BN Breeding Question

[Ashes2ashes]

It's normal to lose a few fry...that just happens, but leaving them with the father until they are ready to be taken out will definitely lessen the losses. It is more stressful to move them to another tank when they are not ready to be taken out. Since they don't eat their babies there is really no reason to move them unless there are other fish in the tank threatening them. I would just leave them alone and deal with the few natural losses that come.

 

[EmilyMarie85]

Thanks for the responses. I will leave this next batch in with dad, longer.

At what point is it safe to move them over to another tank? After the fry leave the cave or?

 

[Ashes2ashes]

Once you see them out and about and they are eating independent of their egg sacs they are probably OK to move, but the longer they stay in the environment they were born in the better off they will probably be.. Baby BNs are sensitive to spikes in water params too, so when you move them you will want to make sure that you keep the water extremely clean and keep the nitrates low. They are poop machines, so adding that many of them to any tank will likely cause a spike, so it's just something you want to keep an eye on. That could also be one of the reason you were seeing so many losses in the first bunch depending on if you were keeping up with whether or not you had a spike. BN fry are pretty tough once they are a little bigger. The babies are just a little sensitive.

 

[DLV082]

I noticed that you are only feeding the fry lettuce (which has no nutritional value at all) and any alge they find in the tank. This is not enough you will have start them on commercial food like alge wafers and other types of vege's like zucchini, beans etc. They might have starved to death. I don't move my fry into a grow out tank until they are at least 2cm long and start feeding them alge wafers and blood worm as soon as they are out of the cave and very rarely have any die on me.

 

[toddnbecka]

I feed my BN NLS Grow pellets as a staple diet, occasionally spirulina flake, and canned green beans once weekly. I usually leave them in the tank with the parents until they're at least 1", then move them into other tanks for further growout.

 

[pinkertd]

It is normal to lose a couple of fry in the first month, but remember they eat 24/7 and need lots of supplemental food. The first couple of weeks I feed very soft zuchinni and lots of first bites and water changes 3X a week. So be sure to feed them very well. They grow like crazy the first few months.With my L144's I want to be sure to save every last fry since the batches are small and infrequent so as soon as I see dad in the cave, I fill the 10G tank up with water from that tank, throw on an established filter and lift the whole cave with dad and eggs out, keeping the cave full of water, and put it in the 10G. This way, if any fry escape too soon or get accidentally fanned out with dads long fins, no predators can get them. I had one incident with a new dad who never let the fry out, and they were totally gone by the time I investigated thoroughly. Fear of that happening again has led me to taking dad out of the cave and out of the tank completely when it's been 5 days since the fry have hatched. I gently shake him out, babies get out too, I net him, put him back in his main tank and give the babies the cave for a few more days. I supply driftwood in the fry tank so I can pull the cave totally in another week or so and give it back to dad and the ladies. These are issues I never encountered when I bred the Pucallpa bristlenose....they had 100's of babies every month! They all got out of the cave, they all lived, and I had way too many baby plecos! LOL!