APR makes life a lot easier, make sure you keep it in the fridge
though (just a small portion in the fish room or by the fry tank).
The idea is to feed often. This is not as easy with vinegar eels or
greenwater etc. The comment was made that APR is a minimally
acceptable food (or something similiar to that) and that fry should
be moved to brine shrimp as soon as possible. I agree that they
should be moved to brine shrimp as soon as possible but NOT because
APR is lacking. A discus breeder from California proclaimed this
about APR a few years ago but from the info. that I read from the OSI
company this is not the case. Their material is supposed to contain
a lot of fatty acids which is really what the young fish need & is
often lacking in a lot of the other prepared foods. If you let those
fatty acids go bad by leaving it out to oxidize however it won't work
very well after a month or so. Good APR has a kind of smells like
eggs. It loses this smell over time. I do feed vin eels to my fry,
I've got about a 1 gallon or more of the creatures all over the fish
room in various jars. It takes awhile to get a culture going though
so it's something you need to do before you order eggs or find
someone willing to part with a full size culture instead of just a
starter culture. It still takes time to collect and feed them though
so I also use and feed with APR. Just like for adults bows a
combination approach is much better and is often used by those
raising a lot of fish. BTW Wet Thumb aquatics phone # is (810)
725-0960. We have the wrong area code on the web site.
Blue-eyes - however no one seemed to notice that many of the
blue-eyes can almost skip the APR/vin eel stage. The fry are so big
that they really can start eating live baby brine right away.
Something like a gertrudae or a harvey's creek signifer might be a
good start. If you look around you will also find commercial sources
for P. furcatus. I've seen them in several stores lately. That
might be the way to go. As far as I know they haven't started
crossing the blue-eyes (yet).
Assuming that the platys are history we can probably "bend the rules"
enough to hatch eggs in a decorated tank. Do about a 50% water
change when you get your eggs in. You really can't just drop the
eggs into the tank as 1) the ottos might get them and 2) you can't
watch the development, you won't know if they turned to fungus
immediately etc., hatched or whatever. If you can turn your power
filter down, do so.
A good way to hatch a group of blue-eyed eggs in a tank would be to
go out and buy a "net breeder trap". They are about 6"x6" x4 or so.
Bill Benson used this approach to hatch his cyanodorsalis eggs. He
had a Tetra billi-filter that sucked water from outside the net trap
and dumped it into the trap, to ensure good circulation. He adjusted
the whole device so that it was just about 1/8 of an inch below the
water-line. When the fry hatched they swim to the surface and out of
the trap. That should keep your ottos out of the eggs until they
hatch.
Chloramine - it's been in St. Louis for some dozen years, it's not a
problem. You just double your dechlor amount, if you have any sort
of a biological filter the tiny amount of ammonia released isn't even
measurable. If you do measure make sure you use a saliasylicac
(really bad spelling) based kit as your amquell product will give a
false positive with the Nessler's based kits.
Shipping - this really isn't brain surgery and once spring comes to
Minnesota {Cary, isn't that around July or August :-)} it should be
easy to do. I've literally shipped hundreds of boxes of fish all
over the US and most of what I've used is the US postal system.
Express mail is fine for most fish and for 10 small blue-eyes this
shouldn't cost more than about $20. Blue-eyes can be packed more
like killifish using much smaller bags (3 and 4 inch bags) and small
amounts of water. With a small box the entire thing should weigh
under 3 pounds. Post office to addressee rates for that are $17.25
under 3 lbs. Make sure that the shipper does a water change on the
fish 24 hours before they ship and doesn't feed them for 24 hours.
That way they'll be cleaned out for the trip and won't foul the
water. Put 2 to a bag and you should be well within 3 pounds.
Gary Lange
Rainbowfish Study Group of North America
http://home.earthlink.net/~sbuckel/index.html
----------
From: Tim R. Ayers <ayers at ibex-usa.com>
To: rainbowfish at pcug.org.au
Subject: [RML] Newbie hatching questions
Date: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 9:52 PM
Hi everyone,
I am contemplating getting a group of Blue-eyes. I certainly want to
do the right thing and after recent discussions, it is obvious I
won't
be getting them from a fish store. (Not that I could find any
anyway.)
That leaves me with fish from Roy, or eggs from someone like Cary
Hostrawser. Having been _involved_ in other hobbies, I appreciate all
of Roy's hard work. But as a guy with one little tank who just wants
some nice fish to look at, I can't really justify the cost of
shipping
fish. So that leaves me with trying to hatch eggs.
I was reading the article by Gary Lange on the Rainbowfish Study
Group
site about hatching Rainbowfish eggs
(http://home.earthlink.net/~sbuckel/hatch.html) and had a couple
questions.
As background, I have a newly cycled, moderately planted, 15 gallon
tank. It is filtered by an Aquaclear 150 with a sponge "pre-filter"
over the intake. The water surface is very calm. The tank is
currently
occupied by a pair of platys and two Otocinclus affinis.
Gary Lange says to use freshly dechlorinated water for hatching the
eggs. My water is treated with chloramine. Will water neutralized
with
Amquel be okay?
If I trade in the platys on a few more Otos, can I raise the fry
directly in my tank? It was a battle just getting this little tank,
and my wife will have a fit if I get another aquarium just to raise
baby fish.
What do people feed the fry? Artificial Protozoan Rotifer seems easy
enough. ;-) From Adrienne Tappin's description, vinegar eels seem
pretty fool-proof, but Gary Lange says that they are
time-consuming. Which is it? I can probably manage to hatch baby
brine
shrimp, but are they suitable in a tank where I may not be able to
vacuum all that fall into the gravel? (Assuming I can use my tank.)
Please send any other options and advice. I'm excited but intimidated
by the prospect of hatching fish eggs. Thanks for the help.
Hope you have a very nice day, :-)
Tim Ayers ayers at ibex-usa.com
IBEX Object Systems, Inc. http://www.primenet.com/~goat/
St. Paul, Minnesota 612-698-2736