Krib Questions

[Captain Hook]

I've recently decided I want to try to raise the babies of my kribs. I have only seen hatched babies once and that was quite a while ago. However, yesterday I saw a lot of shaking from the male and am planning on getting 2 coconut caves for the tank.

My first question is, should I put a piece of flat rock in the caves to give the fish a spot to lay eggs?

This is a community tank, but I was planning on trying to remove the babies and raise them in my planted 25 gallon. Sound ok? What's the best and safest way to get the babies out of the tank?

I would really appreciate any tips on feeding, water changes, etc. for the babies. I've never raised any fry except livebearers.

 

[Captain Hook]

Here's a pic of the pair

 

[Beeker]

I love your pics! That Syno Eupterus is a strange fish. It looks kind of like a bird.

 

[Samala]

Hi there! I'm raising Krib babies at the moment, my fry have been free swimming a week today. I'm really not sure how you would go about moving the fry to a new tank... for the most part my fry follow the parents around the tank and the pair switches turns watching the fry and leading them to new foraging spots in the tank. They tend to stay in a nice clump, like a living ball of babies, when they are being led. If the fish are scared (say, with a net) the fry immediately hit the gravel and blend in, and Mom or Dad get defensive. I guess the only way I would try to move the babies would be when they were eggs (be sure to keep them completely submerged) or, use a brine shrimp net or something similarly fine to scoop up babies from the bottom once free swimming. (Swish it above them to draw them into the water column, I wouldnt risk scooping them up with the gravel.)

As far as feeding, I've been doing 4 portions of microworms a day and my fish will be graduating to a mixed microworms and BBS diet next week. I think I may actually enrich the BBS with Selcon (a liquid supplement with HUFA) to try to coax them to grow a bit faster. As a tip, though you've already thought about this, raising them in a reasonably mature planted tank really seems to help them out in foraging. Mine are certainly picking at spots of algae in the tank and groom the gravel. I dont know what they're finding, but they always have full bellies, even hours after I've fed them. The babies are big enough for microworms and BBS as soon as they are free swimming.

For water changes, I'm doing 10% everday simply because I have a large spawn (at least 80) along with the pair and three cherry barbs in a 20gallon long. There's an Aquaclear mini on the tank, but its got a sponge over the intake at the moment to avoid losing babies. I need the WQ to be near perfect so the babies will grooooow. I think after their third week or so I will transfer them to their own 20gallon raise out tank where I can feed more liberally without worrying about the water quality suffering as much. Water quality in my tanks runs dKH 2 dGH 5 pH 6.6 Temp 76F NO2/NH3/NH4 0ppm and NO3 runs about 5ppm (hungry plants!) I think in a larger tank you would not actually need to obsess about water quality as I am and could easily get by on 20% each week.

One thing I wanted to mention was to not separate the fry entirely from their parents.. They dont seem to do well if they dont have any parents around. If your female and male get along, go ahead and put them both in the tank. But if one seems to be more interested in parenting then the other, go with that one. (My pair of P. subocellatus (close to Kribs) the Dad was actually the better parent so he was the one who was left with the kids in their tank.)

I think that's about it! If you dont have microworms I can send you a bit to start a culture. PM or email me. slardizabal@comcast.net

>Sarah