when do I need to start feeding kribensis fry?

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chilligirl

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Nov 9, 2007
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I'm pretty sure my kribs spawned today. They were showing courtship behaviours and in full breeding colours, and behaving very aggressively the last couple of days. Today, the female is primarily staying in their cave (a coconut shell), and the male is closing guarding her and the cave entrance. Neither fish lets the cave entrance out of their site, which is actually nice, it means they're no longer chasing the other fish all over the tank, but are only defending a tiny little section of the tank.

Anyway, when do I need to start supplying the fry with fine foods? Is it once the parents bring them out, or before that?

Any food recommendations? I don't have time or resources at the moment to hatch brine shrimp, so it's frozen, freeze-dried, crushed flake, or egg yolk. Which is best?

The tank has some java moss which I recently added, including some on the cave roof, but there's very little algae in the tank (my pleco keeps things tidy).
 

AquariumNoob13

I AM NOT A N00B!
Aug 27, 2007
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Bonita, Ca
i can't really say anything too helpfull, but what i did with my guppies is i scooped them into a net as soon as i saw them. i feed them dissolved foods like cichlid flakes and tropical flakes. also they sometimes will eat fine pieces of lettuce.
 

Pixy Blood

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Dec 31, 2007
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when you see free swimming fry, feed immediately with Finely crushed Flake and baby brine shrimp, or even algae from your decor or glass.
 

chilligirl

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Nov 9, 2007
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thanks for the replies. I won't be removing the fry, I want to let the parents raise them.

I suppose I could feed algae from my goldfish tank? There's plenty of it in there, that I'm always cleaning off the glass. Does it matter what type of algae it is? The goldie tank grows both green and red/brown stuff, mostly the latter.

I'm going away for just over a week towards the end of the month. Hopefully by then there will be enough stuff in the tank for the fry to forage, as my housesitters are not particularly experienced with fish. I'd planned to leave enough food seperately packaged and labelled for them to feed the fish twice while I'm away, and I wanted them to otherwise not touch the tanks...
 

chilligirl

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Nov 9, 2007
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Well, it's a non-issue for now, at some point they lost their spawn. I never actually saw it, as they spawned inside the coconut cave, and I didn't want to disturb it. However, after 3 days of enthusiastically guarding this site, and of the female constantly hanging inside the cave and fanning the water, she suddenly switched locations. I thought maybe she had some wigglers and had moved them, but don't see anything. Checked the coconut cave, and no sign of eggs or fry. Oh well.

Now, they're (the pair) busy excavating two sites very thoroughly. The ceramic hollow log thingy that she'd originally moved to is now largely buried, with tunnels dug to the openings. The pair spends much of their day keeping the inside clean, shoveling sand out of it. The other site is the coconut cave, which I'd moved to the other end of the tank. The female's made a project of removing all the sand from inside, and piling it outside the doorway - there's a little mound two inches accross and an inch and a half high. That's a lot of work for a little fish to do a mouthful at a time!

Both fish are still in spawning colour, but the female's ovipositor hasn't reappeared since the previous spawn (which was only six days ago). How long typically before they spawn again?
 
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