Apisto eggs

[Souperman]

I guess I am doing something right because my apisto just laid eggs under a rock. Is there anything I can do if they hatch being in a community tank? I am not really in the position at the moment to raise baby brine.

 

[SeanTrollope]

do you want the babies or not? if not then just leave them. if yes then you will most likely need to get brine and get a tank cycled as well as move all of your fish, i dont advise doing this it is not really worth it.

 

[Souperman]

do you want the babies or not? if not then just leave them. if yes then you will most likely need to get brine and get a tank cycled as well as move all of your fish, i dont advise doing this it is not really worth it.

I don't have another tank to cycle at the moment. I am not interested in the babies but if they do hatch I would like to see how far I could get them being in a community tank.

 

[SeanTrollope]

i am afraid there is not much you can do other than hope.

 

[Souperman]

i am afraid there is not much you can do other than hope.

Luckily I don't have anything crazy predatory in the tank. I think I may try to find some frozen babybrine or some small fry food to have on hand. I don't really care about raising them or anything eating them I just don't want them to starve if they get that far along.

 

[SeanTrollope]

yeah okay.the frozen stuff might work.

 

[Souperman]

Don't know how well it will work but I at least am going to give it a shot if they fry ever make it that far.

 

[SeanTrollope]

good luck. let us know how it goes

 

[Souperman]

Will do. Even if the fry all gets eaten it will be good to know that I have a good pair.

 

[Essjay]

You could try microworms, but they take a few days to get a culture going. All you need for those is two or three plastic tubs - roughen the insides with sandpaper to let the worms climb up better, and punch a few air holes in the lids. A pack of instant porridge if they have that where you live. Dried yeast - this is optional. A starter culture from somewhere like Ebay. And a long pipette (turkey baster) for putting the worms right by the fry.
When the culture arrives, make up the porridge with hot water to about half an inch deep in one of the tubs. Let it cool, then sprinkle a bit of dried yeast on top and add the culture. Keep it somewhere warmish - I kept mine on top of the tank. After a few days you'll see tiny worms crawling up the side of the tub. Scrape them off, avoiding the porridge, put them in a small tub of tank water and use the pipette to place them right in front of the fry.
After a couple of weeks the culture will start to smell. Make up some porridge in another tub and seed it with some of the liquid on top of the first tub. You'll soon get to know when you how fast a tub goes off so you can start the next tub in time.

The eggs will hatch to wrigglers - fry that don't swim. They don't need feeding at this stage. Once they become free swimming they will need feeding, but this is the time they are likely to get eaten. The female will guard them and chase away other fish, but she is only one fish, she can't chase all the other fish at the same time. And almost every other fish in the tank will view the fry as a tasty snack.

If you could ever manage to set up a second tank and put the apsitos in there till they spawn, then remove the male, you will see the female caring for the fry, moving them about the tank and rescuing those that stray too far. I did this with a pair of cockatoo apistos. The fry were growing nicely - then the tank stared to leak so I had to move the fry to my small quarantine tank. 5 of them made it to adults.

 

[Souperman]

You could try microworms, but they take a few days to get a culture going. All you need for those is two or three plastic tubs - roughen the insides with sandpaper to let the worms climb up better, and punch a few air holes in the lids. A pack of instant porridge if they have that where you live. Dried yeast - this is optional. A starter culture from somewhere like Ebay. And a long pipette (turkey baster) for putting the worms right by the fry.
When the culture arrives, make up the porridge with hot water to about half an inch deep in one of the tubs. Let it cool, then sprinkle a bit of dried yeast on top and add the culture. Keep it somewhere warmish - I kept mine on top of the tank. After a few days you'll see tiny worms crawling up the side of the tub. Scrape them off, avoiding the porridge, put them in a small tub of tank water and use the pipette to place them right in front of the fry.
After a couple of weeks the culture will start to smell. Make up some porridge in another tub and seed it with some of the liquid on top of the first tub. You'll soon get to know when you how fast a tub goes off so you can start the next tub in time.

The eggs will hatch to wrigglers - fry that don't swim. They don't need feeding at this stage. Once they become free swimming they will need feeding, but this is the time they are likely to get eaten. The female will guard them and chase away other fish, but she is only one fish, she can't chase all the other fish at the same time. And almost every other fish in the tank will view the fry as a tasty snack.

If you could ever manage to set up a second tank and put the apsitos in there till they spawn, then remove the male, you will see the female caring for the fry, moving them about the tank and rescuing those that stray too far. I did this with a pair of cockatoo apistos. The fry were growing nicely - then the tank stared to leak so I had to move the fry to my small quarantine tank. 5 of them made it to adults.

Thanks for the advice. If I can get them eating once they hatch I do have a 10 gallon with ember tetras I can transfer them to white I temporarily hold the embers in the tank they are in now. I would like to try to raise them food but I don’t think my parents are really for me trying it. Think I might just see what I can find and if any make it to swimming stage see if they will eat. I have heard that boiled egg yolk may work.

 

[Byron]

I would tend to leave things and see what happens as this is presumably the first spawn of the pair of apistogramma.

Any movement of the fry at this stage will mean serious stress on the parents and they often eat the fry when this happens. Thinking seems to be, if they are going to lose their fry, they will gain the benefit of their nutrition rather than some predator.

What species of Apistogramma? And what are the other fish in the tank?

 

[Souperman]

I was not planning on moving them as I don’t really plan on breeding them. If they do get a little ways along I do want to help them though. The apisto is apistogramma cacautoidoides double red. The other fish in the tank is a small honey gouranmi (which I could temporarily move), Cory’s, and neons.

 

[Byron]

With cories, the fry are almost doomed. Apistogramma are active during daylight, but rest during darkness. Cories are nocturnal and that is when they find the fry easy pickings. But even so, I once witnessed two or three cories that came upon a blue ram female shepherding a shoal of fry, and the fry were gone within seconds; thee female had no chance against the armoured cories.

But even so, sometimes it is different. Depends a lot on the individual fish.

Essjay gave excellent advice on fry foods. There is one more, less involved if you want to try something, and that is to take a pinch of flake food and grind it up with your fingertips into a fine powder. Mix this in a very small amount of tank water until it is water logged. Then using a small pipette (you can make one from a piece of airline tubing suitable for this) squirt a small bit of the flake-infused water toward the shoal of fry. They will usually readily snap it up as it swirls around and sinks.

Another excellent fry food is infusoria, and the easy way to get that is to put some dried leaves in the tank on the substrate. I collect oak leaves fro the back garden; beech and maple work too, just make sure it is a clean site (no pesticides, chemicals, etc). Pick up the completely dead leaves that have fallen, rinse them, dry them on paper towels and keep them in a plastic bag. Put two or three in the tank, they will float for a couple days, and when they sink place them on the substrate. The fry will greedily graze them eating the infusoria. Fry given this infusoria grow faster.

 

[Souperman]

With cories, the fry are almost doomed. Apistogramma are active during daylight, but rest during darkness. Cories are nocturnal and that is when they find the fry easy pickings. But even so, I once witnessed two or three cories that came upon a blue ram female shepherding a shoal of fry, and the fry were gone within seconds; thee female had no chance against the armoured cories.

But even so, sometimes it is different. Depends a lot on the individual fish.

Essjay gave excellent advice on fry foods. There is one more, less involved if you want to try something, and that is to take a pinch of flake food and grind it up with your fingertips into a fine powder. Mix this in a very small amount of tank water until it is water logged. Then using a small pipette (you can make one from a piece of airline tubing suitable for this) squirt a small bit of the flake-infused water toward the shoal of fry. They will usually readily snap it up as it swirls around and sinks.

Another excellent fry food is infusoria, and the easy way to get that is to put some dried leaves in the tank on the substrate. I collect oak leaves fro the back garden; beech and maple work too, just make sure it is a clean site (no pesticides, chemicals, etc). Pick up the completely dead leaves that have fallen, rinse them, dry them on paper towels and keep them in a plastic bag. Put two or three in the tank, they will float for a couple days, and when they sink place them on the substrate. The fry will greedily graze them eating the infusoria. Fry given this infusoria grow faster.

Thanks for the tips. I will have to try the infusoria thing. I was thinking that the Cories might be a threat but hopefully it will help a little that I always feed right before the lights go off. I was not trying to breed when they spawned if I was I would have set up a tank for the pair. Also would catappa leaves be better for infusoria or would it not really matter?