Celestial Pearl Danios - Help? Pretty small.

[Ben_RF]

Hey you wonderful folk.  I was hoping to reach out to you to seek some advice.  Today I received an order of celestial pearl danios from a reputable company that has me a bit concerned.  They are on the smaller size. The two doa that I measured were abit less than 1/4".  I am assuming it is ok to feed live baby brine at that size.  I just don't know. I do have access to green water if I need to be adding it to the tank.

Also should the dealer have included a heat pack?  There was none included and I am thinking that may have made all the difference in the two doa.  Our temperatures here have been in the high 30'f at night and in the day we have been in the mid 50'f to low 60's here on the coast of NC. 

[Ben_RF]

Oh I guess I should also say this is my first time keeping them, so I am a bit nervous as it is.  I have been watching all the youtube videos that I could (including the ones by Jimmy and Corey, which were great).  Also reading up the various articles that I could find.  So yeah already a bit nervous going into them to begin with.  

[Ben_RF]

Oh and I do have repashy soilent green and community blend.  Perhaps that would be a good option to feed just in powder form?  Just concerned that they are so small.

[Schwack]

1/4" would make them only slightly larger than the 6-7 week old CPD fry I'm raising right now.

They're tiny fish when adults, but 1/4" sounds... really tiny. Mine were quite small when I bought them. Probably 3/4" long and drab gray. I was concerned about feeding them, but the people at my LFS advised just grinding up flake/pellets with my fingers until they put on some size. I supplemented that with BBS and frozen daphnia and they've grown and colored up beautifully.

If you've got baby brine on hand, they'll be fine to eat that. Mine have been eating bbs since ~week 2 of life when they were little more than a pair of eyeballs and a tail. I still feed my adults baby brine 2-3x a week. 

As far as temps go... maybe? I keep mine unheated at room temp. Their water temperature sort of hovers between 71-72F. I know temps in the wild can dip into the 50s so it seems reasonable that they could manage a couple days of low temp, but I'm not sure why they would risk fish arriving DOA when a heat pack is such a simple addition.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Schwack

[Ben_RF]

Thats a relief that the bbs they are now munching on is going to be ok.  They just started eatting them. 

[Jollypop4321]

Ditto what Schwack said.  Cpd are impossibly small especially when young. 
when my cpd,s came I had micro worms already on hand as well as bbs.  They grew rather quickly and colored up nicely.   
Im not exactly fond of them right now but that is because they are tiny fish in a large aquarium that are hard to see.  I,ve been thinking of moving them to a smaller aquarium where I believe I could enjoy them more.  They are active little critters and are fun to watch when you can see them. 
Best of luck

[TheNerdyFish]

I've bred cpd and they lived on micro fauna in the tank various live foods and for sure crushed up fish food they are pretty resilient for being such small creatures more live food and variety the better cpd tend to be shy unless you have them with something else when they were in a 10 alone they kind of hid a lot in a group of eight i  put my limia Isla in with them and boy are they bold and out n about now  

[Marc]

I've recently raised about 40 of them. I did not need to feed the little guys live food, they may have found some themselves in the tank but I fed them decapsulated brine shrimp eggs and the Coop's fry food along with first bites. Almost all survived. At about the size you describe or a little before I started grinding up flakes and tetra tropical granules and they did fine.  They will generally only eat food in the water column, so food at the top or at the bottom is rarely eaten by them. I just feed a little bit at a time, but more often at first. They could be easily outcompeted by larger more boisterous fish. I keep mine alone until they are full grown, except for bottom feeders.

I just added my last group of 12 to my main community tank, they'd been babied long enough.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Marc

[Brian]

I agree with Schwack.  The thing I would add ... what size is the tank?  At that size you don’t need them spending more energy hunting down live food.  (It’s that rewards and benefits things). Smaller tank and maybe target feed.  Good Luck 

[Maggie]

I have their "cousins", danio erythromicron, and their small size and shyness is difficult. I havr found fry on water changes and in the tank and put them in a breeder box - the oldest one is now well over 40 days and is just now starting to get a body shape and slight color. And to boot, they're impossible to see from above when trying to net them, and they're like speedy bullets and are very hard to catch.

[Hobbit]

I’m not sure there’s such a thing as too much baby brine... I feed my honey fry exclusively bbs from week 3 to about week 8 or 9. I feed them multiple times a day until their bellies are totally bulging and full. I’ve never kept cpd’s so I may be missing something, but with most baby fish, feeding tons of bbs is the fastest way to put weight on them.

[Schwack]

1 hour ago, Hobbit said:

I’m not sure there’s such a thing as too much baby brine... I feed my honey fry exclusively bbs from week 3 to about week 8 or 9. I feed them multiple times a day until their bellies are totally bulging and full. I’ve never kept cpd’s so I may be missing something, but with most baby fish, feeding tons of bbs is the fastest way to put weight on them.

Only downside I've run into to feeding bbs all the time is a hydra outbreak. Stupid things spring up like weeds. It's worth it to get the baby fish to fatten up though.

[Hobbit]

^true! That can happen.

[Ben_RF]

Since cpd are predators, will they eat hydra?

[Schwack]

37 minutes ago, Ben_RF said:

Since cpd are predators, will they eat hydra?

My adults seem to completely ignore hydra. I've had a breeder box with fry attached to their tank for a few months, and a hydra outbreak started in there and spread to the larger tank. I've been clearing the breeder box as best I can with a pipette, but the actual tank is still full of hydra. I'm in the process of moving the fry into a larger tank so I can totally cut off the baby brine shrimp and hopefully wipe out the hydra.