Three weeks ago, i had 100 lil bundles of joy. After 2 weeks, i transfered them to a 15gallon tub filled halfway with a small filter. After a week, a lot of fry started dying. On the avereage, 2 a day. I was so devastated that i took drastic action and placed them in a smaller 2 gallon pale. I only got 48 left out of the 100! I was so sad at that time but i still continued on to raise my lil fry.

To my surprise, they were doing a lot better in their smaller container. No fry died til now, and they were growing a lot quicker. The reason...with the smaller container, they were able to find the food better. Simple solution to my big problem. Wow! They are growing much quicker now and much fatter.

Did any of you had the same experience?

This is really weird. My fish laid eggs 3 times in four weeks.

The first batch was on January 9 with 100++ eggs

The second batch was on January 16 with 50++ eggs.

Then, they bred again this morning, with around 20++eggs!

This is getting out of hand! I don't have any containers left for my baby fry.

So far, i've got 10 big ones and around 90 smaller ones. I don't know why but these 10 of my fry are growing at an astonishing pace. I separated them from the rest of my fry and to my surprise, they grew even quicker! What could this be caused by?

Mailbox, your problem is most likely water pressure. Those little guys can not handle much of that at all in that stage, and the filter, as small as it was, caused a current that was too much for the fish. And the more water is, the higher is the water pressure on their tiny bodies, even with no filter at all. The only recommended filtration for small fry is a sponge filter, set that way that only one or two bubbles come out every second. Everything above that is too much.
I experimented with my betta fry like that, and had the most success with them in very shallow water with a sponge filter. I asked an experienced betta breeder (the lady from Bettatalk.com) about it back then, and she explained it to me.
The bigger the fry get, the more water you can add. One inch at the time, literally. ...

Thanks for the info

The water level is now only around 5 to 6 inches.

One thing I also noticed is how much smarter the bigger ones are. The really slow ones have a hard time searching for food and you have to literally put the food in front of them for them to eat. The other ones that grow a lot quicker look food nonstop. I think this is also the survival of the fittest.

I had to separate them into 4 containers and grouped them by size. I placed all the big ones in one bucket and the smaller ones in another. This didn't help at all. When i mixed them all up, putting small ones with big ones, to my surprise, this worked!

When i mixed the big ones with the small ones, the small ones would copy what the bigger fry did and grew much much quicker. What do you think? Is this just coincidence?

Because they are still colorless, you can see their swim bladder filled with air! Looks really silly.

How old should they be til i stop feeding them brine shimp? They're literally eating me broke.

You can feed them flakes and pellets(crushed)that your goldies are eating or you can buy those fry foods in powder form. How big are they now?

The biggest already have a dorsal fin and you could just make out the anal fin. They're more than 1cm long and is very goldie shaped now. They would eat flakes and mircon flakes now but the really small ones still have a hard time adjusting. Is eating flakes a good sign?

I don't know I only started feeding flakes like a week ago.I always feed them baby brine shrimp,peas or live tubifex worms I'm sure you know that not all of them will survive.Like you said,survival of the fittest.Good Luck with them

Thanks for the luck. They're doing great til now and i hope most of them survive. I can see 10 that will definitely make it because they're the biggest.

They're 1 and a half months old already and some of them are beginning to look like goldies, finally! Some are getting a blackish coloration. There are still around 40 fry in a 2gallon tub...what would be the ideal container size for these lil' fry?

Mailbox, I would give them at least 10-15 gl for those 40 at this point. That way they can continue their growth spurt with bigger water volume. Remember, the water is not gonna be all the way to the top, so you are not really having 10-15 gl. Try to find a 20 gl rubbermaid container, its a lot cheaper than a glass tank, and any filter you are using right now will also fit for the rubbermaid. You can raise the water level over time and can use that rubbermaid for quite a while....

Ok, will get to that ASAP. I have a 15 gal tub. I used to put my fry there til they started dying one by one. The reason was that they were too small to find the food in such a big container. But now with them a lot bigger, i guess now is the time to move them back.

They are now growing big. The only prob is their body shape is not that, well..."cute". They're long and you can't see that they're fat unless you look at the top. I hope they look like their parents. They already have scales. When will they have color?

I think they start getting colour around 6 months old, A friend of mine told me that when i was trying to work out how old my fish were when i first got them, so i don't know how accruate that is as i have no experiance myself.

Good luck raising all thise fry,

Rachel

My frys are 18 weeks old and only one fry is getting some color.He's a bit white,yellowish and a little black The other two are still goldish

Wow. That's going to be a long wait. Most of my fry now have scales that are really shiny. They're also starting to grow fat like all fancy goldfish . Will be transfering them to a bigger 15g tub soon. They still eat brine shrimp but are capable of eating flakes and crushed pellets.

It sounds so exciting mailbox, congratulations on rearing so many fishies.

Mailboxck, don't you have any pictures of your fry?

Good Luck looking forward for some pics