My Oscars finally Laid eggs! Now what?

[sassyb]

This has been a long time comeing. Their 2 tiger oscars ... About 8- 10 in in length. Thier in a 120 gal tank. Finially thiey have bread!!!!!!!!!!How can I tell if the eggs are fertilized?

[dave76]

The best thing you can do now is watch the eggs and see if they hatch. If they dont hatch is 3-4 days they are either fungused or non fertile. If they turn white they are fungused.

[Tightdog1]

CONGRATS on the eggs!! yea DAVE 76 got it right do what he said, basically just wait, the parents will take care of the babies by themselves so u dont have that much to do except watch them.

[Frameshift]

Feed newly free-swimming fry baby brine shrimp...and I hope you have some massive grow out tanks.

FYI-fertilized eggs are a clearish/amber color, unfertilized are white.

[sassyb]

They were white in color ....... right up to when they ate them...little brats......:( :confused:

[dave76]

You might have two females....I have heard of oscars going through breeding behavior but never producing offspring. I had a friend that traded his in to a LFS as a breeding pair with a red devil to get two arowanas. What comes around goes around though as one of the arowanas killed the other. His laid eggs all the time but never produces any fry. I would suggest using some kind of fungus medication and making sure that your water is highly oxigenated. If they still do not hatch then you might just have two females.

[ChilDawg]

I thought that cichlids were good at differentiating good eggs from bad ones and would eat the bad ones during the "mouthing" process...though I could be wrong...or this could be an overgeneralization, especially if the pair isn't really compatible. Would this mean that the antifungal would be necessary? (Just for clarification. I don't want to call anyone into question.)

[dave76]

I had read that people who were having mostly white egg batches believed that they were fungused and use of medications such as malachite green could prevent this. I do not know if this is effective but would be the only way to discern if the eggs were being eaten because of disease or non-fertilization.

[ChilDawg]

Fair enough. Thank you for the considerate reply, and for clarifying this for someone (myself) with much less experience.

~Matthew

[Frameshift]

The cichlid family in general are long lived for fish so natural selection has given them some "time" to figure out how breeding works. Very rarely do they get it right the first time. It usually is the 3rd-4th time before they figure out to pick off the fungused eggs and to not eat them.

Read that somewhere...with my cons and JD's third time is a charm.

[ChilDawg]

Frameshift, now that you mention that, I remember reading it somewhere as well...good call.