Cool Fry Basket

[Jumbie]

For those of you who use fry baskets, I thought I should share with you this really cool basket I picked up from Tropical Lagoon last week. I prefer DIY baskets but I really wasn't in the mood to go out and get the materials. I was in desperate need of some fry baskets so I spent the money and picked up a few of these.

 

[iamzrad]

The design is iffy. The way the mesh wraps around the 4 poles is kinda bad because fry can get stuck in between the mesh and pole.

I've seen Gerards fry baskets and they are really cool. You can even have gravel in his! I (think) they are plexiglass with drilled slots and holes for water movement.

 

[dogofwar]

I use a lot of these for growing out fry... as well as hospitalizing fish that get beaten.

They have two achilles heels:

1) Bigger fish can eat / try to eat little ones through the bottom
2) The little plug things that hold the aluminum straps to the tank can pop off...depositing the contents into the main tank.

Because I'm usually draining 4-5 tanks at a time, I sometimes lose track and drain tanks below the nets...

An approach that works for me is to set up a bare bottom tank (in my case a couple of 2'x2'x1' - 33g) with a large sponge or 3 and a box filter...along with 4-5 net breeders for various batches of fry. Not having small fry or gravel in the tank itself makes it easy to clean. Not having big fish in the tank keeps the fry safe. And you can have several seeded sponges for new tanks. Keeping the fry in a net also allows you to maximize the amount of food that fry find and eat (and minimize the amount of food that they miss and pollutes the water).

Matt

 

[Prince]

I lost lost a dwarf puffer becuase of that thing. It slipped below the water line and a DP escaped into my Victorian tank. They scarred it to the point where it puffed up and died. Happened while I was at work. My mother in law tried to save the fish but it was too late.

 

[longstocking]

I like the hard plastic ones Lee makes....

Most fry are large enough... at least from Africa and fish can't suck them out....

They float.... so there is no need to worry about the water line etc...

 

[Cartel]

I have killed a few fry with those when they are too small. Once they have some size on them they work just fine. I really liked the ones I saw at aquafest from south central cichlids.

 

[dogofwar]

For really small fry I use a catch-cup type thing (actually an old HOB filter)...and a little polyfilter in it...

Matt

 

[Jumbie]

The design is iffy. The way the mesh wraps around the 4 poles is kinda bad because fry can get stuck in between the mesh and pole.

I've seen Gerards fry baskets and they are really cool. You can even have gravel in his! I (think) they are plexiglass with drilled slots and holes for water movement.

Yeah I have heard stories of this happening, good thing it has not happen to me. I like to make my own so I could make sure that they don't have faults like this. The plexiglass ones wont work for some of my smaller fry I have.

I have killed a few fry with those when they are too small. Once they have some size on them they work just fine. I really liked the ones I saw at aquafest from south central cichlids.

Yeah man those things work great, I have a few of them from SCC they have good stuff there. I use them for other things like Matt does; I have found that they work great for other thing than just holding fry.