PLEASE tell me these are fry not some kind of insect larvae 🙏🙏🙏🙏

[Seisage]

I liked this so much, I changed my pfp to a zoomed in image of the fry's face.
I don't know if I'll keep it...

...it's ominous


View attachment 337884​

Personally, I wouldn't mind if it stuck around That's a fantastic screenshot
Ominous for sure, but in a weirdly cute way

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Looks like a celebrity wearing sunglasses. Perfect.

 

[rebe]

@WhistlingBadger @Seisage
I might have to keep it after all

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

@WhistlingBadger @Seisage
I might have to keep it after all

It's adorable, especially for those of us who know what it is! You should totally keep it as long as you want

 

[rebe]

Clip from a few minutes ago! The moina I introduced have started laying eggs on the glass (as you can see) in addition to their live births. I didn't think they'd multiply so much, but the Moina of all different sizes will be a great food source for the fry when they're slightly bigger.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Clip from a few minutes ago! The moina I introduced have started laying eggs on the glass (as you can see) in addition to their live births. I didn't think they'd multiply so much, but the Moina of all different sizes will be a great food source for the fry when they're slightly bigger.

Nice. The music is absolute perfection, too.

 

[GaryE]

Bug eyed Beckford looks good.

So many hobbyists miss the fun of breeding egg laying fish. it isn't world changing or anything, it's just gratifying and interesting. I intentionally bred zebra danios when I was 11, and I got hooked. I only managed to raise a tiny number, but I was so proud of them. Not a person around me got that, and that was okay. If I'd bragged - nerd bragging doesn't work socially!

I hope you and others keep exploring this. There was a shift in the hobby about 20 years ago, when people stopped breeding their own fish and became consumers. In our local fish club, there would be all kinds of weird things in the auction. For a lot of aquarists, seeing a fish in a store meant considering how they could breed it. Not for money - just to see and raise a dozen or two for their tanks and for sharing out to interested people. That's where most of my beckford babies went once they had grown up.

People want to monetize everything. They breed mutt guppies and they want to become suppliers to a thousand stores. But the fun is in a few, and maybe someday breeding the fish you bred. It's nice to look at a tank, but small scale just for fun breeding is something you can DO with aquariums. Watching the larvae take on their shape and then colour up is a show that should never get boring, if you were interested in the first place.

Please keep updating us as they grow. There was a recent thread from a member who bred Sawbwa resplendens, the Asian rummy nose, and it was very cool to see how that person did that so well, from start to never quite finished.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I hope you and others keep exploring this. There was a shift in the hobby about 20 years ago, when people stopped breeding their own fish and became consumers. In our local fish club, there would be all kinds of weird things in the auction.

I think this is largely the result of the internet, and lack of real life social group/nerd interest meetings. I'm a member of the tropical fish club in my area that has meetings quarterly, but my social shyness has stopped me from attending one (yet), and a lot of the "getting to know" and trading seems to happen more as pre-arranged swaps from online groups now. Many newer people to the hobby won't even know of the days of weekly meets at their LFS, because they don't have many LFS left... only chain stores that don't have passionate hobbyists running them, and even if they do, they have to keep busy and not spend their time chatting with customers and networking.

I do much prefer and find more interesting things when talking with and trading with other hobbyists though! When I was getting overstocked with pygmy cories and started looking to home some groups of juveniles, I did some plain swaps, where for 6-8 pygmies, he gave me three P.luminatus and some buce and other plant trimmings from a hobbyist who like you said, just likes to grow plants and breed fish for the passion of it. That also got me into keeping the idea of keeping dwarf rainbowfish, and might not have occurred to me without seeing and having those three to begin with!

I did want to try to breed them, but was always too busy to set up a spawning tank, and any eggs would have been eaten by adults and tankmates, but I still want to get more and give it a real go. I deliberately bred livebearers to start, loved that for a couple of years, and then took ages to wind it down. Then bred cories - accidentally! Wasn't expecting my bronzes to spawn, or my pygmies to just colony breed in the tank, but both were wonderful surprises, and raising several batches of aeneus cory fry, and being more successful with each batch as I got the hang of it and learned more, was really enjoyable, and makes me want to intentionally breed some egg scatterers next!

Want some more I.kerri most urgently, so need to check my M/F ratio and read up on conditioning and spawning them. SF says they're pretty easy to breed... so hopefully!

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Hm, you make me want to try breeding my hillstream fish. The thing that has always kept me back is just the number of tanks breeding seems to require. I really have (mostly) recovered from an early case of MTS. Now I just want one large, exceedingly beautiful tank to play with. Plus I live in a small town and don't really have anyone with whom to share the resulting fish. Rehoming anything is a rather stressful project around here.

But it would sure be fun to breed my padamya barbs, choprae danios, and sand loaches...

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Hm, you make me want to try breeding my hillstream fish. The thing that has always kept me back is just the number of tanks breeding seems to require. I really have (mostly) recovered from an early case of MTS. Now I just want one large, exceedingly beautiful tank to play with. Plus I live in a small town and don't really have anyone with whom to share the resulting fish. Rehoming anything is a rather stressful project around here.

But it would sure be fun to breed my padamya barbs, choprae danios, and sand loaches...

*whispers hypnotically*

Come back to the MTS, Badger! You'd only need maybe a couple of five gallons! Or a five and a ten. Heck, if you make a double tiered stand, you could make it beautiful, fit a 40 breeder on the bottom and a couple of tens lengthways... just for fry, you understand. Just to do the breeding projects. For Science. For Education. For Fun.


You know you want to.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

But it would sure be fun to breed my padamya barbs, choprae danios, and sand loaches...

Lots of ingenious products now available for shipping fish really quite safely, and customers can cover shipping costs...

Edit: What species name for the sand loaches, plz? I wish to look them up!

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Whispers back hypnotically: That's all true...but I have so many hobbies and a family that sometimes enjoys having me around for activities other than fish tank maintenance and selling/shipping fry...
Seriously, that's the problem. Too many irons in the fire. I like the idea of breeding fishies, but it would be more stressful than fun right now.

Edit: What species name for the sand loaches, plz? I wish to look them up!

Himalayan sand loaches, Nemacheilus corica. Really cool and relatively unknown little fish. Lots of vids and pics of them in my journal.

OK, we should now return the thread back to @rebe for further fry updates.

 

[GaryE]

Only do it if it's fun. No one needs more chores.
I just noticed u and i are side by side on the keyboard, so fin can come out as fun.
Let's get back to enjoying Rebe's fun vicariously. Or the fins.

 

[rebe]

Hello friends! It's been a couple of days since I last posted any updates, and the fry seem to be doing well! Not a lot of development you can see, but they are behaving like real fish now and interacting more with the environment.
The moina population has boomed and it's funny to see the fry get bonked on the head by one in the video

I've not really been feeding the fry at all, as they're still too small to accept crushed foods. I have been adding a drop or two of liquifry dissolved in some tank water and adding it around the floating plants. I figure that if the fry don't eat it, other organisms will like the moina which will eventually be eaten by the fry. I presume the fry are eating tiny creatures and bacteria in the tank, as they've made it this far.


I have a question for anyone who has knowledge or experience raising fry. Do I need to feed fry and young fish dry foods in order for them to accept them as adults? Would only feeding small live and frozen foods result in picky fish perhaps?

Edit: A second question, do I need to keep the fry separate from the main group when they grow into adults? I don't know how problematic that would be if they spawned again

 

[rebe]

Bug eyed Beckford looks good.

Please keep updating us as they grow. There was a recent thread from a member who bred Sawbwa resplendens, the Asian rummy nose, and it was very cool to see how that person did that so well, from start to never quite finished.

I'm so pleased to be able to have this experience! I've always wanted to try my hand at breeding or raising fish from eggs. It makes me happy too that I've given the adult fish an environment that they are comfortable enough to spawn in.
From the sounds of it, it takes a lot of effort, space and time to intentionally breed most fish. I wish everyone could have their own experience of raising fry from eggs. It's so interesting and I'm excited to see how they develop into adults.

I'm very happy to have a supportive community to share my beckford fry journey with!