amoonklein Posted February 5, 2016 I am still pinching myself over the fact that I have teeny tiny fancy goldfish fry. I’ve had male and female goldies in the same tank before, but I’ve never had them spawn… I’ve never even seen the females lay eggs. I was so surprised to wake up last Saturday (1/30/2016) morning to find eggs in the tank. Not just that there are eggs there, but I’m mid QT, doing lots of water changes and keeping a steady 68-69 degrees in the tank. I just figured if that spawning behavior would happen later when the tank has been established for a while and everyone was a little older. Guess not! Ha Overall, I take it as a compliment because I must be doing something right if they were feeling frisky enough to spawn. I was able to salvage 88 eggs from the main tank and moved them into a 10 gallon with a little less than 5 gallons of water. Then I did an impromptu water change on the main tank. Boy are eggs messy and hard to remove. That same day I went to my LFS and picked up a tiny sponge filter, airstone, and Acriflavine (my LFS didn’t have Methylene Blue at the time). I got the sponge filter and air stone set up in the egg tank. It was at about 68 degrees so I thought I’d wait to add my heater (I had to order once since my heater was WAY too big and I didn’t want to cook them). Sunday (1/31/2016) rolled around and I half expected to see most of the eggs (if not all) white because I wasn’t sure if any of them had been fertilized. I half ignored the egg tank and focused on the main tank since I planned on doing another water change to start their 4th round of prazi. While doing the water change, I found 43 more eggs (all stuck to the plastic plants). I carefully moved them to the egg tank with the others and put my total egg count at 131. I added the Acriflavine and twiddled my thumbs… again, not expecting much. Plus the temperature in the tank had dropped to 66 degrees. Monday (2/1/2016). The teeny tiny heater arrived. Yay. When I got home from work I saw EYES!!! So cool. About 40-60 had those cute little speckles inside the egg and I even saw a few twitch. I went and picked up a magnifying glass so I could try and get an up close look. Tuesday (2/2/2016). The egg tank is now at a toasty 75. Got home from work to see that 2 had hatched and the rest of the eggs were twitching a lot more. I left to run a few errands and when I came back 2 more had hatched! By the time I went to bed, there were 8 fry in the tank. Wednesday (2/3/2016). Woke up to 19 fry in the tank and there are still eggs that need to hatch. Went on my lunch break and picked up brine shrimp eggs so I could DIY a hatchery. Got home to find about 36 fry in the tank. They are hanging on to the sponge filter and side walls, with some just sitting on the bottom. Occasionally they will squiggle and jerk around. I set up the brine shrimp hatchery which felt like a cool science experiment… hopefully some baby brine shrimp will be ready to go just in case these guys get hungry. Thursday (2/4/2016). I think I have between 35-40 fry. It’s hard to keep count. About half are swimming horizontally and darting around the tank with the other half still hanging onto tank surfaces. I checked the brine shrimp and it looks they are ready so I put just a tiny amount in the tank to see if there was any interest. There was!! Several of the fry are interested and will stalk the brine shrimp. It is such a trip to watch them try to eat. I can also see that their bellies are full of brine shrimp since it has an orange hue to it. Friday Morning (2/5/2016). I left the brine shrimp in the tank as they are still buzzing about and the fry are still following them around trying to eat them. This whole process has been absolutely fascinating. I can’t wait to get home tonight and see how they are doing. I will continue to update on their progress. Thanks for reading, and of course, any and all comments/suggestions are welcome as I am open to feedback on what I can be doing to better help these little guys have the best chance at becoming healthy happy fancy goldfish. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DawnMichele Posted February 5, 2016 Congratulations!!!! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FishyMandy Posted February 5, 2016 Congrats on your babies! It's so fun to raise them and watch them grow, lots of work but very rewarding Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
amoonklein Posted February 5, 2016 Congratulations!!!! Congrats on your babies! It's so fun to raise them and watch them grow, lots of work but very rewarding Thanks, Ladies! It's definitely a lot of work, but I'm having such a great time watching them. I hope they keep it up and get to be big strong water monsters <3 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SweetMamaKaty Posted February 6, 2016 So fun! Be sure to take lots of pics, it's amazing how fast they change. My main suggestion on the brine shrimp hatchery (and maybe you're already doing it this way), is to have two going, 12 hours apart. That way you'll never be without a batch when you need it. And even though it's scary, be sure you do daily water changes. That fresh water every day and plenty of food are the two main things that will grow them big! Mine also spawned during prazi, and I've read several other accounts of the same, almost like the fresh water helps that along too. I forget the exact age, but somewhere in the 2-4 week range, you'll want to prazi the babies too (without salt). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
amoonklein Posted February 6, 2016 So fun! Be sure to take lots of pics, it's amazing how fast they change. My main suggestion on the brine shrimp hatchery (and maybe you're already doing it this way), is to have two going, 12 hours apart. That way you'll never be without a batch when you need it. And even though it's scary, be sure you do daily water changes. That fresh water every day and plenty of food are the two main things that will grow them big! Mine also spawned during prazi, and I've read several other accounts of the same, almost like the fresh water helps that along too. I forget the exact age, but somewhere in the 2-4 week range, you'll want to prazi the babies too (without salt). Thanks, Kathleen I have only 1 hatchery going right now, but I did get some more supplies so I can run two at once like you suggest. I'm hoping to get that set up tonight so I can have a constant food supply for these hungry guys! I also have a turkey baster and last night I started slowly sucking up the eggs that didn't hatch. Tonight I'll start sucking up the remnants of their brine shrimp smorgasbord. Thank you for the heads up on the prazi treatment. Right now they have .3% salt in the tank. When the time comes for prazi, would I remove the salt and do prazi by itself and then replace the salt when the prazi treatment is over? I think I read somewhere on here that salt concentration could be at .3% for the first 4 months and then wean them off gradually? I'll need to double check that. I'd love to hear what others have done so I'll start perusing through some posts too Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SweetMamaKaty Posted February 6, 2016 (edited) You know, I'm not sure on the salt. I didn't purposely salt them, but I never rinsed my brine shrimp so they were in some amount of salt because of that. Shameless thread spam - my thread if you are interested. I asked a lot of zero knowledge questions and people answered them. Edited February 6, 2016 by SweetMamaKaty Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
amoonklein Posted February 6, 2016 You know, I'm not sure on the salt. I didn't purposely salt them, but I never rinsed my brine shrimp so they were in some amount of salt because of that. Shameless thread spam - my thread if you are interested. I asked a lot of zero knowledge questions and people answered them. OOOOO I LOVE shameless thread spam! Thanks for the linky. I'll take a peek Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites