S. petricola eggs!

Post by **Barbie** » 04 Feb 2004, 09:54

What a week! I put most of my petricolas in a 20 gallon, as I could catch them from various tanks, so I could sex them and remove the males to condition just the females, in order to get them spawning. The larger of the groups have been in with my tropheus and on a strictly veggie diet. 3 of my wild females looked quite plump, but they've looked like that since I bought them 4 or 5 years ago, so I just ignored it. I had the marble trap made already, so I stuck it in there and slapped a pot on top to give them somewhere to hide until I got fish shuffled around to make room for the males...

They obviously didn't realize they weren't in condition. There are probably 70 or so eggs in the container with marbles. I've moved all of the adults out, and left just the marble container in there. I added the sponge uplift to keep current flowing over the marbles (hadn't bothered before) and now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to feed the fry on short notice. I have the ecosystems larval diet, and I think I can get my hands on a microworm culture, but yet again, I'm caught not quite prepared. Any suggestions for initial fry food? Heck, how long til the eggs hatch?

Guess now is a good time to go look through the articles again. I've read them 3 or 4 times, but that was back when it was all theoretical!

Barbie

sidguppy · Post by **sidguppy** » 04 Feb 2004, 10:23

THE food for them is fresh hatched artemia nauplii.

And you should start feeding a day or so after hatching; the babies must be "seeking" for food, not just lying on the tankfloor.

Or you'll pollute the water (dead uneaten artemia fry), and the babies will perish within a day.

petricola eggs hatch incredably fast, within a few days! for the next one to three days, the babies just lie on the bottom, only moving ater being disturbed. During that time you can remove all parts of the marble trap; marble by marble.

As soon as all furniture is removed from the tank, start looking for "swarming behaviour", then it's time to feed.

So you still have time to setup a hatchery for brineshrimp-eegs; you'll need it.
It's much "cleaner" food than microworms wich usually are quite polluting, due to the bacteria in the medium.

Post by **Barbie** » 04 Feb 2004, 19:36

I have no problem with hatching artemia, but I was told that the fry won't be large enough to tackle them for a good two weeks, no?

Barbie

pturley · Post by **pturley** » 04 Feb 2004, 20:55

The fry are just like Synodontis multipunctatus only a whole lot smaller. They are a mouth with a tail...

Also, eggs at 80 degrees F seemed to have hatched in as little as 18 hours! (they may have floated around in the marbles for awhile thought). Don't wait to get a mix ready, you'll need it right away.

Post by **Barbie** » 05 Feb 2004, 20:16

The eggs hatched last night, and after hand picking out 200+ marbles, I found a MUCH smaller bowl to use for this. Good lord, what a chore. There were more than 200 fungused eggs in the marble container, and maybe only 50 or so viable fry. The container hadn't had the water passing through it, due to my confidence that I was just "conditioning" the fish, until after they were probably already 12 hours old. Oh well, live and learn. I'll be checking their new tub a couple of times a day now to see if it happens again.

The fry are definitely still working on yolk sac this morning, and just sort of wiggling around. Not sure how these little guys are going to tackle bbs, but I'm going to try it. I figure it will take a few batches of test runs to get it down to a science anyway. Sorry no pictures, my camera isn't up to shots of stuff THAT small with me driving it anyway ;)

Barbie

MackIntheBox · Post by **MackIntheBox** » 10 Feb 2004, 21:19

any updates?

im always curious to hear othe people's experience with spawning fish and raising fry

hope theyre all doing well, any pictures yet?

Armand Ortega · Post by **Armand Ortega** » 10 Feb 2004, 22:44

You can feed also frozen Cyclops eeze.

Congrats !

Post by **Barbie** » 10 Feb 2004, 22:58

No updates, I'm sorry to say. I really wasn't prepared for them to spawn, and the tank was at 84 degrees later that afternoon when I went down and the fry were dead. Terrible learning curve, but hopefully it will work out next time!

I would think cyclopeeze would be far too big for them, as my sterbai cory fry can't tackle them til they are a couple weeks old, and these fry were maybe half that size, no?

Barbie

MackIntheBox · Post by **MackIntheBox** » 11 Feb 2004, 00:35

aw

sorry to hear that Barbie, hopefully you will be more prepared the next time

plesner · Post by **plesner** » 11 Feb 2004, 13:45

Barbie wrote:I would think cyclopeeze would be far too big for them

I use freeze dried cyclop-eeze for all my fry. For the really small ones, I use a minute amount, which I 'rub' through a brine shrimp sieve. I then collect the extremely fine particles and use them for my fry, but I also dip the bottom of the artemia sieve in the tank with my small fry. In that way a small cloud of ultra-fine cyclopeeze gets into the water.

Wood · Post by **Wood** » 13 Feb 2004, 02:14

I would like to know more about the marble trap.

plesner · Post by **plesner** » 15 Feb 2004, 12:01

Wood wrote:I would like to know more about the marble trap.

There's a picture of one in this thread:

http://forum.planetcatfish.com/viewtopic.php?t=4602