Marbles?

[plunket]

Evening all
Haven’t been on the forum for some time – Happy New Year everyone – great to see so many interesting threads to catch up on
Am just getting ready to try another spawning and have set up two 30l nanos – one to hold my males while I condition up the females and the other for spawning and to raise some fry (hopefully!)

Here’s my question: someone suggested using a layer of marbles as substrate. The reasoning is that they are basically sterile so won’t polute and the eggs fall between them out of reach of the adults. Theoretically, this sounds great, making it possible to have multiple spawnings over several days without worrying about the adults eating the eggs.

Anyone tried this or have any thoughts on practical implications?

Thanks in advance :lol:

[BallAquatics]

In many aquarium books and magazines, you will see marbles being recommended as a breeding substrate for egg scattering fishes.

The catch with that is, CPD’s don’t spawn like typical Danios scattering eggs to and fro. That said, if you provide them with a bit of moss or a spawning mop, they probably won’t care if the substrate is made of marbles or not.

Give it a try and let us know how it works out!

Dennis

[plunket]

Thanks Dennis – will give it a try and see how it goes.

[plunket]

Hi all – been just over a month since the great marble experiment and thought I’d post an update….and pose a few new questions :lol:

On the whole, it’s been a success – I now have 2 x 30l tanks with about 90 fry in total – set up looks like this:

Nursery on the left – this has about 60 fry and the breeding tank on the right with the marble substrate. This is where I kept the adults – 3 females and 2 males – though I’ve now returned them to my main tank. I did this about 10 days ago, and now have about 30 “swim-up” fry, hatched from eggs that must have been left when the adults were taken out.

What I found was that syphoning from between the marbles into a clear, flat-bottomed glass bowl, I was able to easily see developing and newly hatched fry. These I could then transfer to the nursery tank with a turkey baster. I did this each day for about 2 weeks, finding about 5 fry on average per day.

I also transferred the Java moss in the breeding tank to the nursery tank and this yielded a further 20 or 30 babies.

I’ve been feeding a combination of liquifry and infusoria, and the fry now look like this:

My concern now is how long I can keep them in these small tanks??

My main tank is 260 litres (68 gal?). My plan is to have this as a dedicated CPD/planted tank. At the moment it holds around 100 cherry shrimps, some amanos and 15 adult CPD’s….I’m just not sure when it will be safe to move the babies to the main tank?? Any advice??

Thanks

[BallAquatics]

That’s fantastic, thanks for the update on your project. Also, congratulations on your fry.
@plunket wrote:

My concern now is how long I can keep them in these small tanks??

I keep my fry in the breeder set-up, (5.5 US gallon tanks), for the first 30 days. Depending on the number of fry, I like to do daily water changes of up to 90%.

@plunket wrote:

….I’m just not sure when it will be safe to move the babies to the main tank?? Any advice??

I would think any where around the eight week old range should be big enough to go into the main tank. Under optimal conditions, your fry should be sexually mature and around 3/4 adult size at 12 weeks old.

Thanks again – Dennis

[plunket]

Thanks Dennis – that’s about what I had in mind, though I didn’t anticipate doing waterchanges at that rate or volume…

To be honest, I’ve been doing 10% twice weekly since I set the breeding system up, and using normal tap water as I don’t have an RO unit :roll: As the babies grow though, this will become more important – might be time to get a bit more organised!

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