another lucipinnis post

[pleco_breeder]

Hello all,

My new rack is doing rather well so I'm taking on more breeding projects. Four of the five species housed in the system have already spawned and only the L10a have yet to produce viable fry, but he's sitting on his first clutch. I bought the Syno lucipinnis pair in December as a wild caught, mature pair. I didn't plan on trying to spawn them for a couple more months, but I'm on a roll and don't want to slow down just yet. As a result, I built one of the egg catching devices that all the sites seem to talk about but never bother showing a picture of.

I didn't want to trust my first spawning attempt with these fish to one of the tiny commercial foam filters, so I made my own uplift system from 1/2 and 3/4 inch PVC. The tube inside the bowl is 1/2 inch with 30 holes drilled around it, to allow for eggs to be sucked in, and an end cap to prevent all the flow from coming in from the open end of the pipe. This forces the intake to remove water from all around the bowl instead of the majority coming from one location. The rest of the pipe and fittings are 3/4 inch. The pic doesn't show it well because of the angle, but there is a PVC tee at the top to allow water to flow into the collection cup and allow me to insert the airstone that provides lift. I cut the top portion of the tee off because it would hold the tank lid open otherwise.

A tight fitting hole is drilled in the side of the cup below their cave and the PVC "filter" is pushed in through that. All the websites recommend using marbles in the cup, and some go so far as saying you have to use black marbles, but marbles are amazingly difficult to find these days. Therefore, I used a bunch of polished stones that I usually keep around for my plant tubs as decoration. I may still have to keep looking for marbles, but these leave enough open area that I would expect they will work just as well as the marbles. I'll have to wait and see how it works out after their first spawn.

The collection cup is made from three inch thin-wall PVC. I make similar cups for hatching eggs in for a couple other species, so it was an obvious choice. I simply use super glue to hold a section of fine mesh curtain to the bottom of the cups and it allows water to move freely to keep oxygen levels up. Most tetra fry can't swim through this stuff, so I'm fairly confident it will suffice for the Synodontis as well. On the side of the cup, I cut a slit just wide enough for the uplift tube to fit into the cup to send any eggs into the hatching container. Since I know this set-up has a lot of flow based on the current inside the cup, and will likely pull quite a bit of food and waste into the cup, I placed a single cherry shrimp into the cup to keep bacteria to a minimum. I used one that would normally end up being culled and fed to the Synodontis tank anyway, so I'm really not losing anything other than a meal for the adults to keep the eggs safer.

As I mentioned above, nobody ever seems to bother with posting a pic of their set-up. I've looked all over the net to get ideas for improvement before I ever bought my breeders. Since nobody else wants to do it, I'll post a pic of mine and hopefully get some feedback from others that have gone before me.

Excuse the stickers on the tank. The rack is made from tanks I had sitting around from my retail shop days.

Larry

[Birger]

Most I have seen, use these same basic principles and seem to end up being rigged with whatever is at hand(I am bad for this myself) but still work, yours should work nicely and using the shrimp is a nice touch.

One question, what is the diameter of pot used for your "Cave"? When compared to the 3" collection cup it does not look much bigger, but that just may be the angle of the photo.

Birger

[pleco_breeder]

I used a 4 inch pot. I keep a few of them laying around with the holes already cut in case I decide that I don't have enough Ancistrus in the fishroom. The lip has always made it easier to keep eggs from being kicked. I happened to luck into finding the plastic bowls that fit them perfectly. The cave sits inside the top of the bowl, where the threads are, tight enough to actually pick up the entire set-up rocks and all without being so tight that I had to fight the cave into it. I was originally thinking that it may sit inside the base of the cave, but think this works much better.

I just came back from checking the tanks and doing my last feeding for the night and was amazed at how much food had already accumulated in the collection cup. I thought that it may be an idea to turn the air off during the day to prevent so much accumulation, but have witnessed one spawn of this species during the day and would be worried that I would miss one if I did. I'll probably just dump the container each morning as I do my check for eggs in all the tanks, provided there are no eggs in there.

Another piece of information I've had trouble finding about this species is the egg size. I know the fry are quite small and need fed within a few hours of hatching, but couldn't find even an estimate of egg or fry size in my research. Food size is something else that has been missing. I keep an assortment of sizes and types ranging from 50 microns up, but don't know what they will be able to take as a first meal. I would be thrilled if decap brine, or larger, is appropriate. However, based on the statements I've read of their initial size, I'm doubtful.

I'm hoping that I can be ready to go with these as soon as the eggs are laid, but know that there will be something that I either forget, or don't know, to ask that will create hurdles with raising them.

My female has been conditioning rather quickly on a diet of frozen foods a couple times a day and the addition of sinking pellets almost constantly for the last month. She's easily half again as wide as the male at only 2/3 his length. If a spawn doesn't happen soon I'll be quite surprised.

I appreciate any suggestions or information that can be passed on as I would love to have a large group of F-1 in my larger tank.

Larry

[Birger]

Good example of egg size


[Mod edit: Use youtube tags --Mats]

[pleco_breeder]

Thanks for the link. I remember seeing this video several years ago, but somehow it managed to escape my research. My female is comparable in shape/condition to the female in the video and still getting fatter by the day, so I'm still hoping for a spawn soon. Her feeding habits have also changed quite a bit the past two days. She'll come out for the morning cyclops and decap brine feedings, but nearly ignores the pellets I feed the rest of the day till lights out. Then she goes over to clean up. Up till this point, she has eaten them almost as soon as they got close to the tank bottom.

I noticed that the waste was really starting to pile up in the bowl of rocks this afternoon, so I pulled it apart to clean and put together a couple modifications I've been working on this week to fix that problem. I'll take a pic of the changes in the morning after I'm sure it's going to work as planned. It was a PITA to make, but seems to be helping so far. However, most of the mess in that tank occurs overnight.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

I didn't get a chance to see if the new adaptations are going to work before they exploded. I came home from work tonight and found this. Click on the images for larger size.

Now I only have a couple days to figure out what to start feeding the fry. Best guess, based on what is in the collection cup and is visible on the rocks and bottom of the cup, easily over 200 eggs. I can only hope to raise a large percentage of them. Given that I've never spawned an egg scattering Synodontis successfully, this is a new challenge for me. Should also be good for BAP as well.

It was obvious before leaving for work that something was about to happen. Both of the adults were quite a bit more active this morning while I was doing my rounds feeding. They had been more lax the last couple days than usual, and made up for it this morning in spades.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

I removed the rocks from the dish last night, and was up till two this morning putting eggs in the collection cup. Luckily, the eggs aren't very adhesive and it was only a matter of removing the rocks and pushing any eggs off into the dish. I then removed the PVC grate I made and dumped the entire contents, waste/food, eggs, and all into the collection cup. I was surprised to find out that I had made the hole for the uplift tube so tight that it was waterproof when I removed the cave.

I don't know what time the eggs were laid, so I'm splitting the difference and assuming around 7 p.m. From what I understand from my research, it's important to feed the fry very shortly after hatching to prevent starvation taking over, so that time should give me something to base an initial feeding time on. One of the catelog pics mentions hatching at around 30 hours, so they should begin hatching late tonight, around 1 a.m., and I'll give their first feeding in the morning. I was advised on another site that they would be able to take decap brine as a first feeding, so I'm going to try that with this first spawn. If they can eat it, raising these just got A LOT easier than I expected. The mesh in the bottom of the collection cup is fine enough to keep decaps in the cup, so I should be able to feed them heavily a couple times a day and get by with little other maintenance till I need to move them to larger quarters. If not, there's always the next spawn to try something else. The water from the uplift tube, in combination with the cherry shrimp, seems to be keeping the bottom clean rather effectively, so I'm not in any big rush to remove the fry to larger quarters. The smaller container will also keep them close to the food, and that's always a plus.

Sorry if I'm boring anyone with these long posts, but I've been planning this spawn for the past three months and want to make sure that I'm getting any pertinent information out to anyone else planning a similar project. It also gives a chance for the gurus to give any feedback of any mistakes I'm about to make and maybe prevent me from crashing the current attempt.

With all that said, I'll end the post with a pic of the eggs at approximately 12 hours post spawn. There are several infertile eggs in there, but the vast majority are good and no signs of fungus taking over the good eggs.

Larry

[Birger]

Sorry if I'm boring anyone with these long posts

Don't stop, it is nice having this info all in one thread.
I was hoping others would chime in, seems to be many breeding these I thought...The decaps work and get them going on microworms soon too.

All hatched?

Birger

[bigbird]

wow this is a great read and pics etc. well done. how are they going..cheers jk

[andywoolloo]

wow, cool, i didnt realize their eggs were so small.

[pleco_breeder]

By the time the eggs were 24 hours post spawn, fungus had taken most of the spawn. I believe this was caused mostly by my error. I left the uplift tube running as a source of oxygen, or so I thought. By circulating the eggs, those that developed fungus just stuck to viable eggs and the cherry shrimp couldn't keep up once the chain of events began. From this spawn of 200-300 eggs, I ended up with 15-20 fry.

Assuming their conditioning time runs on a schedule, I should have another chance at a better hatch in about three weeks. Most of my spawns have a distinct time-frame between spawns because of a weekly water change schedule and species requirements for conditioning. For the next spawn, I intend to add several more cherry shrimp on the day the spawn occurs and turn down the current in the tube dramatically. Hopefully, the additional shrimp will assist in controlling fungus without the eggs being constantly churned in the current.

Even though I consider the spawn a failure, I'll go ahead and include the most current photos for documentation. I will also try to keep this thread going as I progress to the next spawn. There is a lot of information out there on this species, but hardly anything that is all-inclusive of what is needed to maintain and spawn them. I'd like to see this thread at least work as a more complete reference for anyone else that decides to spawn these fish.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

Although it didn't turn out the greatest, I took a couple pics while doing my water change this morning to see if I could luck into a decent fry pic. They are growing rather quickly compared to what I had expected, but still rather tiny. I only managed to get one pic that allows you to make out a very blurry fry, but I'll post it anyway. The eyes, and yellow belly are about the only things clearly visible in the pic, and a very blurred white shape is the rest of the fish.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

Hello all,

I'm working on something a bit different, even more so than usual, for the next spawn. I started thinking about how much I would like to have pics of the fry while small, but can't get a decent one in the tubes I normally use. Therefore, I started looking around for something clear that I can use to make another tube that will allow me to watch the fry as they develop. I found out a 2-liter soda bottle works marvelously for this, so I'm going to make another tube with the bottle tomorrow and wait on the next spawn.

I would also like to ask for some input from the experts. My pair spawned just last Wednesday, and the female got amazingly thin compared to what she was prior to spawning. She is now approaching the same shape as before after only five days of conditioning. What is the normal time frame between spawns from a single female? I don't want them to get burned out, but I'm really doing nothing different with them than I do with every tank on this system. Just feeding 3-4 times daily and a weekly water change.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

Today is one week post spawn, 5 days post hatch, for the first spawn. The female is once again acting more lethargic, not immediately eating when food hits the tank, and swelling like a balloon. Therefore, I think I'm looking at another impending spawn shortly. She did this last week beginning on Monday and spawned two days later. By the same pattern, there may be a spawn Friday. Either way I got nervous of missing another good hatch for the same mistakes as last week, and made the planned modifications to the tank.

While moving the fry from last week to another tank, still in the hatching tube, I took one more try at getting decent pics and got exceptionally lucky with one of them. The fry started getting a feeding of sinking pellets a day this morning, and the fry in the upper right of the pic shows that he has been eating some of it by the darker colored stomach. The other fry in the pic shows the golden color I've associated with feeding on the decap brine I've been feeding. As a reference, the fry are now approaching the 1/4 inch mark.

I'll also include a bad pic of the new clear tube with an army of shrimp to assist in cleaning the eggs. The new tube, because it is wider and clear, will also allow me to use a long pipette to remove bad eggs as they develop and assist the shrimp in the cleaning duties.

Larry

[Anthonyck]

Pardon my ignorance, but I would have assumed the shrimp would devour eggs. Is this not the case?

[pleco_breeder]

I've used them to hatch everything from kerri tetra, to L10a, to Ancistrus. They pick the eggs, but only eat the bacteria and sediment from them. If an egg dies, it will burst and they'll eat the contents. They're usually very effective at cleaning eggs, but I think I asked too much of this one.

Larry

[PlecoCrazy]

Great post Larry. Keep up the good work.

[pleco_breeder]

Nothing new to report. The female didn't spawn as hoped this weekend. I believe it was caused by an issue with my heater controller which caused some very sporadic temperature fluctuations. I need to find a better way of anchoring the probe in that sump.

I'm going to try to start taking daily pics of the female, as she is rather plump at the moment, to try to display her size before and after a spawn. This is being done as more of a tool for anyone else thinking of working with this fish than personal use. The female gets quite plump, and it's difficult to explain without a pic. There's even a notable progression of how she fills with eggs.

Initially, right after a spawn, there is still a slight bulge on either side located above her vent. As she conditions, this develops more anterior until there is a rounded shape when viewed from above and a slight indent only where the pectoral fins are. Only after she is as wide as she is going to get does she start getting the rounded look along her underside. In both known spawns from this pair, she has conditioned to the point of having a nearly vertical shape along her ventral side just behind the gills.

I'm going to try to get a pic to display this so everyone else knows what to look for. There really is no spawning trigger I know of for this fish, but could serve as a tool for anyone trying to plan a spawn without the use of an egg collector and remove waste prior to an impending spawn.

Larry

[mistern2005]

Larry-

This is a very nice write up. I look forward to future developments and future success(es)!

[pleco_breeder]

The fry will officially be two weeks post-hatch sometime late tonight. I wanted to get some pics at that point to show growth, but tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. Therefore, I pulled the tube for pics so I can at least show that they do grow faster than one-half inch in six months as some online articles state. I intentionally included their cherry shrimp "baby sitter" in all of the pics as a size reference. The shrimp is only slightly under one and one-quarter inches total length. There are a couple smaller sized fry that didn't make it into the pics, but I don't want to cull from these this early on till I see what develops. Besides, there were only 15-20 survivors due to my lax care of them initially. I started adding a sinking pellet each day at around one week of age to slowly acclimate them onto the next food, but only a couple of the largest are showing any interest yet. The vast majority of their food is still decap brine and whatever copepods and micro-critters they catch that seem to be so abundant in my tanks right now.

BTW, the female continues to get fatter and still hasn't given me the expected spawn. I've been pulling the egg collector every 2-3 days to clean any waste accumulation as to prevent some of the necessary cleaning after they spawn again.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

...and one more.

[pleco_breeder]

Sometime while I was at work this evening, the lucipinnis decided to have their next go. Once again, this is a massive spawn and probably upward of 300 eggs. I'm starting to wonder if conditioning has more to do with smaller spawns that some have reported. I feed the same diet to their tank daily, and apparently get the same result with each spawn.

On to the logistics. Even though the female had been rather plump before, sometime between the cyclops and decap brine feeding this morning, she ballooned to be even larger. I can only compare this to several of the saltwater species I've seen spawn where the female ripens eggs only a few hours before the actual event. There was quite a difference between when I set up to take pics early this morning and when I left for work.

As planned, I cleared all of the infertile eggs I could find from the collection cup and the army of cherry shrimp are working hard on the remainder. I also turned the current down in the collection cup to allow the eggs to remain on the bottom rather than suspended and let the shrimp do their job. I will likely attempt to remove any infertile eggs once again in the morning and can only hope past that. They should hatch sometime tomorrow night and will get their first feeding Monday morning. Hopefully, I can call this one a successful spawn as I'm starting to worry about what I'm going to do with all these fish if it becomes repetitively small spawns. I only have so many tanks set up and the first batch, only 16 days post-hatch, is already too large to be trusted with younger siblings.

I'll try to post a pic of the new spawn, since it's in a transparent tube, in the morning. However, it's going to be a busy day as I have two racks to do water changes on before leaving for work.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

The new spawn didn't make it long enough for me to get pics. They were fungused by the the morning after the spawn even though they looked fine the night before. I believe that this was actually my fault and I should've increased the amount of water movement around them rather than decrease. There would have likely been a different issue the following morning for the same reason, but that problem has been fixed by a preventative change to the overflow in the tanks on that row. Now to wait for the next spawn to try again.

Today is three weeks post hatch and I moved the first spawn from their tube into a fry tank. I had been planning this for a few days, but had to get some tetra fry out before changing it over. I didn't think it would be so difficult to get a pic of the fry in the tank, so didn't take any in the tube prior to the move. They immediately hid under the foam filter, so the best I could do was a shot as one swam around the side. Not the best pic, but it does give a blurred idea of how their color is coming along. The largest is starting to get some color behind the dorsal fin, but it's the only one so far. The rest just have stripes on their heads.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

I missed a spawn last night. I noticed yesterday morning that the female was substantially fatter than usual, but didn't think anything of it as it hasn't even been two weeks since the last spawn. Most of the spawn was covered in fungus by the time I found it this morning, but a few eggs were in the collection cup and those that were higher in the rocks seemed to be alright. Because of that, I'm starting to think that the mulm in the bottom of the rocks is likely the cause of my problems with hatch rate.

I added an extra airstone to the egg container this morning, as well as the current from the airlift, so we'll see if I was correct about the current as was my last guess to fixing the problem by tomorrow.

For the next spawn, I'll have to pay more attention to the condition of the female to really test my theory regarding the mulm. She tends to balloon around the 10 a.m. feeding on the day of a spawn. Therefore, provided I see her condition in time, I plan to remove the rocks, screen, cup, and all other parts for a good cleaning on the anticipated morning. I had planned to do this for this spawn, but thought it was too soon as it hasn't even been two weeks since the last spawn. Apparently, they can condition/ripen eggs very rapidly when the mood hits them.

I'll try to update this thread again in the morning once I know how this spawn turns out, but I don't expect much from it as it was at least 12 hours old before I found it. Likewise, I plan on taking pics Friday for the four weeks post-hatch fry that are now in a ten gallon grow-out tank. They are approximately one inch and have got a lot more black on them than I would have expected at this age considering how slow they were to begin showing any color/pattern. The boundaries where the white edging of the dorsal and caudal fins will eventually be is already visible if you use a slight bit of imagination.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

Another quick update. After I got the circulation set and posted the initial post, I went back to check on the status of the eggs. All of them were in circulation similar to what I saw with the first spawn, but were not sticking together as I had previously seen presumably due to the more aggressive aeration, think snow globe.

The mulm that was dumped into the collection cup with the eggs had also pushed through the bottom mesh and was flapping in the current. Again I assume this to be due to the heavy circulation and inflow of water from the lift tube. I brushed the bottom with a filter tube brush and there is now no mulm left in the cup and appears that the spawn may actually produce a better result than I got with the first. This could change by the time I get home tonight, but it appears that this may actually produce a reasonable result.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

This has been a rather odd spawn in comparison to the first two. I checked the eggs last night around midnight because I'm still working these fish based on an estimated 1 a.m. hatch time if spawns occur while I'm at work. There was a substantial number of healthy eggs in the cup. I stopped the current for a few seconds to estimate the number, but there were just too many. The remaining current pushed them all to one side and it was easily enough to cover a one inch square and 2-3 deep. Since I had to be up early this morning, I replaced the current and went to bed.

This morning, I woke up and there were only a few fry in the cup and the few eggs that had fungused since I cleaned them yesterday morning. I removed the extra current to allow the fry to eat, rather than floating around the cup, and within an hour the remaining fry had all but disappeared. I have to suspect that either the shrimp picked the fry to death or the current was just too much for them to handle.

Since the eggs remaining in suspension seems to have done more for the eggs than the shrimp ever did, I'll be removing the shrimp the next spawn. It's just not worth the risk if they're eating fry. Likewise, I'll be missing sleep to stay up and remove the excessive air at hatching time.

It occurs to me that I could save myself a lot of issues by building a mcdonald jar that will fit the egg collector, but IME they're a bit too temperamental to get properly adjusted to keep eggs in suspension.

Therefore, the plan for the next spawn is as follows:
1. Monitor the female for the rapid swelling the day of the spawn and clean the rocks and collection cup that morning.

2. Place any eggs remaining in the rocks into the collection cup without shrimp and with an airstone for current.

3. Drink plenty of coffee to stay up for the hatching and remove the excess current as soon as the eggs are hatching.

4. Remove remaining bad eggs.

5. Feed with the 10 a.m. feeding the morning after hatching.

Based upon my very limited experience and observations, this should provide a very high hatch rate and remove any limiting factors to the fry health. I'm still questionable about whether I want to add a single shrimp to the cup once the fry begin feeding to clean waste/bacteria, but will have to make that decision once I see how feeding goes. I'm a bit concerned that the shrimp will limit the feeding opportunities of the fry and a successful spawn will be difficult to keep fed in such a close area anyway. However, bacteria could also become an issue for the same reasons.

In case this post is misunderstood as speculation, it's common practice for me to do a lot of planning ahead for possible changes when I'm working with a new species to solve problems. Some of these changes may not be necessary, but I'm only looking for one good spawn from this species so I can say I was able to successfully spawn them. Given that the female seems to be consistently producing close to 300 eggs per spawn, I can't call anything less than 200 fry successful. Then I'll get to move on to the next species of African catfish.

I'm still torn between three species as to which it will be, but have already found a potential source for all three. I would've never thought that a 400 square foot fishroom would force me to have to decide which species I want to work with next

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

As I expected, the shrimp obliterated the most recent spawn. However, I now think I'm on the right track to getting a good hatch from these and have rearranged the set-up accordingly. I only have to wait for the female to ripen again and make sure that I clean the rocks and cup right before they spawn to have everything work according to plan.

As promised, I took some 4 week post-hatch pics this morning while rearranging fry. They didn't turn out very well, kinda blurry, but there are definitely a couple in the tank over one inch. These are nowhere near as slow growing as the articles would imply.

A couple of the fry are nearly completely black on their body with only a minor trace of the light color they had only a week ago. They are also starting to clearly show areas of the bright white color on their caudal rays which doesn't show too well in the pics.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

Once again, they spawned this evening while I was out to a baseball game. I didn't make it to the garage to check them till 1 a.m. I had suspected a spawn was coming yesterday, and cleaned the rocks and cup as planned; however, didn't clean them this morning because the female hadn't swollen any since yesterday and I thought my eyes may be playing tricks on me. Regardless, I now have a relatively good size spawn and will have to wait to see how things progress from here till Sunday morning when they hatch. Even with the failed spawns, there is quite a bit of information to be had. Right now, I'm working on charting the time between spawns to help better prepare. It appears to be approximately 10 days at this point, but I'm sure that will change as more spawns occur. The frequency still appears to be kind of erratic even with a constant water change and feeding schedule.

The first batch are now 5 weeks old and I didn't really think they had grown much in the last week till I looked at the pics posted last week. In fact, they are still growing at a substantial rate and can barely fit under the foam filter where the pics were taken last week. Once again, I can't say that the reports of slow growth are even remotely accurate. Their growth rate so far is keeping up with a couple swordtails that were born the Monday following their spawn, and exceeding it if you consider that they were initially a lot smaller. I didn't take any 5 week pics because the growth wasn't immediately apparent, but will take a couple in the morning after opening the fish room.

Larry

[pleco_breeder]

As promised, I took pics of the fry to show growth. The angle is kinda bad, but the size difference is still obvious compared to the previous pics.

[pleco_breeder]

The first spawn is still growing at a good pace. They will be two months old on the 31st and can't fit under the filter foam anymore. I haven't pulled them to get an accurate size, but estimate them around 1-1/4 inches TL.

The last spawn yielded a small group of fry, but they didn't make it till the first feeding. I started thinking that the collection cup likely has a flaw in being able to raise the fry, so tried something a bit different with a spawn from this past Saturday. I was lucky enough to have cleaned the rocks, bowl, and collection cup that morning as I have been trying to do and there were a lot fewer dead eggs when I found them as a result.

Initially, I placed all the eggs into the collection cup to try the same method that has failed so far. However, Sunday morning I decided to try something a bit different to change my luck. I cut a 1 inch square hole in the end of a shoebox and glued a piece of mesh to cover the hole. I hung this in the tank below the lucipinnis tank and siphoned all the eggs into the shoebox. This gave a lot better ability to remove the dead eggs. I also placed the tank return hose into the box and turned the flow down to about half.

After doing this, and removing all the dead eggs I could, I realized that there was too much chance for more eggs to foul. Therefore, I recruited a couple dozen cherry shrimp into the box to assist with cleaning.

This morning, I found approximately 30 fry had made it to hatching and they are still doing well after their first feeding. The larger of the shrimp were removed and I only left about a dozen small shrimp to assist with cleaning.

This spawn has been a relatively successful one, but still around that 10% hatch rate. For the next spawn, I will likely be placing the eggs and shrimp directly into the box as soon as I manage to get them all collected and remove the bad eggs. I'm hopeful that will get a better hatch. However, I've already started making plans to clean the eggs with some type of anti-fungal for the following spawn if it doesn't prove successful. I don't want to make this more complicated than it has to be by dosing any chemical/medication if it's not necessary. These have been fairly consistent breeders, so I will likely have more than enough chances to figure out the "fine print" as I go.

Larry