Raising Fry

Once the eggs are laid, you can remove the parents in none fry guarding species. This is especially important if the fish are the types that eat their young. In case of fish that care for their brood, it is recommended to keep the parents with the fry.

Taking care of your fry requires some special attention. Some young ones, like the Goldfish, will not eat for the first 40-48 hours of their life, while other species need to be fed immediately. How do you know when to do what? And what are the best conditions for keeping the fry alive. These are some of the many things that you need to keep in mind when the fish start spawning.

In some livebearers, the female may release only a few of the babies at the beginning. She may take a few hours or even a day to release the entire batch of fry; and some of these fry will likely be stillborn or even eggs. Even after this, a female can be full of fertilized eggs that will soon begin to develop into fish. Livebearers can release several more batches of fry even if there are no males around, due to their ability to save sperm.

The fry may take up to a few weeks to develop. Do not expect your fry to come out ready for a swim and a feed. The larvae that hatch have almost nothing in common with their parents. They will be enclosed in a big yellow yolk sac and will not be able to swim at all. The larvae will eat up the egg sac until the yolk is fully gone. Once this is over, the fry begin to get hungry and look for food.

Infusoria is a good food for tiny fry. Green water or egg yolk can also be fed to the fry. Powdered flake food is commonly fed to fish fry in aquariums, but powdered flake food is not the best fry food. Powdered flake food is however better than nothing if it is all you got when the fry arrives. Take a plastic bag and put in 1-2 tablespoons of flake food. The bag should not have too much air in it. Then squeeze the bag in your hand and mash the flake as well as you can. The more powdered it is, the better.

Putting in only a small amount of food for the fry is also a bit difficult. The best way to add in small amounts of powdered food is by using a toothpick. Wet the end of the pick in water, and wipe it with your finger so that it is only a little wet. The wet toothpick should now be dipped into the powdered flakes. Touch this tip in the water just above the fry. You will need to feed them several times a day.

This powder is quite fine and is acceptable for many fry to start off with. But some fry find even this too big to eat. For instance, the newly hatched Angelfish cannot eat this powder. It needs to eat infusoria or baby brine shrimp for the first few days.

Baby brine shrimp is a very important food for most fish fry. Most livebearers will eat lots of baby brine shrimp, and this definitely makes them grow faster and healthier even if livebearers are among the fry that can be raised on powdered flake food alone. The eggs of Brine Shrimp are carefully processed and collected and are sold in many pet stores. The aquarist can purchase these eggs, hatch them and use them to feed fry. One advantage in hatching the eggs at home is that these can then be fed special additives that will directly be transferred to your fry. Some fry are too small to be able to eat newly hatched brine shrimp and such fry will need infusoria the first few days before they can start eating brine shrimp.

After they start feeding, the fry usually grow pretty fast. Feeding should be done several times a day for optimal growth. Aquariums that are well lit, well planted and nicely filtered provide the best conditions for rearing fry. Having a fixed feeding schedule also helps the fry grow faster. Frequent water changes are a MUST if you want healthy fry. Remember that the filtration in an aquarium that contains small fry will be less efficient than the filtration in a proper aquarium as the circulation has to be kept lower. The number of feedings is also higher and the wastage will also be more. Thus frequent water changes; stable water chemistry and sufficient warmth contribute greatly towards the well being of your fry.

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