Fry

[bpondabay]

Hello I have had Guppy fry before but it has been a long time and I want to be a little more educated this time around
My question is simply I am planning on keeping my fry from my swordtails and guppies in the community tank that they were born in. I have plenty of plants and hiding places my question is though how do I feed the fry without the others eating the food and also I have a 55 gal tank do i need to put something over the filter if so what.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum BPondabay.
A couple of answers for you.
To protect your fry from being sucked up by the filter, cover the inlet tube with some filter sponge. I get a filter sponge designed to be internal to a name brand filter, cut a slit in one end and slip the cut up over the filter inlet tube. It looks like this in place.

It looked like this on my desktop.

The second question about cover for fry is easy. If your fish are kept well fed and the fry are given finely crushed flake food, the fry will have a place to hide and will get enough to eat. I use java moss as fry cover. It provides a dense mat of cover that the adults have a hard time swimming through to catch the fry. It looks like this in one of my tanks.

 

[soybean]

They're canny little things and as long as they have a nice clump of moss that bits of flake can get stuck in, they'll be fine. I didn't even know I had any until half a dozen fairly substantially sized extra fish appeared in the tank one day! I didn't do anything special. Crush a little flake, try to get it to land near their hangout, and they will find it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

You can use a scissors to shape the foam so a smaller piece can be used. It is very important to rinse out intake sponges weekly as it is never a good idea to impede the intake side of filters and pumps. He is a picture which shows a shaped sponge on the power filter filter in one of my tanks.

 

[OldMan47]

Contrary to what Two Tank does, I use a huge chunk of filter sponge. Each of us has a viable method. For TTA, the weekly maintenance is a must due to a small sponge surface area. For me, a monthly cleaning is enough because I have such a large sponge surface. Either way will work but my method takes a bit less maintenance and his method means you can use a single sponge for lots of filters while my method burns through sponges fairly quickly. You must decide for yourself what method suits you since they are both viable methods.

 

[bpondabay]

OK for the sponge I am guessing a regular store sponge would be toxic is there a special type of sponge or can i get it at the LFS or what?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I use the sponges for Hagen's AquaClear filters. I also do weekly waterchanges and media cleaning on all tanks. It has absolutely nothing to do with the size of my prefilter sponge vs the size used by OldMan47.

The longer one waits between media cleanings and water changes, the "dirtier" any tank will be. Nothing can change that. Organic wastes trapped inside of any media will continue to break down and work their way back into the water.

 

[TCfishies]

The second question about cover for fry is easy. If your fish are kept well fed and the fry are given finely crushed flake food, the fry will have a place to hide and will get enough to eat. I use java moss as fry cover. It provides a dense mat of cover that the adults have a hard time swimming through to catch the fry.

Hmmmm, Java moss sounds like the secret to fry survival. All mine got eaten last time. I got some new plants hoping they might help, one is Wisteria.

Do you think that might work?

I'll look into getting some java moss, but I haven't seen any in the shops...

cheers

TC

 

[DeadFish666]

OK for the sponge I am guessing a regular store sponge would be toxic is there a special type of sponge or can i get it at the LFS or what?

You can get open-call sponges at hobby stores aka poly-foam, used as furniture cushions, stuff etc.

 

[OldMan47]

Almost any plant will work as fry cover but the tighter the spaces it provides, the higher the fry survival rate will be. Some tried and true plants for cover include the mosses, cabomba, water lettuce (the fry hide in the roots), anacharis/elodea and almost any of the stem plants.

 

[TCfishies]

Almost any plant will work as fry cover but the tighter the spaces it provides, the higher the fry survival rate will be. Some tried and true plants for cover include the mosses, cabomba, water lettuce (the fry hide in the roots), anacharis/elodea and almost any of the stem plants.

thanks for that. She's still not at all fat after the last drop so I think I've got some time

cheers

 

[Giantdny]

The second question about cover for fry is easy. If your fish are kept well fed and the fry are given finely crushed flake food, the fry will have a place to hide and will get enough to eat. I use java moss as fry cover. It provides a dense mat of cover that the adults have a hard time swimming through to catch the fry.

Hmmmm, Java moss sounds like the secret to fry survival. All mine got eaten last time. I got some new plants hoping they might help, one is Wisteria.

Do you think that might work?

I'll look into getting some java moss, but I haven't seen any in the shops...

cheers

TC

I have a decent ball of java moss and my fry still get eaten I think it's real hit and miss. Maybe I have dumb fry