bristlenose catfish fry

[x_davo_x]

hi guys just a few questions i have a colony of common bristlenose and a colony of albino bristlenose the both have spawned a few times. but my fry survival rate is very low.here i go

- whats the best way to raise the fry.(currently i take the log the male is in and put it in a bare bottom tank).

- should i you a frysaver in the original tank-

-what food (currently zucchini and crush algae wafers)

-if a fry saver how do i get the fry into the saver

anyway sorry for all the questions guys

cheers dave

[andywoolloo]

what size is the tank they are in when they breed? What's the parameters, NI NA PH A temp, maintenace schedule, filtration, substrate.

.(currently i take the log the male is in and put it in a bare bottom tank).

I have learned on this forum or read here that bare bottom is bad for fry, they can get ill from the micro organisms or bacteria build up on the glass bottom. Mine are on sand.

I leave my babies in the tank with the adults. I remove them at 2 inches to the fish store. Or just about 2 inches.

I feed them the same as the adults: zuchinni, cucumber, sweet bell peppr strips, potato, melon, mango, romaine lettuce, sweet potato, apple, and various flakes and sinnking wafers and pellets. They like NLS Grow and NLS Finicky. I also have some fry foods, Hikari first bites, and Ocean Nutrition newly hatched artemis. Also once a week I feed that tank defrosted Hikari frozen foods, bloodworms, spirulina shrimp, daphnia, tubifex.. and a defrosted veggie formula.

It's all about making sure they have enough food, enough filtration , enough water changes. Put the food in take it out put more in take it out put more in etc. It is tough on the filters, I have to do the tubing on the canisters and replace media in the HOB frquently. But I think the dad can do a fine job with them till he releases them then I just feed them and keep the water clean. I usually change that tank water 50% twice a week. Mine are in a 40 gal breeder.

One batch of babies got kicked out or accidentally got out of cave still as eggs sacs and I put those in a in tank breeding net. I just gently picked up the whole egg cluster and put them in the bredding net. I put the breeding net where it would get good current from the canister filter. They all hatched and were fine. After their egg sac was gone I started feeding them in the breeder net then after about 2 weeks I released them into the tank.

Also I keep their tank at about 80-82.

[Simian]

When they are young, the big trick is to get as much food into them as possible. I cook my Zucchini so its nice and soft for them. IME the 30 day mark is a critical time to ensure they are getting enough food.
Lots of water changes and plenty of aeration. I too struggled to keep mine alive when I started, dont get discouraged.

Another way I have seen work is keep them in green water with plenty of Java moss, they feed on the micro organism's when really young and seem to do pretty well, the hard part is you cant see them very well so cant see if you are beginning to loose any.

As for removing them, If I cant remove them before they are free swimming I siphon them out when they are still small using a piece of hose, I dont lose many using this method.

[apistomaster]

I prefer to leave the fry in the breeding tank as long as possible. I feed mine a diet of mainly Spirulina and Earth worm sticks and on this diet, they grow rapidly. I do not bother feeding them any fresh garden vegetable but only because I am too lazy to bother since they do as well as I think they can on what I am feeding them.

I have only bothered to hatch expelled eggs from a pair of albino long fin bushy nose and one batch of L134 I accidentally dumped out of their cave. I have found I could usually replace the eggs in the cave and elevate the opening and the male continued to care for the brood normally.
Using a larger tank is wise if you intend to raise many fry in the breeding tank.
If you don't think that is practical to raise many fry in the breeding tank, then wait a month and remove the fry with a net after you siphon half or more of the water out. This makes it easier to capture the fry. I do this with other pleco species during a routine water change.

Instead of using a breeding net I put the eggs in a 4.5 gal spawning tank with a heater and an air stone. They develop just fine this way.
Even while they are larvae they need a smooth surface to attach to with their sucker mouths. Breeding nets do not let them do this well.

I keep a thin, ~1/4 inch of substrate in all my catfish tanks. It seems that the survival rates are higher. Having some Java Moss or other fast growing plants like Hornwort seems to help with maintaining better water quality.

[Carp37]

As with most of the replies, I also prefer to leave the fry in with the parents, although I do move some to growing-on tanks after a couple of months. As they produce copious amounts of waste I only have a gravel substrate a couple of grains of gravel deep, plus some largish bogwood pieces, a cave and a large plastic plant.

I've found survival tends to be pretty good- it might be a lot higher if the fry weren't so desperate to climb into internal power filters! Using sponge filters I was always on a knife-edge of water quality, and changing nearly 50% of the water every day, whereas with the power filter I can get away with changing water every four days, so I accept the fact that I'll lose a small percentage of the fry as I still get too many fry to raise effectively.

[apistomaster]

I understand how loosing a few fry to a power filter intake doe little to harm the overall survival rate but there may be times when the fry are of some more valuable specie where any avoidable losses to a filter should be prevented.
Instend of using sponge prefilters, I prefer an improvised prefilter made from a filter media net filled with springy Eheim Ehfifix.
This Ehfifix filled bag distributes the total area over a large area and allows the finer, sponge prefilter clogging particles through. Live bbs and other edibles tend to collect on the surface of the filter bags where pleco fry easily gather them up.
I have used this style of a prefilter for several years on the intakes of AquaClear 50 HOB filters I'm using on my permanent breeding set ups for Corydoras hastatus which produce relatively small fry. The filter intakes never really become clogged and no fry are lost.
I shove the tip of the intake deeply into the media filled bags then attach the bag to the tube with a rubber band.

I also believe it is beneficial to have even the thinnest of substrates vs the results of a bare bottom tank. Many theories have been advanced as to why fry seem to do better over even a minimal substrate but I think it simply boils down to helping create a more complex ecosystem which supplies additional micro-foods and discourages the development of a layer of unwanted bacterial films.
The benefits seem to extend to a diverse number of fish fry including plecos, Corys and Apistogramma to name a few.

[Carp37]

Hi Larry-
do you have any photos of your prefilter set-up? It sounds an interesting solution but I can't really visualise it.

Stu

[apistomaster]

Stu,
I'm afraid I have never photographed my home made pre-filters.
It is really simple. A cheap 6 X 10 inch filter bag is partially stuffed with Eheim Ehfifix.
Then the intake tube tip is inserted into the middle of the bag and held in place with a rubber band.
The Ehfifix is quite springy and wants to expand. This keeps the bag ballooned out and creates the large surface area that does not clog as fine pored sponges do. The excess bag material is held down with the rubber band.

It isn't any more complicated than I described.
I do like raise cherry shrimp in my pleco breeding tanks and they help keep the bag surface cleaned off. The pleco fry also work over the bag surface since finer food particles tend to cling to the bag surface.