I know there's posts on this, but I was still wondering if someone had a list of requirements for fry care. (Tank, filtration, foods, water changes, ETC)

My fish are makin babies like it's going out of style, and I have at least 60 babies in a breeder box in my tank. I know they need to be moved to a regular tank, but will someone please tell me what to do? Oh, and they're not sticking to the sides anymore so I fed them some "First Bites" and they ate it...

Oh-uh, surprise, surprise!
- 10-20 gl tank
- sponge filter
- piece of airline tubing for water change

Thats basically the basics - the 10-20 gl tank will do fine for now, and a sponge filter is the safest for them - no getting sucked up in an intake tube and filter.
I don't know "first bites", but if its fry food, it should be good to feed. Otherwise there are frozen brine shrimp eggs at Petsupermarket, I liked them much better than having to hatch those eggs myself (well, not literally, but you get the point )
Water changes need to be done carefully, and an airline tubing is perfect for it. That way you don't suck up any fry accidentally. Filling in the new water too fast is a big no-no - the rushing water can crush them, and slight differences in pH can kill them. The best way to do it is fill up a bucket with the new water, have it sit above the fry tank, and the new water gets back into their tank via an airline tubing. It takes longer, but is much safer.
And one more point for feeding - twice a day is not enough for those little guys. More like 5-6 times, but smaller meals are better. You even can get some green algae from an existing tank, or grow algae in a bucket of water out in the sun. Or try to get some soft leaved plant, they love that too.
60 babies, hmmmm?? What are you planning on doing with them?
You know, the subject of culling will come up eventually. Are you prepared to do that?
New babies, YES!!!

Ok. Thanks Andrea... will get the 10 gallon set up ASAP... now i'm gonna try to figure out how to make a sponge filter. I have enough crap laying around, I should have all the stuff to do it!

Yeah, First Bites is fry food by Hikari or something. It's tiny tiny little pieces of food, and so far they seem to like it. Do you know how much I should feed approximately 60 fry? The food itself is aobut the consistency of very fine sand. Just a pinch?

Also, I don't know if I can grow any algae..... too cold outside, and no room inside! Maybe I'll put a tupperware in the window with the lid on... would that work? I have cats, so I can't exactly leave it open or they'll drink it. <_<

As for the culling...... yeah, not looking forward to that at all. When do you do that? And how do you know what ones to cull? Does it HAVE to be done? I feel badly, but if it's something I have to do, I'll do it.... or make Jon do it. Do you just use clove oil or waht?

And, nope, I don't know what I'll do with the survivors..... send em ALL to you, how's that sound????

Thanks for all your info, oh wise one.

Erika

Hey congrats grandma!!!!!! You just got yourself another award!!!!! We'll be calling you the" General" in no time~~~ Have any idea who Mommy and Daddy are???

I know who mom is. I only have 2 females in that tank and I saw the bossy boys pummeling her around the other day, then yup, eggs ALL OVER THE BREEDER BOX NET!!! I just about died when I saw where she put those eggs! So I just turned the net inside out and put it back on the box, so when they hatched they were already inside of it.

As for who dad is..... Oh GAWD. Could have been any (or all!) the boys. Dad is either Moby (very good possibility) he's my 9 inch fantail, Tang (another very good possibility) he's my 7 inch fantail, or it could have been Bella (yup, she's a HE), he's my 5 inch blue oranda.
Mom is Miranda the Oranda..... er, whatever she really is. She's a red capped oranda, but she doesn't have any cheeks or wen at all really. She's my super mutt!!!

I'm excited to (hopefully) grow these babies out. Should be interesting. I hope Bella fathered at least some of them.... baby orandas!!

I don't have a filter though that I could put in the tank for them. I read Andrea's sponge filter post, but I don't have a powerhead, and I'm broke as a joke. I'll have to figure SOMETHING out.

What are YOU laughing at butthead?

There's way too much um......"goodtimes" happening at your house!

You know it baby! Oh yeah. Just the animals though.

something you might find useful, to avoid fluke infestations killing off all your babies add aquarium/sea salt in the tank at 0.3%. mine were dropping like flies and i was only left with 8 fry. i put some salt in and i still have 8 now and that was about 4 months ago. the only downside is that eventually you'll need to ween then off the salt. its not hard though. good luck, hun!!

Cool, thanks Amy, I was wondering if they'd be able to tolerate salt at all. I'll add it slooowly. I'm gonna get them set up in the 10 gallon tonight.... gotta take Caeleb trick or treating first.

Here's a question.. how come I can't use my Penguin filter and just cover the intake with some floss or something?

Orrrr, does anyone have a sponge filter recipe that doesn't need a powerhead?

Erika, I get the cheap sponge filters for a few $$s at the petstore, and as long as you have an airpump, thats all you gonna need. Airline tubing goes into the sponge filter and to the airpump, thats it.
If you could turn down that Pinguin of yours to only a minimal suction, you could use that. I don't know if you can do that with a Pinguin though. Otherwise you might find half your fry trying frantically to get away from the suction, and that is very stressful on them.
If you can't grow algae, you can either try finally crushed spirulina flakes or peas, or tearing off a few leaves off an anacharis and almost liquifying that.
As for culling, I would just look at them in a few weeks and pick out the ones that are severly disformed - crooked body and missing fins. I know it is hard to do, but you can see it as giving the healthy ones more space to grow and thrive. The deformed ones only take away space, and most of them will not make it into adult hood anyhow. ...

Thanks Andrea!

The fry are officially in a 10 gallon tank with an airstone.... sponge filter is on it's way. So far I've only seen about 3 dead ones, and the rest seem to be faring well. I overfed them last night, but I won't do that again. One of them has red eyes. Weird. I don't have any gravel or anything in there just a handful of javamoss for them to hide in although they don't really. I'll update you all later.

Sounds like the perfect nursery to me!

Well, the babies are still doing awesome (suprisingly!), but I've been doing everything right. I've only had maybe 10 casualties, and I still have a swarm! They're bad during water changes though, cuz I'll be sucking poo up from the bottom with my tubing, and they just aren't afraid of it at all! So needless to say I've sucked a few up, but I use a white container so I can see them then I put them back in and they're fine.

Now, they're a little over a week old. When can I start feeding them crushed up ProGold?! I want these little buggers to GROW!! They are growing though, I'm just getting anxious to get them on some real "goldfish food".

Oh, one problem I'm having is overfeeding. I never feed them the right amount and it seems that there's always extra on the bottom that they like to graze on.... is this bad? Cuz when that happens, I'll skip a couple feedings and they just eat that.

Here's some pics!

Another...

Last one...

awww! look at 'em! they got big ol peepers, dont they!

take good care of those little buggers! ill be wanting one when they get big enough to ship out! ive got a twenty gallon thats just sitting in my attic waiting for a reason................

paul

Hmmm... it's been over a week since these babies were born, and I still don't see dorsal fins on ANY of them. Is this normal, or could mom possibly be Herbie, my lionchu? The babies tailfins are very small and their backs are starting to show more of a curve. I crushed up some progold very fine and put that in there and they seem to like it. I can't believe how well they're doing!!!

So how are those guys tonite? It just totally amazes me on how fast these babies grow!! I was also surprised to see just how small they begin their life too,because goldies are such chubby piggies-you would think that their babys would look like chubby baby goldies piggies!

They're doing well, thanks Devs..... I'm starting to notice some deformaties, but only on a couple. I know the bigger they get, the more I'll notice though. They're definetly interesting. Jon's even interested. He said something last night about how fast they're growing. It's neat. It's like having Sea Monkeys but waaaaay better! HAHAHAHAHA

I was thinking about that.....I think that's kind of hard. The culling part. With anything that I've ever had have babies, nature just kind of took it's course.Maybe that was wrong of me-maybe I should have tried to put them out of their misery. You can't always tell that there something wrong though at first-and by the time I did,it was usually over. I've watched the betta babies,and so far I'm watching the five cory babies,and it's been totally awesome to see the transformation of this tiny little squiggle to these miniature versions of the adults! hahaha I'm actually seeing little cory barbells(whiskers for those not sure) and it's so cute!!!! With your goldies,it will be like wow...will they all look alike? What are the colors going to be?? You'll be having alot of fun until the "{who wants a fish-I have no room" Auction comes up!

Uhhhh, yeah, you'll want at least one, RIGHT?!

What's a baby cory cat look like??????? How sweet. Those little guys are among my favs.

mine too. I had planned on trying to take pics of them today,until my computer started acting up!!!!! UGH!!!!!!!

Wow.. I want fry now!!! hehe

What kind of deformities do u c?

So far the only thing I've seen with deformaties are crooked backs....... just on a couple, but who knows when the get bigger what I'll see. They're getting bigger! I was able to see fins last night, the little arm fins (LOL Paul).
I have yet to see dorsals though.

Errika that is great news!! New grandma.....hahaha.
I will be watching to see how all this goes. Someday I have aspirations to breed but not now.
Good luck with them.

Oh man, it must be Spring Break Cancun over here. Fish are spawning for the 4th time in the past 3 weeks!!!!! I don't have any more room for fry though, so I'm letting nature takes its course.

What I did when I had my fry in the tank during water changes I used a small tube - like that goes to your air pump. It takes a while but it keeps from sucking the babies up - it also doesn't cause much disturbance at all. I also added the water back this way so there was no change in the water temp.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing in the fry tank. The main tank takes care of itself now. The eggs don't even get a chance to hatch, they're eaten up by the loaches and goldies about as soon as they're laid. Plus, I don't have any gravel in there anymore, so the ones that spill to the bottom are eaten up immediately as well. I'm gonna take more pics of the fry tonight.

Yea,those sexy mama's of yours just keep reelin' them in!!!!

Erika i would like a baby to when there ready.

Woo-Hoo Erika!!!! one down---59 to go!!!!

how big are your babies now mind are getting bigger i have at least a hundred of them

Oh, I don't have a hundred!! I bet there's 50 though, and they're about this big ------------> ...... So theyr'e growing!!! Good, now who else wants one??!!

chubbybabygoldiepiggies that's a good screen name! ROFL

quote=errrika1979,Nov 10 2004, 12:13 PM]
Oh, I don't have a hundred!! I bet there's 50 though, and they're about this big ------------> ...... So theyr'e growing!!! Good, now who else wants one??!!

[/quote]
ROFLMAO

i want a little blue humpy lionhead fantail oranda with no wen fo sho!!!

LOL.......................

Jillian's been paying attention!! Wouldn't you all freak though if they were blue phoenix egg fish? The genes are all there...............

oooooooo

*drools heavily onto the keyboard*


blue egg phoenix's, huh? and you say the genetics are there? you know, i didnt even think about that but, your right, huh? cool.

yeah, i dont care what mine looks like, as long as its healthy, everything else will be icening on the cake............. well, i do want them to at least have P E C T O R A L fins though!

Hahaha, yeah, I was wondering if you'd reemmber that!! You crack me up.


Well, I'm not sure what a blue phoenix egg fish is genetically, but............

Mom was either an oranda or a lionchu. Dad was either a blue oranda or a fantail...................?

You're lovin this aren't you????

Yeah,I guess I am! It doesn't take much does it? I want to see the latest pics,or did I miss them while working?

No, I havent' posted any lately, it's so hard since they're still so small, but I'll try some later.

<-------------------------------------- love the new phrase under your name!!!!!

you guys are great. what the heck would i do with out you?


oh- yeah. work.

HEY Emilio just said we could have another goldfish - if it's from you K!!! YAAAAAY lolol i have no business getting another goldfish. i'm 1 overstocked as it is in my 10.

Well, get another tank Holcum. Geez. Get like a 55 gallon, and I'll give you 5 babies!! Hey, don't say "Oh, I don't have enough ROOM!" either. Cuz I don't care. Just take some of these fish!!!!!

i'll put all 5 in my 5 1/2 gallon with my betta and tetra. how's that?