day one?

I am the furthest thing from a "real" breeder, but I have had luck with the ACO Easy Fry Food and clumps of hair algae I've pulled out of the main tank. I reasoned that it probably had tasty microfauna and would provide some cover. I usually start giving them BBS between day 4 and 7 post-hatching, but that's really sort of arbitrary and based more on when I can have a batch ready than anything else, and if I'm being honest, I don't know if they're actually eating them or not (because I made them hard to see with the algae clump).

I think I mentioned this elsewhere, but I really recommend @Lowells Fish Lab 's video on breeding sterbais:

He actually knows what he's doing!