Just what the title says–just wondering what percentage of fry make it to adulthood. I have much fewer than I started with. I am sure its normal as some of the crooked ones have died. I was going to put them down anyway as they grew and I was sure they were deformed.

Some of my survivors are getting quite large, and just in the past few days they have begun to color up! They are just a little over a month old.

hmmm..I donno..much..about goldfish...i'm jux a begginingr

Not to be rude but if you dont know the answer, dont post. It clutters up the board and wastes time.

Sorry, just wanted to bump this back up as I never did get an answer. Anyone know?

I am certainly not an expert but I'll share my experience.

I had 24 fry and now, 7 weeks later, I am down to 2. So about 10%. I believe Koko had around 10 fry her first time around and ended up with Konig and his sister whose mouth is deformed somehow.

When my fish spawned it was a total surprise. So perhaps if I was more prepared, more would have survived? (Didn't have a heater, the tank they were laid in was infested with parasites, etc). But it seems like I had heard around 10% was expected?

If someone knows for certain, please correct me if I am wrong.

It just seems to be an extremely hard thing to do- breeding. I wasn't prepared . 2oo eggs. Almost all hatched (that was the easy part). At least half deformed. Half died every water change. After the first month down to 25 fish. 7 fish made it to 5 weeks, 5 of them with floating problems. Finally 2 made it and then I lost them both to some illness.

Of the 20 that I saved on day 1, I have not had a single one die, and its been 19 days. Ill keep you updated.
No incident of parasites or anything.

Hmmm without culling & enough food for every fry, I'm sure the survival rate is quite high. I've read an article in rearing ranchu fry that someone woke up in the morning suddenly finding 3000 eggs, and only about 20 or something died from mishandling and dropsy. The person culled the fry a few times, halving the population each time.

So based on that I'm sure that the survival rate of the fry is pretty high given u've got the resources to rear them all.

Let me see if I can find the article...ah here it is:
http://geocities.com/greenngoldsg/diary/babysitter.html

I would guess that there's a rather large learning curve involved? The more you did it, the better you'd get and the higher survival rate.

Obviously the breeders that d_golem is talking about are going to have a much higher percent live than, say, someone like me who came up from my basement and had to make a thread here called "What Is This In My Tank?"!!

I wonder if Ranchugirl or Koko or some of the other breeder types around here would have a better idea?

Indeed that more experience means better survival rate.
According to the article though, the 3000 fries were the guy's first spawn. The difference was that he spent money & take care enough that 99% of the batch survive till first culling.

Another thing to keep in mind too, is the parents. Think about the fact that the normal "run of the mill" GF we get in the petstores are culls. Offspring will most likely inherit some of their parents defects, some of which can be crippling, and cause the fry to perish. When Tangera and Miranda spawned, I had some that died on their own from things like swimbladder problems, backs, etc. But the majority had to be culled for obvious problems. Out of probably 50 eggs that hatched, I only ended up with Spud, Solo, Puck, and Spoonie.

Don't know how many eggs there were in the beginning, but I'm sure there were hundreds. Now I'm down to seven fry who seems to be doing just fine!

he was raising them in green water, that makes a big difference.

The article doesn't say anything about greenwater. Besides, what's the point of using greenwater when keeping fry, when the greenwater only blocks up the view?

THe reason for green water, I would think, is that there are literally thousands of food items in that water, particles that we can't even see with the naked eye, and perfect for a 2mm small fish.
And sometimes it is better to breed "mutts" than highly bred fish. It is similar with overbred dogs and cats - there are so many messed up generics in there that the die off rate is rather high, mostly because of defects that just pop up so much more in overbred fish.
Shubunkin are most definetely much more stable fish than for example a phoenix egg or a highly inbred ranchu strain. Its amazing how many ranchu fry you will get with different stages of dorsal fins, even though both parents are ranchu and don't have any dorsals.

I agree that greenwater will provide constant food & natural filtration, but the con of not being able to see the fries outweighs the pros, in my opinion

When raising fries in green water, the amonia the fries can produce is relatively low but high enough that the green water colony are able to survive.

If you don't understand examine one of the pictures in that site and you would notice a tinge of green.

So culling and checking of health is relatively easy

Hmm a very light green tinge though, compared to my greenwater culture. Would that be enough to provide enough filtration for the fries, u think?

Of course, the less ammononia, the less green water is need.

Ah! Gotta try that when I try my hand at breeding

First spawn, I ended up with 70+ Kois
Second Spawn end up with 7 Kois and two of them butterflys. Long Story...

Three spawn Today 2-07-06. Ten thousand eggs. (how much do I want to keep).

I had the same question when my guys spawned last year. I took what first appeared to be about 50eggs on some plants and put them in a separate tank to find out I ended up with 300! I had figured at 50 babies, maybe five would survie given i had never had babies before. But 300?? At first none seemed to die, I think it was about a month before I noticed I was losing the odd one every few days. I ended up culling any that were deformed and some of the smaller ones that for some reason did not grow at all. I also noticed it did not take long if any died, for the others to start munching on them and they would decompose overnight quite quickly so no doubt some may have got missed along the way. In the end, I now have 21 but could have easily had triple that had i not been so stringent on culling. It is definately not a fun job. I chose to keep my guys and did not want to be giving them to a pet store not knowing who would buy them. Even at 21, I have too many if they all survive (now just over three months old, none have died for well over a month now) but if they all make it, I am just going to have to build a pond or invest in a few more tanks and keep the males separate to the females. So as for exact numbers, it is hard to say. I think it depends on how healthy the parents were and how strong the babies are.

Karen.