I'm so sorry. This is heartbreaking. I've been following along--haven't posted--just was watching with great interest. I hope that you try again.
Goldfish Babies
- Thread starter Kashta
- Start date
Hmmm..I wonder if you are having pH fluctuations. A stable pH is crucial. I assume you are testing this when you do your water tests. Out of curiosity, how does your tap water test as far as pH and KH(carbonate hardness or alkalinity)? The higher your KH is, the less likely you are to have pH swings.
You may have already known this, just throwing it out there. Maybe we can find the culprit, so you can have greater success next hatch.
You may have already known this, just throwing it out there. Maybe we can find the culprit, so you can have greater success next hatch.
Hi guys. Almost 24 hours later now and that single remaining fry hasn't died yet. I'm not being too optimistic yet because the survivor is still one of the smaller ones. It's either not grown as fast as the others from the first spawn, or it's one of the second spawn fry that I fished out from the tank as a free swimmer. It's not eating a lot, either.. compared to the others. I have to look close to tell if the belly gets full or not. So I'm still watching and hoping.
At least those two do. I'll definitely keep them together from here on. I'd never had goldfish spawn before - probably because I did like most people tell us and didn't keep a lot of live plants in goldfish tanks. No good spawning facility = no spawning (I suspect).
I have two other juveniles who are starting to show early signs of mating behavior toward the adult females - Akira (a solid white comet) and Sekani (a solid red oranda) - so I'm reasonably sure they will turn out to be male. For females - one comet (Alexei), both my calico fantails (Cassandra and Sachi), plus the leucistic fantail (Chiffon). As the youngsters grow up.. there's no telling what kind of crosses and coloring I might be able to breed if I start doing this for real. Don't know the sex of the new chocolate oranda (Remy), but that's a high quality fish I got from a breeder. No photos of him yet (or her?).. I noticed a small white spot of ich or fungus when the fish arrived, so I'm keeping him separate for a while longer. The was also a small scratch on the side of his face, which is already healing up nicely.
Thank you, Bubbles. I could tell from the viewing activity that a lot of people were keeping tabs on the thread, other than just me and a few who were posting.
Thank you, squabeggs. My pH should be fairly stable. But there's always a good chance the problem was water related. Either that or something bacterial, me overfeeding them, or possibly overcrowding because I tried this with too many at once.
My tap water always tests out on the high end for pH and that's always real consistent. I know we also have hard water here. I was using API's liquid test kit for spot checking - but I don't bother testing phosphates or hardness. A significant chlorine spike would have been something I would not have detected.. though I tend to be overly generous with the dechlor dosage. I've been using AquaPlus for that which is quite good, but will likely start using Prime instead. Trace minerals are also high, which is usually a good thing. I don't actually know what the "ideal" water chemistry is for goldfish fry, I just went with what I have... conditioned water from a mature (yet fairly overstocked) fish tank and what comes out of the tap (municipal water). The usual stuff (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates) wasn't a problem. But I may have been changing their water too often for their overall comfort level.
At least those two do. I'll definitely keep them together from here on. I'd never had goldfish spawn before - probably because I did like most people tell us and didn't keep a lot of live plants in goldfish tanks. No good spawning facility = no spawning (I suspect).
I have two other juveniles who are starting to show early signs of mating behavior toward the adult females - Akira (a solid white comet) and Sekani (a solid red oranda) - so I'm reasonably sure they will turn out to be male. For females - one comet (Alexei), both my calico fantails (Cassandra and Sachi), plus the leucistic fantail (Chiffon). As the youngsters grow up.. there's no telling what kind of crosses and coloring I might be able to breed if I start doing this for real. Don't know the sex of the new chocolate oranda (Remy), but that's a high quality fish I got from a breeder. No photos of him yet (or her?).. I noticed a small white spot of ich or fungus when the fish arrived, so I'm keeping him separate for a while longer. The was also a small scratch on the side of his face, which is already healing up nicely.
Thank you, Bubbles. I could tell from the viewing activity that a lot of people were keeping tabs on the thread, other than just me and a few who were posting.
Thank you, squabeggs. My pH should be fairly stable. But there's always a good chance the problem was water related. Either that or something bacterial, me overfeeding them, or possibly overcrowding because I tried this with too many at once.
My tap water always tests out on the high end for pH and that's always real consistent. I know we also have hard water here. I was using API's liquid test kit for spot checking - but I don't bother testing phosphates or hardness. A significant chlorine spike would have been something I would not have detected.. though I tend to be overly generous with the dechlor dosage. I've been using AquaPlus for that which is quite good, but will likely start using Prime instead. Trace minerals are also high, which is usually a good thing. I don't actually know what the "ideal" water chemistry is for goldfish fry, I just went with what I have... conditioned water from a mature (yet fairly overstocked) fish tank and what comes out of the tap (municipal water). The usual stuff (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates) wasn't a problem. But I may have been changing their water too often for their overall comfort level.
Kashta, I'm so sorry about your fry. I have read this whole thread tonight, and things seemed to be going so well, I was sad to find out they had not survived, after all your care and efforts. Best wishes, I hope you are not too downcast
Thank you, bitbot. It's nice to hear all the comments like this. It is really sad and I'm disappointed, but I didn't have high expectations from the start. And none of my time or effort was wasted. I learned a lot just going through everything step-by-step. Perhaps next time, I can be better prepared ahead of time and make better choices along the way. Overall, I'm not letting this discourage me. I still would really like to see the offspring those two fish would produce. If I can manage to do this successfully someday, I think those babies would turn out to be awesome fish.
I hope that you will try again as well. At least next time you have all the supplies to set up a traditional fry tank. Are you keeping one of the sponges in your main tank to have it seeded for when the time comes? Hopefully next time they will do better with out all the switching around. I am so sorry it didn't work out, you gave a great effort.
I'm sorry to hear you lost the fry, Susan! No worries - sometimes you'll have a massive die-off, sometimes the fry will survive no matter what you do! I'm sure they will breed again.
Your new goldies are spectacular!!
Your new goldies are spectacular!!
Hello Kashta
Really sorry about your loss. I have read the entire thread just now and I think that you did everything as well as you could. As a matter of opinion I think you "loved them to death"(over fed them) I have one question? You keep saying that you could not see them clearly enough either in the breeders net nor in the 10 gal. Is that because you have green water? If you did have green water there should have been plenty of nourishment for weeks old fry in it. By the way great thread. Good info. Nice pics. Hope you try again.
Really sorry about your loss. I have read the entire thread just now and I think that you did everything as well as you could. As a matter of opinion I think you "loved them to death"(over fed them) I have one question? You keep saying that you could not see them clearly enough either in the breeders net nor in the 10 gal. Is that because you have green water? If you did have green water there should have been plenty of nourishment for weeks old fry in it. By the way great thread. Good info. Nice pics. Hope you try again.
Thanks, Rachel. That's a good idea about always keeping a sponge or two somewhere in the main tank. I'm never going to know when the fish will spawn again until it happens. It's easy enough to tie one to a rock and hide it behind some plants or a chunk of driftwood, maybe slip another one into the media tray of my canister. Then a quick rinse in a tub of tank water before using it and my 10 gallon is all set for them. Looks like Squabeggs transferred his straight to a fry tank right when they were first collected. That would work much better, I'm sure.
Thanks, Flaring.
No, the water was clear. Being able to see them up close seemed important so I could compare their development against fry photos I've seen from other breeders who've posted clear zoom images of theirs. They were too small for me to get shots like that using a basic cell phone camera. And too small for me to see them to that degree with the naked eye. I was using those references as my guideline to figure out what stage of development they were in so I'd know what to do about feeding them as they progressed -- the examples I was following the first week or so had them going from liquid fry food (which I couldn't get) or mushed up hardboiled egg yolk - then to First Bites - then to baby brine shrimp in that order after so many days. Not having done this before, I didn't want to rely on doing that based on them being this many days old or that many hours between feedings in case my fry were developing faster or slower than theirs did. I later found out it doesn't matter which food you use because others examples showed they could eat all those things. Some people used nothing but BBS, while others only used First Bites... and their fry managed to eat just fine. I also wanted to post photos of them here in the thread. I could share this with everyone along the way, that also gave me a documented (and visual) reference point in case something went wrong so I could refer back to that in the future. Or maybe someone here would notice me going off in the wrong direction and jump in with some better advice than what I was following. Really, all that was just my own inexperience.. being unsure what to do.
Thought we could use something on a happier note than losing a bunch of baby fish. There's more going on in the goldfish world that isn't so dismal. So here are the pics I have of two more goldfish I'll be getting a few weeks from now. I mentioned them before, but hadn't shown the photos yet.
Remington (for that gunmetal-type coloring) - a metallic lavender/chocolate broadtail ryukin.
And Morka (which means apricot) - a red ranchu with metallic orange coloring.
Remington (for that gunmetal-type coloring) - a metallic lavender/chocolate broadtail ryukin.
And Morka (which means apricot) - a red ranchu with metallic orange coloring.
