I have babies

[karrihug]

last night my daughter came and got me and said i had gourami fry. they are in my 210. i can't believe it. the tank is 29" deep and i had seen my gold male had been building bubble nests for several weeks, but was not even sure my blue was female. i have hundreds of babies. is it possible that there are more than one spawn? half of them look like they just became free swimming, so small you can barely see them. and the rest are the size of newborn guppy fry. and they are in 29" of water. dad is still hanging out chasing everyone else away. i have no where else to put them at the moment, and would probably not be able to get them all out anyway. the funniest thing is to watch dad chase away a 6" sev. can they eat frozen bbs? there is not even any way i can divide the tank is is so big. what should i do?

 

[Gourami Lover88]

Are you sure they are gourami fry?Spawing in a community is not normal,but if they are gourami babies then your stuck beween a rock and a hard place . What I would do would get some micro worms or grown some inforsia, if you have alot of plants I wouldnt worry about the inforsia tho. Gourami fry are much to small for bbs at this stage wone they get bigger like newborn guppie fry then they would be big enough. But most of the fry probabaly will be eaten or dead before you can get anything going

 

[fish_face]

You could maybe try to get a breeding compartment thingy from a pet/fish shop. You've probably seen them, its like a very small clear plastic box that you connect an air pump to and attatch to the inside of the aquarium. Its for isolating small pregnant fish for spawning and keeping babies safe in. I'm no expert tho and don't know if you'd have too many babies, but at least they might not get eaten

 

[sylvia]

They will need access to warm atmospheric air to breathe and very clean water and tiny foods so a breeder trap would not be ideal. Like mentioned, if your tank is planted, buy some liquid food for egg layers (the kind that contains food for infusoria) and put some in. This will be good enough food for about 5 days, sometimes more. Then you realy do need microworms. BBS would work too but they are known to cause swim bladder problems and, at the moment, are too big for the newly hatched fry.

I'm sorry to say that without a seperate tank for breeding, most of the fry (probably all) will not make it to any significant size. They will get eaten, starve, not be able to develop their labyrinth correctly and may get sucked up by the filter or swept away by a strong current. They are very difficult fish to raise in a community. However, there is a chance you may get a few to survive. I have had success in a tank with just cories, plecos or other gouramies so I know that breeding them in a community is not impossible - just difficult and you will experience major losses if you have fish like severums in with them.

You can't feed them frozen foods at this stage - they need things that move to trigger feeding. Plus BBS would be too big for most of the fry.

It IS possible the fry are from different spawns but I am rather surprised you did not notice them earlier then as the male could not possibly have been guarding 2 bubblenests at once...

 

[karrihug]

1 gold severum
1 green severum
2 jurapuri geophagus ( i know that is not the correct name anymore)
2 bp(who spawn every 2 weeks, no babies though)
1 turquois rainbow (who must move soon, everybody is getting to much bigger than him)
1 african butterfly
2 rainbow sharks
1 blue gourami
1 gold gourami
1 pictus cat
1 common plec

these are the other fish in the tank. the only other fish i had pairs of don't go near them so it has to be the gourami. the tank is heavily planted and the jurapuri dig up stuff all the time so lots of floating plants. they are in a little jungle that i am not sure the bigger fish can actually get into and dad stays under the nest and runs everybody else off. so it must be him. he has been blowing bubble nests for several weeks, but i have never seen the female anyway near them, or him for that matter. oh well, i will see this weekend if i can figure out where to put some more babies. the convicts and kribs are still too small to put in with older fish and too small to sell. hmmmmm, maybe i will buy a new tank