Caring for Gourami Fry

[Isthan]

I have successfully mated my dwarf gourami in my 10 gallon tank. I had two females with one male. Three nights ago, I witnessed the male curling his body around a female. This process went on for two hours after I had noticed it. The result is one centralized bubble nest under a plastic lilly pad and various patches of bubbles (possibly devoid of eggs?) along the top edges the tank. At the time of spawning, I unplugged the HOB filter.

One day after the spawning, I removed both females. In the middle of the night on the same day, I removed the male. My breedings books said that the fry would hatch within 12-24 hours. Are they invisible at this point?

On the second day, I notice a handful of extremely tiny organisms along the glass. They are reminiscent of a worm, yellow-white with a tubular body. I am rather confused at this point whether they are baby gourami or if they are infact a recently developed snail? I have about 10 stow-away snails that came in on some live plants. Under a magnifying glass (the only way to really see these organisms) the worms look almost like snails that have not secreted a shell. Sofar, these are the only organisms visible.

My tank properties are as follows:
Ph: 6.5
Nitrite: .2 ppm
Nitrate: 5 ppm
Ammonia: 0 ppm
78 degrees f

If anyone with dwarf gourami or any bubble nest spawners has experience to share, please help me out! I dont mind playing the waiting game to see if anything develops, but I would really like to know if any of this brood will survive on my first attempt at breeding fish.

 

[OrionGirl]

Well, it doesn't sound like this was a successful hatching. Unplugging the HOB filter is likely part of the problem--you should have an internal filter (RUGF would be great, easy to clean and not produce the surface agitation). Removing the filtration source creates a cycle--as shown by the presence of nitrites, very toxic to fry. The new fry will be very tiny, but they will look like a fish--more like a guppy than a gourami at this stage, but still fish-like. It sounds like you're seeing something else--not a snail, since most snails have a bit of shell immediately. I suspect hydra.

 

[Isthan]

Well this is pretty sad for me, but I guess I didnt really come into my first breeding experience betting on success. I knew that removing the filtration would be a bad move, but as I watch my male and female mate, I noticed how hard it was for the male to catch some of the eggs, and I imagined some were being filtrated by the HOB filter. I hadnt wagered on the filter to be as much of a problem as it turned out to be.

I suspect that I came across some Hydra, but those organisms were different than the tube like worms I saw. The organisms I thought were "Hydra" were tubelike and had 4 sprouts coming from the "flower" end of the organism. The life that I found was truly wormlike and the head of its body would twist and turn like a snail changing direction.

I pulled the plug on my hopeful operation, or put in the plug as I should say. I started my HOB filter back up and began to filter the buildup. I siphoned my water to remove the brownish corpses of the "wormlike" creatures. Since they are all along the gravel and more concentrated around the bubble nest, I assume they are the remnants of my underdeveloped brood.

Regardless, I am not going to completely give up on the idea of breeding gourami, as they are some of my favorite fish. I dont exactly want to drain all the water and gravel for an UGF, is there another option?

 

[Ghost_knife]

you can build a water distrobution system, I have them in my breeder tanks, I cut a trough in a PVC pipe and put it under the filter after cutting slots in the PVC for water to drain, Creates less disruption for eggs, works beautifully in my 20G Gourami spawn tank and Zebra Spawn tank