Rummynose rasboras

[Natalie is new]

I am the unexpected parent of about a dozen rummynose rasboras. They are so small and seem to be slow growing,  so far. Can anyone recommend food for them? So far I'm feeding them bbs, manufactured fry food, and finely crushed flake food. Honestly, I think they were surviving on microorganisms in my floating plants just fine until I spotting them. So maybe I should just let them continue on as they were? Any advice is appreciated! They are TINY.

Natalie 

Edited August 1 by Natalie is new

[Mr Gumby]

Being a CPD keeper I try and keep a bottle of liquid fry food in stock for just such an occassions.

You could try and get an infusoria culture going and hope the fry survive until it's ready to feed out and also see if you can get a starter culture of vinegar eels and micro worms from eBay or a local fish keeper for when they grow a bit more.

If your fry are similar in size and growth rate to CPD fry I'd say you're about 3-4 weeks from being able to feed live BBS.

Hikari first bites is another stock item in my food cupboard

Good luck and don't be too disheartened if they don't make it as it's always harder when super small fry appear when you're not set up for them.

[Natalie is new]

Thanks for your quick response.  I had been thinking about getting vinegar eels going... So, I just ordered a starter, but the expected delivery is week away. I'll do some research on getting infusoria going too, and cross my fingers. Atleast I'll be prepared for next time.

[tolstoy21]

On 8/1/2024 at 1:41 AM, Natalie is new said:

I am the unexpected parent of about a dozen rummynose rasboras. They are so small and seem to be slow growing,  so far. Can anyone recommend food for them? So far I'm feeding them bbs, manufactured fry food, and finely crushed flake food. Honestly, I think they were surviving on microorganisms in my floating plants just fine until I spotting them. So maybe I should just let them continue on as they were? Any advice is appreciated! They are TINY.

Natalie 

I breed a lot of this exact species. When they first hatch, they require infusoria or paramecium. Most established tanks will have this present in enough abundance to feed a clutch of small fry.  After that, BBS is a good next food. And finely crushed up flake also works. So at this point you're doing great!

Sorry in advance for the long reply, but this is what I have learned after maybe 2 years of breeding this species.

These fish (Sawbwa Resplendens) will breed almost daily, adhering a small number of eggs to your floating plants.  If you want raise a larger number of fry, I would remove any floating plants from tank at about noon, or a little after. Put those in another aquarium for about three or so days (enough time for the fry to hatch), then put that plant back in the aquarium with the parents. If you have a few good clumps of floating plants, just rotate them in and out daily for about a week (making sure each plant clump stays in the 'hatching' tank for about three days). I use floating clumps of java fern to breed my rummynose rasboras. But any floating plant or spawning mop will work. They key with this species is that they require floating plants, and they they don't have huge spawns, but will consistently lay a small number of eggs daily. 

Feed infusoria or paramecium for the first two weeks. If you have vinegar eel or microworm cultures, start introducing those near the end of week one. This is not 100% necessary, but does make for a good transition to BBS. When you can start seeing the teeny tiny fry, put in a little BBS and observe if they start taking it. If they do, start feeding that daily. After a while, move them up to crushed flake. The fish food called Golden Pearls and/or Sera Micron also works very well.  You can start feeding that almost immediately (to feed this early, I use Golden Pearls in the 5 -50 micron size).

Anyway, to end this rather long response, I can usually spawn about 100+ fry in a week's time using this method. Of course, if you just let nature run it's course and leave the fry to hatch in the adult's aquarium, you'll have some survivors which will accumulate over time. Just make to have tiny foods to feed them, like the infusoria or the tiny micron-sized fry foods. 

I have also come to learn that they young fry are susceptible to poor water quality (or at least mine are), so make sure to keep up with water changes. To siphon water out of an aquarium with such tiny fry in it, you can put fine sponge filter over the end of the siphon hose, or a piece of filter pad attached firmly with a rubber band.

Good luck and have fun!

PS - Yeah, they are slow growers. 

Edited August 4 by tolstoy21

[Sammy]

I've used Spectrum, Hikari,  Liquid Fry, even powdered egg yolk... nothing beats an infusoria or paramecium culture for that first week for those Rasboras/ Killies/ Microdevario sized nano fish fry. Higher survival rate, good growth rate, ignites the hunting instinct and smooth transition into vinegar eels and banana/ microworms. All fairly easy to obtain/ maintain. BBS/ Grindal worms to follow that feeding cycle and they grow FAST. Most are micro-predators and just aren't wired to scrounge around or taste-test "floaties".  I even tested it: I have 2 tanks of Daisy's Ricefish that are from the same week's egg harvest and the difference between commercial fry food and live food is unbelievable. Most of the live food tank have been sold but less than half of the dry food tank babies are even close to sale size, some almost 50% smaller than the ones I just sold last weekend. It convinced me to stop spending money and just put in a small amount of effort and patience... it paid off.

I might be weird but I think it's just another fun part of creating, raising and observing aquatic life cycles - I don't see it as work at all.

What a great hobby we have... 😊