Bristlenose fry; now what?

[PaperDoves]

I had set up a 55 gallon tank for my angelfish to spawn without having their eggs eaten by my L137 again. I put a trio of bns in there just for the heck of it, without any expectation of them breeding since they have never done so before.

Well, the bns beat the angels to it. Within days of setting up the tank, I noticed the male fanning in a cave so I inspected it and to my great surprise, found eggs way in the back of the cave!

That discovery was made on a Monday a couple of weeks ago. The next day, I received a shipment of julii cories and put them into that tank. The next morning I got up to look at the eggs, and I couldn't see any. My eyesight is variable and generally terrible though, and my son said he still saw eggs, although not the same huge ball of them that we had previously seen.

So, surmising that the cories may have eaten some of the eggs (all the while kicking myself for not predicting this occurrence), I removed them from the tank so that they couldn't finish off the job. I also removed the angels so that they couldn't eat the fry, if any hatched out.

Then on Sunday, April 1st, I looked into the cave and saw wiggling tails. I did a 60% water change that day, using slightly cooler water to fill the tank. The next morning I couldn't see the wrigglers because they appeared to be blocked by a new clump of eggs which was closer to the entrance than the original ones had been. In pictures, I could make out individual eggs in this new clump of eggs. Again, this was Monday morning, April 2nd.

There are two females in the tank with the single male, and I have heard that it is not uncommon for multiple clutches of eggs to be laid in a single cave.

Anyway, fast forward to last night, April 6. I moved the cave to a different position so that I could get a better look inside, and saw dozens of fry! I was not able to determine whether they were of two different body sizes, indicating two different clutches, so it is still a mystery whether or not there were ever two clutches in there. However, there are far more fry than the number of eggs which were apparent the day after I put the cories in the tank.

This brings me to my question: what do I do now? The only fish in the tank are the trio of bns, an L200 and an L47. So I think that the fry should be safe. They are making their way toward the front of the cave, so I expect that they will be coming out looking for food any day. I plan to provide them with canned green beans, and fresh zucchini which is cut in half and weighted to make it sink.

Do I need to do anything else? I'd like to maximize survival rate.

My parameters are consistently 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 10-15 nitrates and I do about a 60% water change weekly.

[PaperDoves]

Fry are out and about! I put a handful of green beans in there, hopefully they'll find them okay.

[SLIMESLAYER10]

as long as you put enough food in the tank so they can find it the should be ok, they will probably stick to the glass for the first few days so if theirs any algae on the glass it makes a great first food so dont scrape it off. other than that BN fry are fairly easy to raise so you should be set!

[bekateen]

Yeah, leave the kids with the parents. Feed often, keep water clean. They'll be fine.

FYI, it's easy to get 200-300 eggs from a single common BN spawn.

Cheers, Eric

[PaperDoves]

Thanks, I'll make sure to keep plenty of veggies in there so that they can find them easily.