denis coghlan
Fishaholic
This is just a quick story about how a maternal mouth brooder crushed its fry to DEATH. ((Also it gives me a chance to take more pictures and show off my tank making skills)). It’s been two weeks since I noticed that my yellow lab was holding so I thought it about time to move her into her own fry tank.
I set up the fry tank about four days ago. I made the tank with my own bare hands from a couple of sheets of glass that I had in the shed. (cutting glass is not that easy and there was a lot of unusable leftovers). It measures 22 x 10 x 10 for filtration I am using one of those cracking 5minute sponge filters from over there in the DIY section. For heating I am using a 100w spare juwel heater and lighting is a multicolored (tacky as hell) cold cathode light. The fry tank only cost me 8 euro to set up and that was only for the silicon. For a tank the same size I was quoted 38 euro. Cha-Ching !!!!
Anyways I am rambling now I will get on with the story. I decided to move the female for two main reasons; better fry survival rate and less parental stress on the female. Yesterday was moving day, I had no idea that it would be so much effort to catch one wildly fish. I removed lots of the rock and netted her fairly quickly. I then popped her into a bowl to make the journey of about 4 meters from one tank to the other. Just when I was putting her in the maternity ward I noticed that she had spat one of her fry. He was a very small little fellow to say the least! I placed them both into the tank and they seemed happy enough. The little guy (free swimming at this stage but still with a very large yolk sack) tried his hardest to get back into the safety of the mouth, but mom was not opening up. After about ten minutes or so (I was watching intently) the mother made a move towards the fry and promptly crushed it against the glass. No more fry! Ah well I guess she was only trying to get it back in her mouth but I think someone should tell her that it only works if its open.
For scale the big yellow thing is a fish food tub!
You know what they say, you cant save them all!!!!
I will let you know how the rest of the fry do. I hope there will be no more crushings!
I set up the fry tank about four days ago. I made the tank with my own bare hands from a couple of sheets of glass that I had in the shed. (cutting glass is not that easy and there was a lot of unusable leftovers). It measures 22 x 10 x 10 for filtration I am using one of those cracking 5minute sponge filters from over there in the DIY section. For heating I am using a 100w spare juwel heater and lighting is a multicolored (tacky as hell) cold cathode light. The fry tank only cost me 8 euro to set up and that was only for the silicon. For a tank the same size I was quoted 38 euro. Cha-Ching !!!!
Anyways I am rambling now I will get on with the story. I decided to move the female for two main reasons; better fry survival rate and less parental stress on the female. Yesterday was moving day, I had no idea that it would be so much effort to catch one wildly fish. I removed lots of the rock and netted her fairly quickly. I then popped her into a bowl to make the journey of about 4 meters from one tank to the other. Just when I was putting her in the maternity ward I noticed that she had spat one of her fry. He was a very small little fellow to say the least! I placed them both into the tank and they seemed happy enough. The little guy (free swimming at this stage but still with a very large yolk sack) tried his hardest to get back into the safety of the mouth, but mom was not opening up. After about ten minutes or so (I was watching intently) the mother made a move towards the fry and promptly crushed it against the glass. No more fry! Ah well I guess she was only trying to get it back in her mouth but I think someone should tell her that it only works if its open.
For scale the big yellow thing is a fish food tub!
You know what they say, you cant save them all!!!!
I will let you know how the rest of the fry do. I hope there will be no more crushings!