feeding fry in a community tank

[BobK]

You don't have to feed 3 x a day but you get much quicker growth that way. I fed my platy fry 3 x a day for 3 months.

 

[thrdwatchfan]

When do you stop with the 3Xdaily? When you are ready to move them into the big tank?

 

[ferrikins]

I acherly feed mine every 4 hours, till there 4 weeks, then cut the food down slowly, and ween them on adult food by 8 weeks, witch is when they go to my LFS.

If they can't fit in any of your fishes mouth, you can out them in the tank.

 

[BobK]

Hey ferrikins, what kind of fry are you talking about and how big are they after 8 weeks?

 

[Kittycat]

How do you feed fry 4-8x a day in a community tank without ending up overfeeding the adults?

 

[gale]

Problem with breeding traps is stagnant water. There is no circulation and no filtration. The ones with the airstone are better, but sometimes the holes in the trap plug up and don't let water flow freely. When my platies had babies I just moved them to a separate 5 gallon tank. Platies are really bad about eating the fry (at least mine are). I have two adult females and one adult male and I haven't seen any new fry in 4 months. My Sailfin Mollies don't seem to be interested in the fry at all. My female dropped 50+ fry and I don't think I've lost any (at least not that I could see). They also sell tank dividers which might be a good option for you if you don't want to start a new tank. I believe both your tanks are standard sizes that would accept the dividers.

As far as feeding the fry, I've had very good luck with crushed flakes and crushed freeze-dried bloodworms. I see you're going to feed the BBS which is really good as well. Also, the fry eat microorganisms and mollies eat algae as well so they probably would get enough food if they were loose in the community tank, they just wouldn't grow as fast. I've heard that stuff like liquifry can pollute the tank so if you use it do so sparingly. Good luck with the little guys. It's a lot of fun watching them grow up. I just released my 5 platy fry into the community tank last week. They're doing great.

I thought about that stagnant water thing too. So far I've been pouring a cup of water through the little tank every so often (it has holes on the solid bottom). I decided instead of using fabric I would just silicone the solid bottom to the bottom of the tank. If I put fabric, the food will just fall through and they won't be able to scavenge the bottom of the little tank to get it.

I called the lfs today and they have liquifry and powdered (he thinks). So I might just get both and limit the liquifry to once a day or every other day. I haven't set up my bbs hatchery yet-I need to alter it to reduce eggshells (as seen on phil's site or somewhere)

I would love to get a 5g for the fry. My problem is space and money-if I get a 5g I still have to get another heater, another filter, etc. At the moment I have no where to put one either and since this is our first fry since having the tanks stocked in September, I'm not going to go that route just yet. What I might do though, is get a small 2.5 gallon minibow for fry and just keep the media in my big tank to keep it ready to use. I can put something like that in my daughter's room since it's small and wouldn't need a bunch of extra stuff in it (just a heater).

On another note, I was using a turkey baster to get the old food out of the little tank and since it was only a few hours old, I put it in the main tank for the other fish. Well this time there was no food left (yay!!) but I decided to suction out some water anyway and the rasboras LOVE swimming in the current from the turkey baster.

 

[ferrikins]

Hey ferrikins, what kind of fry are you talking about and how big are they after 8 weeks?

there guppies.

mine are in there own tank, witch has ground feeders, and is gravel vacced, and water change's.

If there fry in the adult tank, you should make shore there anothe food for them to scavange.

 

[vidiots]

The best ways I've found to feed the fry depend on how much time you have everyday to do it and how much effort you want to put into it.

The quickest way is to crush up flake food. To simplify this task I take a large amount of flake food and pinch and grind it repeatedly over a sheet of paper that has a crease in the middle until the flakes are powder. I then pick up the paper and use the crease as a pour spout and pour the powdered food into an clean dry test tube with a cap. When I need to feed the fry I just sprinkle in a little of the powder. I have raised many batches of fry on nothing but crushed flake food. If you feed them too much you will have to do more frequent water changes because the uneaten bits of food will rot in the bottom of the tank.

A more time consuming method of feeding them is to hatch live baby brine shrimp. I've read from many sources that baby brine shimp are the best fry food. They claim it is the best because of the high fat and nutrient content, the baby brine shrimp can survive for hours in a freshwater tank if not eaten so they don't rot and foul the tank. I've had my fry swimming in what looked like a blizzard of baby brine shrimp only to find every last spec of brine shrimp gone in under 30 mins. It also lets them use their natural hunting instinct. If you've never tried hatching brine shrimp and want to try it, I suggest that you pick up one of those cheap complete hatch kits at your pet store that come with the hatcher, salt, brineshrimp eggs , and instructions. If you deside you like using brineshimp, don't buy those expensive little refill bottles of eggs at the petstore that don't last long. Instead order larger quantities from a cheap online source cause you can get ten times as much for the same price.

It takes me on average about 20mins per day to maintain and harvest my brineshrimp, compared to the few seconds per day to feed the fry powdered flake food. I still feed mine the powdered food when I don't have time to mess with the brine shrimp.