A wild question

[NanDiscus]

There are now about 80-100 fry grazing on the parents very nicely.
Xingú F1's on the way.

Nandi

[Paul]

Originally Posted by NanDiscus

There are now about 80-100 fry grazing on the parents very nicely.
Xingú F1's on the way.

Nandi

Well done Nandi

[NanDiscus]

Originally Posted by Paul

Well done Nandi

Thanks Paul! It was them, not me.

[NanDiscus]

This morning -just before the lights came on- I still had about 70-80 fry. About two minutes later there was about half as many. Something happened to the female, and she did the following: The fry were grazing on her nicely, then all of a sudden she backed up quickly and sucked all the fry in that happened to be in front of her, only spitting one or two of them back out. She did it about 3 times eating a lot of the fry, then she stopped just as quickly as she began. It all took less than a minute. Everything is peaceful now and they are munching away on the nice and ripe mulberries I picked this morning.
The fry are growing quite nicely, it is about time to start feeding them new BBS. To my greatest horror though, the eggs I put in the bottle just won't hatch. Weekend mission: get some fresh eggs, start again, lose time. I'm not utterly delighted, I have to admit. I've come to the point where I think it would possibly be better to remove this batch of fry and hand-raise them, leaving the pair to try to go for a bigger batch next time. If all goes well, I will be left with only 15-20 babies by the time they reach 4 weeks, and that's not something I'd call a decent result.

Nandi

[quarr]

Mulberries?!! Excellent!

[NanDiscus]

Here are some pictures I managed to shoot yesterday.:

[NanDiscus]

We're now 16 days from free-swimming and for the last week or so there have been no losses of fry at all. All the remaining ones - 48, according to my better half - seem happy and keen to feed on anything they find, be it on the bottom or at the surface. The parents have that nice silverish hue to their skins, so there's plenty of food for the fry. There isn't a single one of them with an apparent sign of any illness, which -especially at this age- is a promising sign. I know, nothing is for certain, but hey... B+.

Some pics will follow soon.

Nandi

[NanDiscus]

I know I still haven't posted any pics, but I am tied up with other things most of the time and what time I have I dedicate all of it to my fish. As a result of this I now have 47 fry in a ~15gal tank with hu-hu-huge water changes and lots of food, including newly hatched bs, frozen bs mixed with spinach, fish, Sera discus granules. I am planning to add the OSI spirulina flakes to their diet, but it's a bit difficult to get.

The one worrying sign is that while the babies were still in their "separé" with their parents, they have shown no signs of any gill-related issues, while less than 18 hours after I moved them into their separate tank, they began the scratching against the bottom and the sponge. The interesting thing is, that I can see some of them do it during feeding, but hardly ever in between or after the w/c's. I do want to avoid having to medicate them and keep up with the massive w/c's (2x~70% + 1x15%) and see how it goes. If anyone has useful suggestions, I'm keen to listen.

Nandi

ps.: They were free-swimming on 12, June, now about 1/2-3/8" SL.

[boxters]

i thought mine were doing the same, but when i watched them carefully they were trying to dislodge food. Watch them carefully, are they trying to eat off the sponge?

[NanDiscus]

They aren't really eating off the sponge and I don't think it's just food particles stuck in the gills. By this morning I found many more scratching and turning dark in colour, so I added some salt to the water (~1600ppm) which seems to have eased the irritation a little. Despite that, I'm afraid I have to treat them sooner or later, possibly the sooner the better.
I have both Prazi and Flubendazole at hand - in the pure form. Which one to choose? I'll just go and read up on the topic for now...

Nandi