To pull the eggs or not pull the eggs, that is the question.

[Brandy]

Lol, given my abysmal record with the first batch I thought I would end up with 10-20 more and then stop. My family is probably going to kill me...

[Hobbit]

Are they small enough that you can, you know, put some back? 😅 I vote for finding a LFS and selling or donating them—then you can pull fry whenever you want just for fun!

[gardenman]

The survival rate in the wild is a very low percentage, so fish tend to lay lots of eggs. And I mean lots of eggs. In our tanks we can ensure a much higher survival rate, but then what the heck do we do with all of those fish? The Cardinal tetra females can lay upwards of 500 eggs each spawn and if everything's right, they'll spawn very frequently. If you have a healthy school of Cardinal tetras and each female lays 500 eggs and you're able to save all of those eggs and raise them up, you could supply the world with cardinal tetras. The numbers get absurd. Koi tend to only breed a few times a year but a big female koi can lay over a million eggs. You need a pretty big pond for a million koi. The numbers can get more than a little crazy in a hurry. 

[anewbie]

I wanted to comment on the deaths. If there was any uneaten food at the bottom of the ziss basket (even if it is screening) you need to vacuum it out with a turkey blaster because the smallest amount of ammonia can kill the frys. My experience is with angels and not eba but after a while i managed to get about 90% success rate with the first 5 days of free swimming being the hardest. 

-

I used a plastic container that sat off the side of the tank (marina box) for the first 10 days and then switched to ziss breeder box but before each feeding i would vacuum the bottom of any waste and uneaten food as well as any dead frys. 

-

My parents are pretty good but i have them in a large community tank so i let them raise them to wrigglers + a couple of days and then snip the leaf just before they become free swimming. Well I did - i have too many angels so no more saving frys for me.

[Brandy]

In my situation it was more that they were underfed.

I put a couple of shrimp in to nanny the eggs, then once they were free swimming I added a few snails, and because the ziss is constantly refreshing the water with an air uplift and screen sides, my fry were effectively in the 40 breeder, with 40 gallons of circulating water, just restricted from moving around the tank. The only trouble I had in the beginning is that my flow rate was too high, making the fry work too hard and washing food right out of the box before they could eat it. This became more obvious when I moved from vinegar eels (which I can't see) to baby brine (which I could see being washed out of the box).

The ziss breeder box is a crazy well engineered thing. Just brilliant. I do think a valve on the airline to control the flow is a great idea.

[gardenman]

Keeping fry food in the Ziss box is challenging. I use the Fluval/Marina breeder box and food tends to stay in those a bit longer. It's especially good for bottom feeders like pleco fry as there's no mesh on the bottom for food to fall through. I can get a flow as high as a tablespoon a second through the box, so water flow isn't an issue, but the box design lets food linger longer.

[Brandy]

So here we are with the 2 batches of fry heavily overstocked in their tiny grow out (daily 50% water changes, fry soon to be divided). The parents spawned again last night and thankfully not one egg remained by 10am today. 

In the middle of the pic you can see a 2 month old against his one month old siblings. Hard to catch in the photo, but the 2 month olds have the beginning of orange tips on their dorsal.

[Hobbit]

Very cute!! And gorgeous plants. How big is the grow-out tank?

[Brandy]

Currently they are in a 12 gallon cube. the little ones are about the size of a pumpkin seed. The big ones are about 1.5 inches. The plan is to split the little guys across multiple small tanks and return the bigger guys to the 40 breeder if mom and dad will allow. Getting them to sellable size is going to be a challenge, but they are growing fast and well on a diet of unlimited live BBS. I have introduced crushed flake and they have accepted it, but I am leaning heavily on the BBS. This is not sustainable, so I need to move them soon.