Posted by Sarah on July 4, 2008
Happy Independence Day!
The baby rams are still going strong.
I’m really in shock – there was so much fungus on the eggs that I didn’t think anything would hatch.
The only reason that we didn’t take the slate that the eggs were on and clean it up is that Jeff was about to leave when we noticed the fungus – then when we went to clean the slate their were fry everywhere.
The fry are still going strong, swimming everywhere.
This is the largest hatch rate that we’ve ever had, and there are fry everywhere,
There have to be at least 200 fry in the tank.
Hopefully they’ll continue to do well.
The picture shows a few of the fry in front of a moss ball.
They’re so tiny, and so cute.
Posted by Sarah on July 1, 2008
Here are a couple of pictures of two of our German Blue Rams and their eggs after they spawned Saturday night.
Unfortunately something got into the aquarium tank after we moved the eggs, and all of them fungused.
In the pictures you can see the larger male in the front guarding the eggs.
It’s funny to watch him, because sometimes he even chases the female away from the eggs – and yet when I first noticed the eggs there was a Harlequin Rasbora about an inch above them, while the male was behind the piece of slate.
I was excited for a minute, because I thought they might be harlequin rasbora eggs, but they are pretty hard to breed in captivity, and they spawn on the undersides of leaves, so I figured that wasn’t it.
Ah well, I can dream can’t I?
At least for a few minutes.
OK, Jeff just came home from school and there are baby rams in the aquarium.
There was fungus growing all over the eggs, so I really can’t see how any hatched.
There’s still stuff in the aquarium because someone took the lid for another tank, and lost it, but we found it.
Jeff was trying to suck the stuff out, but he couldn’t do it without getting babies, so we’ll see what happens.
Posted by Sarah on June 27, 2008
The discus spawned on Wednesday – I was surprised at how long the spawning lasted. I watched them for at least three hours.
They spawn a little differently from the German Blue Rams though.
When the rams are spawning the female lays the eggs, then the male goes over the eggs right on top of them and fertilizes them.
I didn’t see the male discus get anywhere near as close to the eggs as the male rams do, and that may be part of the problem.
The female was guarding the eggs, which were laid on an overturned flower pot that we put in the tank a couple of months ago after being unable to find a spawning cone, until this morning.
The last time the discuss spawned we left a light in the room on all night, but this time we didn’t – the eggs were fine the first night, but gone the second, so we’ll have to remember to keep the light on the next time.
There were also thunderstorms with really heavy rain overnight, but I’m not sure if that would have scared the discus at all, let alone enough to eat their eggs.
Do you have experience spawning discus?
If so I’d love to hear about it so leave a comment.
Please.
Pretty please 
.
Posted by Sarah on June 12, 2008
The newest batch of German Rams has disappeared.
They make it to the swimming stage, and we see them eating, but after a few days we wake up and there are less and less of them. The funny thing is that we don’t even find dead babies, it’s like they never existed.
The first batch was hatched and grown in RO water, but the next two batches were hatched and raised in tap water (with gravel), so next time we’ll try it with the RO water with no gravel and see what happens.
