I'm new to breeding- I started last night, after randomly noticing a fry swimming around in my tank! I had just done a big water change and was looking around the tank as I usually do. I saw a drifting piece of poop and was upset that the water change didn't catch it. I was surprised beyond belief to suddenly see this piece of poop swimming! I had no idea that my fish were gettin' down, so to speak, and was incredibly surprised. After about 15 minutes of searching, I managed to round up about 10 fry and put the in a small plastic jug. I thought it amazing that so many managed to survive not only the big water change, but also my 3 fish eating them! After considering it for a while, I decided to go ahead and try to raise them up. Nothing to lose, right?

Anyway, here are the important details: I have 3 young fish of unconfirmed gender (1 black moor, 1 red-cap, and 1 oranda, whom i suspect is the mother). The ~10 fry were placed in a 10 gallon tank last night around 9pm. The tank was filled with the original tank's water, about 40% full or 6 inches high. I have no live aquarium plants at all (which makes it even weirder that I got fry completely accidentally!) so I put some fake plants in to float on top so that the fry at least have something to latch on to.

From what I gather (from this amazingly helpful website!) is that my fry are currently just 2-3 days old. Last night, a couple of them still had little bits of their egg sacs still stuck on them, but those have now gone. Since they're almost 3 days old, I figure it's time to start feeding.

I hear brine shrimp is the way to go. But, there is no respectable petstore in my area, and since i have no car, I can't get to one, so I can't get any brine shrimp eggs to start feeding the fry some live brine shrimp. So, I've boiled an egg, mashed up the yolk, mixed it vigorously with a bit of tank water in a separate vial, and tried to feed a few drops of that, but there is no response from the fry. They all just hang there and have no interest in the egg yolk. I also have fish flakes and Pro-Gold that I could grind up and feed the fry too. I also have some tubifex worms. The petstore that I can go to might have freeze-dried brine shrimp, but I haven't checked. Any suggestions on what to do with my current options?

What if the fry continue to not respond to food? This is why I think the live brine shrimp would be good- the live brine shrimp could just go around and not just sit there to rot (like the egg yolk is doing now).

I also have no aeration or filtration or anything else set up on the fry tank. How important is this? I've noticed a lot of previous posts saying filtration is not all that necessary as long as ammonia/nitrite levels don't spike (ie- get rid of uneaten food, of which I have lots). But what about aeration? will they run out of oxygen?! (but they're so small!) I guess I could attach an airstone, but that's a bit of a pain for me right now, to be honest, unless it really is necessary.

I'd be immensely appreciative for any help, as I'm completely new to this and stumbled upon this completely unintentionally! (From all the posting and directions, it seems quite hard to get fish to spawn and make fry, but I just stumbled upon this!) Thanks a lot!

Hi Kamoji! welcome to Koko's and congratulations on the babies!
I am more than willing to help you in any way I can, you can email at Sorsha02@aol.com

Now, if your fry are only a couple days old, they will not be interested in eating because they may not yet have developed their mouths. So all the yolk you add in their in just polluting their water.

I think it is great that you have them in the 10gallon tank. I firmly believe that happier and healithier fry develop in larger spaces.

They do not yet really need aeration, and when you do add it, you may want to consider an air diffuser. You can control the size of the bubbles to make them very fine and this will cause less disturbances for the little fry.

As you can imagine they will not do very well with alot of current and will get tired easily.

Alot of people raise their fry in shallower waters but I have had success with the newly hatched fry in 20" of water. However, i had plenty of plants in the tank to for them to cling on etc. so you are right on top of things by adding the fake plants

You will want to remove the waste as it builds up with a small airhose and watch out because the little guys sometime sit on the bottom motionless and look like small scratches on the glass.

I can understand your concern with the lack of live food. The fry will usually feed when they are swimming horizontally and the movement of the live foods will encourage them to feed.

Do not worry though, they will eat when they are hungry!

Since you have fake plants, i encourage you to find a way to attach them stationary in your tank. When you crush up foods etc into the tank, it will settle on the leaves like dust particles. The fry will swim over to the plant to munch on these little pieces.

Also, you may want to get algae wafers if you are not already producing your own algae. once it starts growing it is quite humorous to watch them tug on the blooms.

I think that is all i will post for now.
Please let me know if you have any more questions, and please do not hesitate to email me. I am always checking my email and you will get prompt responses
Also, if you havent already checked, i had posted the diary of raising fry with photos that is also in this area.

Best of luck!

Thank you so much for your help! I'm sure I'll have a million questions along the way, so thanks for the e-mail address and all of your time.

The fry are just kind of hanging out all the time; not really swimming at all, just clinging on in one place. Their egg sacs are now completely gone and they're really thin. So I'm worrying that they won't eat anything! But I guess I should stop worrying and trust that if they're hungry they'll find some food by themselves.

Good idea on the algae flakes... Funny that you're bringing up algae-- the reason I was doing a water change last night on my main tank in the first place is because I've been having a bit of an algae problem the last month or two. Turning off the lights all day has had limited results, so I decided to do big water changes every other day. That's when I noticed the fry swimming about!

I wonder if it would be okay to just extract or scrape off some algae from my main tank (there's quite a bit growing in the uptake tube of my under-gravel filter) and throw some in my fry tank. Is this a good idea?

Thanks a bundle. I'll keep trying to feed them!

Yep, that is definetely something you can do, Kamoji. The algae is natural food for them, and very well accepted. And it doesn't polute the water like the egg yold does while the fry aren't eating yet. Give it another day, and they should be happily munching on their food. And don't worry, those little guys actually look like thin little sticks, completely normal....