Gourami Fry

[sioband]

Hiya everyone,
we had a nice surprise on friday when we saw the golden gouramis we have spawning. The male has been making nests for some time but female unreceptive, but success on friday. On close inspection we saw some free swimming fry also. On saturday we had to move the male and female into the community tank as the male was seriously bullying the discus in there.
We moved the fry into a heated unfiltered tank with light. So far they are doing great, swimming well, feeding too as far as i can see. I changed some water last night, and am at a loss as to what i need to be doing for them apart from feeding liquifry and keeping the water as clean as i can until i can put a sponge filter in with them.
Any suggestions gratefully recieved.
Siobhan

 

[Tempestuousfury]

It's a good thing you managed to spot the fry. I, unfortunately, was a bit too late in spotting the fry and most were lost before I could even attempt to move the father out of the tank.

Sponge filter is definitely a good idea, and frequent water changes, at least daily, are definitely in order. Speaking of which, how are you performing water changes?

You might want to start a culture of brine shrimp or find other such foods for the fry to switch to shortly, since the liquifry/ infusoria will only feed the growing fry for so long.

Did you think/want the gouramis to mate? In which case, keeping them in the tank the fry are in would have been the best way to go about breeding them.

Anyways, glad to hear about the fry, hopefully all goes well with them.

 

[sioband]

It's a good thing you managed to spot the fry. I, unfortunately, was a bit too late in spotting the fry and most were lost before I could even attempt to move the father out of the tank.

Sponge filter is definitely a good idea, and frequent water changes, at least daily, are definitely in order. Speaking of which, how are you performing water changes?

You might want to start a culture of brine shrimp or find other such foods for the fry to switch to shortly, since the liquifry/ infusoria will only feed the growing fry for so long.

Did you think/want the gouramis to mate? In which case, keeping them in the tank the fry are in would have been the best way to go about breeding them.

Anyways, glad to hear about the fry, hopefully all goes well with them.

Hi,
water changes at the mo- syphoning very carefully from the bottom of bare tank, then carefully pouring fresh in along a side wall. Stirred but not too shaken hopefully!!!
Will look into brine shrimp hatching as we have three fish tanks now and this fry tank, can get expensive this hobby of ours

We hadn't planned for them to breed, no special treatment taken to promote it no fiddling with temp or filter rate, it just happened. Maybe it was the introduction of the 2 Discus a month ago.

All seems well at the mo, lots developing and freely swimming to bottom and back up again. Got the water approx 6-8 inches deep.

 

[Miss Dib Dabs]

That's lovely. The three spots are highly charged for their spawning activities and will will keep producing fry as long as the temp is warm enough and no one is ill. I know, mine do so constantly. I successfully raised a big group of their fry but am now leaving all born in the tank with the parents. I simply don't have enough room!! I have 14 tanks running now. ) Yes, I think I have a bad case of MTS. Bygones.
I never did culturing of brine shrimp for my lot. As they grew bigger I started giving them first bites powdered food and the infusoria together, then found frozen bbs at a lfs which worked well and then tried small bloodworm, daphnia, brine shrimp and learnt what they could and couldn't manage at each age. At three weeks they started breathing air, like the parents, and their colour started to show.
Throughout the whole experience I lost only one and that was due to the poor thing getting stuck behind one of the filters and drowning itself.
I started the fry tank with a small seeded filter that caused little agitation and didn't suck the fry in then added a larger seeded filter as they got older and made alot more mess.
Best of luck with yours.
Hugs,
P.
P.S:My fry tank is around 20g. By the time they were rehomed it was looking very full!!

 

[sioband]

Just a quick update on the fry. We have moved the fry into a larger tank now with sponge air pump driven filter. Heated to 28-30 c, lighted and protected from draughts. There are about 100 or so fry in there. all still growing, feeding on liquifry 1 and sprinkling some liquifry 3 in too. Water changes every other day, treated and warmed before adding.
The parents are in the community tank now with 2 honey gouramis, 2 silver sharks, 4 clown loaches, 5 danios, 5 white cloud minnows, 1 plec and there are no signs of the gouramis scrapping that went on before, which was the reason for moving them into discus tank.
The discus tank now homes a royal blue, a red turk, 2 red pidgeon bloods, 2 clown loaches, 2 panda corys, 2 khulie loaches and a ruby shark.