HTH
Howard
Once the yolk sack is gone and they can swim they are hungry.
My breeding tank
- Thread starter Shdwdrgn
- Start date
So it appears to take 5 days from the time the eggs are laid, until they are free-swimming (water temp is 68F). I went out this morning and I have a LOT more babies swimming around today. A lot of them are clinging to the side of the bucket, but I also see quite a few sitting in the moss and on the plant roots. It looks like they're probably getting something to eat off the plants. Tomorrow I'll probably drop in some food and see if they take an interest. If they don't, I'll assuming they're getting plenty from the plants.
Anybody got a really good magnifying glass so I can see which ones have whiskers? :biggrin:
Anybody got a really good magnifying glass so I can see which ones have whiskers? :biggrin:
fishin4cars
True friends just call me Larkin
It will take 5-7 months to really see whisker growth. I released my fry at 1 week old into the mud pond. I fed them for four days with newly hatched brine shrimp and mashed up egg yolk, then on day 6 and 7 added green water. Day seven the cooler I was using was starting to smell and I didn't want to chance losing a bunch doing water changes so decide to release them in the mud pond I dug last year and only had tadpoles and bug larvae living in it. Today made 7 weeks old and I can tell the average size is about 1-1.5" I can't tell how many survived but I'm guessing 100-300 out of 1-2000. Congrats, It's a fun challenge and I'm sure you'll be watching some of the youngsters as adults in the coming years.
We noticed today that the fry are finally starting to recognize when we are feeding them, and are coming to the surface and starting to chase down the food we put in. My wife had a couple different kinds of food for newborn fry, plus I boiled up some eggs for the yolks. We can only feed them three times a day, but since they get different types of food, hopefully that will help them grow stronger.
I'm pretty sure there are fewer fry than I started with, but there's still probably a couple hundred in the bucket.
I'm pretty sure there are fewer fry than I started with, but there's still probably a couple hundred in the bucket.
fishin4cars
True friends just call me Larkin
Just make sure and keep up with water changes and don't let the water foul. I only feed once a day and let them feed off of what's available naturally. We are planning on seining the mud pond Later this month and culling down some. I think I ended up with about 4 times more than I can handle! LOL
I have a continuous stream of water coming into the bucket from the pond pumps... no problems there with the water fouling. I figured this would also give them a supply of algae from the pond, plus I dropped some hyacinth and water lettuce in the bucket. Ideally, this should mean they have a constant supply of food and don't really need me to give them anything, but I figured it never hurts to give them a variety of foods.
The only real issue I've had with this setup is that the piece of sponge I put inside the outlet pipe clogs up over the course of the day, so I have to shoo everyone away from the pipe, pull the sponge, and squeeze out the stuff in it. So far the water level has never gotten higher than an inch from the top of the bucket, but if for some reason it did overflow, the bucket is sitting on the edge of the pond and any babies that got washed out would just fall into the pond.
The only real issue I've had with this setup is that the piece of sponge I put inside the outlet pipe clogs up over the course of the day, so I have to shoo everyone away from the pipe, pull the sponge, and squeeze out the stuff in it. So far the water level has never gotten higher than an inch from the top of the bucket, but if for some reason it did overflow, the bucket is sitting on the edge of the pond and any babies that got washed out would just fall into the pond.
So just an update on what happened this Summer... I'm sure a lot of the fry ate each other, plus I had a couple times that the filter plugged up, causing the bucket to overflow. I don't know how many got washed into the pond, but I only have two babies left (the two I thought were koi). They were just moved indoors yesterday to the hyacinth tub, so we'll see if they survive the Winter.
The breeding bucket itself worked fairly well, except I had a lot of waste from the pond flushed into the bottom of the bucket. I think I need a larger inlet tube that I can put a filter on, and add a second outlet pipe to prevent overflows when the bottom pipe gets plugged.
The breeding bucket itself worked fairly well, except I had a lot of waste from the pond flushed into the bottom of the bucket. I think I need a larger inlet tube that I can put a filter on, and add a second outlet pipe to prevent overflows when the bottom pipe gets plugged.