My Celebes Fry Updated: 10 Fry Now

[drobbyb]

Mike, I'd have to disagree with you on this one with rainbows. Having raised quite a few myself, I have tried the powdered commercially available food, but I experienced more losses and slower growth. This isn't the case with all fry, but rainbow fry are different. When fed with vinegar eels and plant matter in their hatching tank I didn't lose any fry (zero) and the fry were able to eat bbs (baby brine shrimp) in 4 days, whereas with commercial fry food I experienced a loss of about 20% with them taking 7 days or more to grow large enough to eat bbs.


Live food is better for fry when it comes to rainbows.

 

[mikev]

No denial that live food is the best for any fish.

20% losses are not my experience, for most of rainbow species I had no losses on powdered food, as long as it is an appropriate one. Some species are more complicated, for instance raising a good batch of threadfins on commercial food is not feasible, but for most, including celebes, it is just not necessary.

Which brand of food caused 20% losses, if I may ask?

 

[myrtle]

I'm 99% certain that the liquifry is the reason why I now have only 2 fry of the original batch of 10ish eggs. I have ordered some brine shrimp cysts and next time I pick eggs I'll try to get a culture of vinegar eels going too. The largest fry is a week old now and is still no more than 5mm. I have some TetraMin baby which I feed my Threadfins with and I'm trying them on this tonight.

Next time I'll prepare the food/cultures before hatching the eggs!

 

[mikev]

Liquifry is dangerous: while the fry may survive on it, you are quite likely to produce ammonia and kill the fry this way. Give Sera or Zm a try, neither is too expensive.

As for the growth speed: celebes are about the slowest growing rainbows. Most of mine are in the 15-20mm range, at nearly three months.

What temperature are you keeping them at?

 

[drobbyb]

Mike, I used Hikari First Bites as it came recommended from a few rainbow forums. The problem with prepared fry food and rainbows IME is that the fry have to learn that it is food. Rainbow fry are programmed to eat live prey when they are born (when they are fry they eat "animal" protein foods more so than adults do).

 

[mikev]

Robby,

This explains. Hikari is absolutely not suitable for most fry. I have not used it with rainbows myself, but tested it with danios to see 75%+ losses; and a friend of mine used it with rainbows to see very high losses as well... you were lucky to lose only 20%. Real shame, because Hikari generally produces quality products.

With quality powder foods you should see no losses in most species .. I raised more than a dozen species so far, and the problems of using powder only occurred only with two, special cases of tiny fry that needed paramecium.

Again, no objections to live food, and I use it too, but absolutely no need to complicate life for the beginners who can have perfect results easier.

Incidentally, here is one of the exceptions: threadfins. Hopeless without paramecium.

My oldest fry is about 12 days, tripled in size to being larger than newborn guppy, and still unable to eat artemia! But they eat mostly powder food for now.

 

[myrtle]

Thanks for all this info, as a total beginner to breeding it's all useful stuff!

Mike, the hatching tank and therefore the fry tank is at 27 degrees and I'm running a small cycled sponge filter aswell as having copious amounts of Java moss and a moss ball from the parents' tank and duckweed floating too.

This began as an experiment as to whether or not the eggs would be viable and I wasn't really expecting them to hatch.

I've now got my brine shrimp cysts and am ready to give this a go now for the first time. I'm also going to look for the powdered fry food you suggest as it has to be better than liquifry!

 

[mikev]

raising rainbows is so easy that you will be an expert in no time.

brine shrimp is not immediately useful; it will take a few days before they can take it, so having either good powder food or paramecium is a must.

here is the link to ZM food:

http/www.zmsystems.co.uk/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=prodshow&ref=zm00030g

I have not used it for a couple of years myself -- they would not ship to the US -- but it worked for me nice before. Sera (check your local stores for "Sera Micron") is my preferred food now. Use very little as not to spoil the water. if your eyes are good, with Sera you should be able to see how the fry is eating.

temperature: up it to 80-82F and verify that the temperature is very stable (use separate thermometer). Fluctuating temperature is deadly for rainbow fry and celebes specifically like it warm.

 

[drobbyb]

Thanks for the info Mike! I only tried it because my daughter knocked over my mature vinegar eel culture, and I had to have something fast with hungry day old fry to feed. I asked on a few rainbow forums, and that's what they recommended. By the time my seeded culture was ready, the fry would have been long starved. I learned my lesson with cultures though, always always have 2 mature cultures ready. I just never thought that the food wasn't good. From what I gathered, hikari stuff is usually decent, so I trusted the brand name.

It makes a good bit more sense now though that I've heard other people having the same problem.

Since we have an up and coming rainbow breeder here, what do you use to grow out your fry once they get past the bbs stage?

 

[myrtle]

I went to both of my lfs today and neither had the Sera Micron and one only had liquifry. The other had the Hikari first bites which I know isn't recommended but it has to be better than the liquifry until I can get some of one of the others through the post.

Yes, I'd be very interested to know what you use after the bbs as I have got Adrian Tappins book but the more help the better!

 

[mikev]

somehow Hikari is the food that most stores in the US carry too... the only people I know who are positive about Hikari are cory breeders, but cory fry is usually much larger than bow fry.

For Sera, go to ebay.co.uk, and search for Sera Micron -- I saw four hits. In the US -- if Robby wants to try it -- go to CorysRUS, they seem to have a monopoly on Sera products.

as for the post-artemia food: actually you can use Hikari... small fish tends to like it and it does not seem to do any harm. I fed it to Endlers fry (not that they needed baby food at all).

I tend to continue feeding artemia for a very long time, until the gets to about 1" and in some cases, give daily artemia even to adults (generally any rainbow up to about 2" loves artemia, and since I make it daily anyway, I may as well make them happy). Once the juveniles reach about 0.5" I supplement with GP's (100-200) and fragmented flake food.

Robby, what are you keeping/breeding nowadays?

 

[drobbyb]

Mike, actually I don't have any tanks up and running right now. A year ago I had to move and sell off my tanks to be able to make it with the economy crash, and I miss it dearly. You have more experience than I, and I haven't been posting on any rainbow forums lately, so I just have been going off of what I have learned and what I have learned through experience.

With my last batch of fry, I started feeding something called golden pearls when they were large enough to take it (was breeding M. lacustris) and their growth was quite excellent on it. The stuff really smells though, but the juvies devoured it to the last granule every time I fed it. Of course I didn't just stop artemia and start the golden pearls, but I fed both for quite a while until I eventually just fed golden pearls and crushed spirulina flake. I can't remember which web site I ordered the spirulina flake from, but I got my golden pearls from http/www.brineshrimpdirect.com/other-goldpearl-particle-c149.html

 

[mikev]

Robby,

oops. I'm really sorry to hear about this...your lacustris were excellent. When you are ready to restart, I'll be glad to send you whatever eggs I can get from mine, I have about a dozen of species now, most can yield eggs at will.

In re golden pearls (GP's): I did as you did (gp's+artemia) most of the time, but I'm not going to be using the smallest GP's size anymore. Here is the problem: it is known (Gary bloviated about this repeatedly) that GP's kept at room temperature at some point go bad and kill the fry. What I have discovered was that GP's stored correctly (airtight container, frozen) also can go bad. When this happened, I lost a bunch of fry over two months ... had real difficult time understanding what is going on since I was breeding fish that I was not familiar with yet, and something else could have been the cause. There seems to be no problem with larger size GP's, but the smallest size I'll not touch: it is not predictable when food turns into poison.

(Now, it well may be that GP's from brineshrimpdirect are not the same as ones from Kensfish that I used ... but I'm not in a mood to experiment after the recent misery).

I doubt I have much more experience than you: we started with lacustris at about the same time... but I've been doing a lot more breeding in the last year.

 

[myrtle]

Sorry to hear you had to sell your stock Robby, that must have been gutting. The economic situation across the globe has affected everyone; for me, these are the first new fish I've been able to get for a couple of years as we were struggling to put food on the table at one point. Hopefully you'll be in a position soon to return to your former breeding prowess!

I've heard about Golden Pearls but I've not been able to find them in the UK. I'm going to try to concentrate on the live cultures anyway and get the Sera Micron. I've got plenty of different frozen foods that I fed my adults on, the I werneri and Celebes love the brine shrimp and daphnia and the larger praecox prefer the bloodworm and the odd bit of daphnia. The herbies, as they are new and farm bred are not taking the 'live' foods at the moment, preferring the flake (Tetra Prima, TetraMin and TetraPro Vegetable) but they have only been in the tank since yesterday afternoon... I'd appreciate your thoughts on them if possible (in another thread!) as I'm not experienced enough with the larger bows to tell whether they are likely to be hybrids or not..

As much as I'd love to breed some of the larger bows, it is so difficult to get true lines in the UK, they are all farm bred and almost always of uncertain ancestry. To obtain lines worth perpetuating I'd have to drive to Europe to one of the Dutch or German breeders and I simply can't afford to do that. I'd also love to breed my I werneri as they are spawning again as I type, however I am nowhere near experienced enough to get the types of cultures going that they would need!

 

[drobbyb]

Well myrtle, getting experience with breeding bows, even hybrids, will give you the tools and habits you will need when you finally do get some pure specimens. Not saying that you would, but don't try and pass off hybrids as pure bows. That's a huge problem with bows in the hobby.

Only experience and study will enable you to tell hybrids apart from pure specimens, and it's not always easy. If there is a question, you can always post on (rainbowfish.info) and let the experts try and mull it over. I am sure there are hobbyists in the UK who breed pure bows (usually they know the history of the species they have, and will gladly tell you where they got theirs from).

Mike, I may just take you up on that offer for eggs when I am ready. I still have a 30 long that I have held on to. I was thinking maybe getting some M. kamaka if I could find them. Some people think they are kind of dull, but they appeal to me, and they are small enough that I could easily keep a group in a 30 gallon. Who knows!