Uh, Something In The Water?

[okimavich]

I've got an Aulonocara Stuartgranti "Ngara" and Tropheus Duboisi holding eggs.

There's also a Labidochromis Caeruleus that appears to be holding, too, but at 1.75", I doubt she's old enough to hold full term.

It also looks as though my Cyrtocara Moori is ripening and will be ready to lay eggs soon. Hopefully she'll hold to term, this time.

When are the checks done with mouthbrooders? It'll be at least 2 more weeks before any one of them will spit out . . .

 

[Steve]

Dude,

I've got L. caeruleus and Cop. azureus fry (yeah, I should confess to everyone: the female didn't really eat the fry . . . oops), and I've got A. jacobfreibergei (swallowtail - the F1s I got from Gerard at a CCA mini-auction last year) holding, as are Prot. Insignis and Pseudo. polit.

I have no idea where I am going to put these fish.

I think, although I haven't looked at the rules, that the fry have to be swimming to count . . . that is, eggs are nice, especially scrambled, but they don't count.

Steve
BTW, *Loved* the Rumsfeld kungfu.

 

[okimavich]

Yeah, but when does the first check happen? Before or after they spit out? Part of the check is to see if they are indeed mommies, right?

Any, I don't know if I have enough eggs for the Flametail. When I tried to move the female to a smaller holding tank last night, I caught mom, dad and dad's other wife. Of course in a panic, the female spit out the eggs into the net. <_< When I pulled one of the females and put her in a container, some of the eggs fell in with her. Guess what? Wrong female. She promptly scooped up the eggs and swollowed. :angry:

When I finally got the right female with the four eggs left in the container and then into the holding tank, I don't know if I will have any left to check. The eggs were gone this morning, so hopefully she's got them stowed away.

I guess I'm going to have to be satisfied with the hundreds of little amano shrimp to released in my little 20G tank any day now. :lol:

 

[Steve]

John,

Para 6.a. says first check comes "after release of fry in the case of mouth brooder" (hmmm, should that be hyphenated?).

I, too, have had the traumatic experience of trying to net a brooding female (must . . . resist . . . urge . . . to make . . . joke) only to end up feeding the other fish in the tank. One thing I've had good success with lately is using as big a net as I possibly can in conjunction with a large container, with the object being to herd the female into the container. Who knows? This could be extrapolating from insufficient evidence, but this seems to be less stressful for the fish . . . at least it has worked to date. Although, I should also say that I always try to leave the females where they are for at least a week, partly to get them in the habit of holding (and defending) the eggs. I suspect that new mothers might be more likely to spit out eggs that those with a mouthful of wrigglers.

Fwiw,
Steve

 

[Larry-T]

What is the thought about removing the eggs and incubating them artificially? I used to maintain a tank of 15-20 adult red-fin obliquidens (Lake Victoria) and every two weeks I would net out every fish, check the females for eggs, and if there were eggs present I would put them in a container with water, acriflavine, and an airstone for incubation. The only problem I had was that with the quantities I had, I exhausted the local market.

 

[okimavich]

I've tinkered with trying to setup a tumbler for some of my more skittish fish (ever have a C. Moori literally spit eggs in your hand?). But I didn't have the time or patience to do it then. Maybe when I get the fishroom setup correctly with my new central air pump, I'll look into that.

But it sounds like Pat could use a few tumblers with his albino Eurekas.

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

What a way to enter the world : Spit out.
NICE!

 

[Larry-T]

I found an easy way to set up a hatcher. I have a few Rubbermaid containers that are about 20 Gal. They're on the bottom shelves so the top is very accessible. They're also heated. I take the depleted cartidges from my Tap Water Purifier and empty the used resin and clean them out. I put one of the caps on the bottom, sealed with sealastic and set it in the corner of the container with a flat rock anchoring it in the corner. It's filled with water a little higher than the surface in which it's set and all I do is add airstone, acriflavine, and eggs. I regularly hatch cichlid, catfish, and goby eggs in this contraption. I've had as many as three of them going at once.