fry all died :( help needed

[robgurr]

(sry its kind of long but i want to find out what i did wrong)
I recently just tried to breed rosey barbs and failed. I couldn't figure out why, could anyone help me bacause i'm going to try again. Here's what i did, first i seperated the males and females for about a week (two females in my 20g communtiy tank and 2 males in my bare bottom 10g breeding tank). Since rosey's eat their eggs i devised a wire mesh that i put about 1/4 of an inch off the bottom of the 10g. I then put the barbs together and the next morning there was about 60-100 eggs at the bottom, under the mesh i had put in. I then removed the 4 adults and the screen and waited for the eggs to hatch. The next day there were really really small sperm like things sort of swimming around and then they would stop and sink to the bottom and move then sink..it was really funny to watch. They looked too small to even feed with anything i had (liquid fry food and first bites) I wasn't sure if they even had mouths yet. I put a few drops of the liquid stuff in but all it did was cloud the water and the fry didn't seem to do anything. Through the next week the fry didn't seem to grow much at all and slowly died off. I could figure it out. Can anyone tell me when i should start feeding then and with what, or if I should be doing something that i'm not? Any advise would be great, thnx.

 

[yhbae]

How long did it take before they died off? From your message, it sounds like it started about a week after, which is when they complete consuming their egg york.

Infusoria is considered to be one of the smallest food that you can feed to your fry. Perhaps you can try that next time. When I used to breed egg layers, I used to feed these before moving on to hatched brine shrimps.

 

[robgurr]

where do you get Infusoria?

 

[yhbae]

There are many articles written on culturing infusoria - here's one of them:

http/mike-edwardes.members.beeb.net/food.html#2

Alternatively, if you happen to have massive quantity of java moss, you have them for free as well...

 

[tashanbrown]

hello
let me intorduce myself my name is tashan

i have breed guppies and mollie and i can tell you that in the end it is not worth the time because all of them will die if you don't care for them right!

i can tell you something that might help you
every morning and night feed them powder food or broken fish flaks nand then you have to have the perfect water conditions for them to grow.

make sure that you have them in a separate tank or in a breeding trap or the filter will suck them up or the other fish will eat them

and in you filter run activated carbone in it because that will keep the water clean and remove any unwanted chemicals out of the water and make the fish grow !!!!

please try all of the advice that i have given you and i hope that you get all the best results for you'r babby fry.

)

 

[sylvia]

Rosy barbs are not livebearers

I agree with feeding infusoria. All you need to do is put a piece of lettuce in a jar with old tank water (from a water change) and put the lid on. Leave it in the sun. You should see it get cloudy and then the cloudiness will clear. It may become quite green. This is when it is ready to feed to your fry so you should prepair it some time before. There are also products that contain food for the infusoria... you add some infusoria to your tank water and a few drops of this food and they'll thrive and provide your fry with plenty of food for their first couple of weeks.

You could also try to feed them liquid food during their second week but don't stop giving infusoria until they can eat 'visible' foods (if you know what I mean) so you know they are eating for certain...

With most fish, I preffer microworms over baby brine shrimp as brine shrimp pose the risk of the egg shells being eaten which can lead to serious problems. Also, microworms will survive for longer than brine shrimp and the culture will last longer and is simple to prepair. Baby brine shrimp eggs will not always hatch successfuly - way too many things can go wrong - and that's deffinately NOT something you want happening just as your fry are running out of yolk...

Once the fry are large enough, you can switch to ordinary crushed or powdered flake and later flake and live/frozen/freeze-dried foods.

Now I think I should point out that livebearer fry usualy require little more than crushed flake as they are larger than egglayer fry.

The foods I have mentioned are what I feed my baby gouramies so there is no guarantee they will suffice for rosy barbs as I have never tried to breed them. Having said that, they should.

 

[ferrikins]

Thought I add as well, Livebeearer fry need feeding every 4 hours. I always fed like this and have only lost one entier litter, but they had birth defects.

On the rosy barb thing, sorry have aserlutly no idea about egglayers.