removing pleco fry from buried cave

[yannachka]

hey all! been super busy with work and haven’t had much of a chance to get on here the last couple months. 

i have some bristlenose plecos in my goldfish tank that breed pretty regularly. the eggs/fry never survive cause of all the other catfish and goldies. my super red male has been fanning the last week or so and when i just checked, there were wigglers that somehow survived at a decent size. im worried they may be too big to siphon out with a standard baster but removing the cave isnt really an option since it is buried

video

dad keeps blocking the cave so i cant get a good photo. id appreciate any advice! the babies are large enough to show color, id say 1/8-1/6 of an inch in range it’s hard to gauge from the small glimpses i get. 

[yannachka]

this tank is kept between 74-76F, i do have a perfect 4g (gets daily wc) i have some rasbora fry growing out in that is covered in algae for them to feast on which is where i plan to move them for a couple weeks to clean it for me

[gardenman]

This is going to sound weird, but have you given any thought to just inverting the four gallon tank over the top of the cave? Make it an aquarium within an aquarium? That would protect them from predation. They'd still have the algae covered tank to nibble on. (Mine aren't big fans of algae though.) If you had some spare largish diameter PVC lying around you could make a feeding/water change tube that would slide under the inverted tank and let you slip some food into the babies. (They love French style green beans.) A straight length from above the water line with a ninety degree elbow and another shorter length going under the inverted tank could let you slide food down the pipe and into the inverted tank and also refresh the water in the inverted tank. Excess water would ooze out around the base of the inverted tank. You could just pump some of the tank water down the tube. The diameter of the PVC would be limited by how much gravel you had in the tank. If you had just an inch of gravel it would be trickier, but a two to three inch gravel bed could work pretty well. It's something to think about.

[yannachka]

12 minutes ago, gardenman said:

This is going to sound weird, but have you given any thought to just inverting the four gallon tank over the top of the cave? Make it an aquarium within an aquarium? That would protect them from predation. They'd still have the algae covered tank to nibble on. (Mine aren't big fans of algae though.) If you had some spare largish diameter PVC lying around you could make a feeding/water change tube that would slide under the inverted tank and let you slip some food into the babies. (They love French style green beans.) A straight length from above the water line with a ninety degree elbow and another shorter length going under the inverted tank could let you slide food down the pipe and into the inverted tank and also refresh the water in the inverted tank. Excess water would ooze out around the base of the inverted tank. You could just pump some of the tank water down the tube. The diameter of the PVC would be limited by how much gravel you had in the tank. If you had just an inch of gravel it would be trickier, but a two to three inch gravel bed could work pretty well. It's something to think about.

the 4g is planted/scaped and is already holding ricefish (not rasbora oops) fry in it. the cave is underneath wood and plants in an inconvenient spot to cover with another tank without uprooting a bunch of plants. im not that attached to the fry if im being honest to ruin the look of my display tank. i appreciate the advice though, im sure in another set up that would work pretty well

[Fish Folk]

First, I’d get a clean plastic storage bin (Walmart style) and siphon out a bunch of tank water into it. Then I’d reach into the tank, lift up the wood, and pull the whole cave out, Plecos and all, and gently set it all into the bin. From there, you’ll treat that like the growout. We added a small bacto-surge sponge filter, a very basic “stay-put” kit-style thermostat (50-watt), and feed the BNPs finely crushed food, zucchini discs, etc. Just did something like this last week. 

[yannachka]

4 hours ago, Fish Folk said:

First, I’d get a clean plastic storage bin (Walmart style) and siphon out a bunch of tank water into it. Then I’d reach into the tank, lift up the wood, and pull the whole cave out, Plecos and all, and gently set it all into the bin. From there, you’ll treat that like the growout. We added a small bacto-surge sponge filter, a very basic “stay-put” kit-style thermostat (50-watt), and feed the BNPs finely crushed food, zucchini discs, etc. Just did something like this last week. 

this is sound advice. i cant remove the cave though, the wood is long and it would uproot all of the plants i have growing on and alongside it. im more attached to my plants (i have them set perfectly and they’re grown in now that the goldies cant uproot them) than i am to the fry as bad as it sounds. the tank is just too established with the plants for me to uproot them for some pleco fry. i think ill just leave them in and what survive survive. appreciate the good advice though!

[Larrimore]

If you're fairly sure you'll lose them to predation, I would go for it with the turkey baster and hope for the best.