Posted by Sarah on July 15, 2008
The German Ram fry are still going strong – they are finally starting to take on that Ram shape, although they are still pretty small.
There are a lot less of them than we started out with, but there are still at least 20 or so, so I’m happy.
We also have some Bushynose pleco fry that just left the cave yesterday.
Well one left yesterday, two are out now, and the rest are still in the cave.
There is an article about Breeding Bristlenoses in the August, 2008 Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, and it says that the fry are cannibalistic, so that probably explains why don’t have too many that survive.
We do have two larger fry from about 3 spawns ago, so I am sure they are having a field day with the younger fry.
Here’s one of the newer fry. He’s so tiny!
Posted by Sarah on June 9, 2008
We woke up Saturday to find a nice surprise – about 28 baby bushynose plecos swimming throughout the aquarium.
It seemed like Spike, the male BN pleco is getting a lot better at keeping them in his cave until he wants them out – I think this batch stayed in at least 3 days longer than any of his previous batches, so hopefully we’ll get a great survival rate this time.
We still have two slightly larger plecos from the last batch, and they all seem to be getting along well.
It’s so much fun to see the plecos – they prefer to sit in the seams of the tank, where the water is strongest, so you can see a line of 10 or so pleco’s with their little tails bouncing around.
It’s so cute.
Posted by Sarah on May 5, 2008
We have more German Blue Ram fry!
I can’t believe how tiny they are!
We noticed two German Blue Rams spawning Friday night, and this morning we awoke to tiny German Blue Ram fry.
Unfortunately the baby guppies in the tank were sucking them right out of the breeder net they were in.
We moved them pretty fast.
Fortunately they are big enough that they should survive with the adult guppies.
I can’t believe the German Ram fry are so tiny!
We didn’t have an open tank to put them in, and we were scared to leave them with the parents because the eggs have gotten eaten every time we’ve tried that, so I convinced Jeff to put the slate the eggs were laid on in a breeder net in the tank with 4 guppy fry, and 2 adult bushynose plecos, and 3 bushynose pleco fry.
Jeff was concerned because that tank only has regular water, and the only other time we had success with Ram fry was when they were in Reverse Osmosis (RO) water.
Fortunately we didn’t have any trouble, and although a few eggs did turn white, none of them fungused like they did in the RO water. We didn’t even have to use hydrogen peroxide to keep the eggs from fungusing – we just through the slate in the breeder net, and let nature take it’s course.
It’s really hard to tell how many fry we have, but Jeff and I both guessed around 50.
Of course we aren’t sure how many the guppies ate.
We did take the slate out of the adult Ram tank before the adults were through spawning, so they did lay more eggs on the replacement slate that Jeff put in after taking the first piece of slate out.
The female did look a little confused when she realized there were no eggs on the replacement slate, but she did continue to lay eggs on it.
Jeff thought that those eggs were oranger than the eggs that were laid on the first piece of slate, and those eggs also turned white pretty fast, so I don’t think the male fertilized them.
That’s a picture of the eggs on the second piece of slate.
It’s a little blurry, but it was the best picture Jeff took.
