Sturisomatichthys aureus (royal farlowella) spawning/raising help

[desskit]

Hello! I have two royal farlowella that the guy at the store said was more than likely a male/female pair. For a while the female was questionable, but this morning I woke up to what I am thinking is over a dozen eggs. Haven't been able to get a good look and count yet.

1. Water parameters
a) Temperature range. 75-78 F. Warm days bring the temp up higher than I would like.
b) pH. 6.7
c) GH. roughly 10
d) KH somewhere around 80 ppm, just under it seems. Been slowly working on changing this the last few weeks with water changes.
e)Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite, levels. 0, 0, less than 15 ppm
f) Water change frequency Weekly 30g water change

2. Tank set up
a) Size. 125 gallon
b) Substrate. black sand
c) Filtration. Fluval Fx4
d) Furnishings. Driftwood, lots of river rocks and very generously planted for the room I had left after hardscape. Lots of moss on hardscape
e) Other tank mates. 2x electric blue acara. 10x otocinclus. 1x common whiptail catfish. 14x roseline sharks. 2x guppies (I just can't get these two netted, I started with 9 lol)
f) How long has it been set-up? tank has had water in it for almost two months now. Did a fishless cycle with pure ammonia, seeded by squeezing filter media in the water, and completed cycle using Fritz's Turbo Start 700 in 4 days. No ammonia or nitrite since.
h) Foods used and frequency? I have repashy super green and grub pie as well as fluval bug bites tropical formula in both the medium and small size (really small; dust) sinking pellets.

I have a small breeder I have put into the tank and I put an almond leaf in there to start producing biofilm. I have read somewhere that you can use something like a credit card to transfer the eggs and wanted to get some input on doing this as I would like to protect the fry from the cichlid. Also if anyone has any other advice for trying to raise these awesome fish, I would love any pointers.

[bekateen]

Hello desskit,

Congratulations on your new spawn.

Just to clarify, there are several different fish sold as "royal farlowellas."

Sturisomatichthys festivus

,

Sturisomatichthys aureus

, and even

Sturisomatichthys panamensis

. Are you sure yours are S. aureus?

As far as how to take care of the spawn, there are several breeding reports here, associated with either S. festivus or S. aureus. In each of these lists, the reports at the tops of the lists (those with the most "points" have the most details to offer:
https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/my ... es_id=1167
https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/my ... ies_id=829

I hope you find helpful information there.

Good luck!
Eric

[desskit]

Oh wow! Thank you for letting me know. I was just going off of that one I put in the title. Going to check out those other species mentioned now. Also, do you know anything about moving the eggs? I was going to wait a few days before doing it, but the breeder I have is much too small. Are they very fragile?

[bekateen]

do you know anything about moving the eggs? I was going to wait a few days before doing it, but the breeder I have is much too small. Are they very fragile?

I've never kept this type of whiptail, so I don't know best practices with their eggs. Is there a reason you don't want to leave the eggs with dad?

If these were corydoras eggs, I'd say use a sharp razor blade, or just roll the eggs with your finger tips. But I don't know if you should collect these eggs without a particular cause.

Cheers, Eric

[desskit]

do you know anything about moving the eggs? I was going to wait a few days before doing it, but the breeder I have is much too small. Are they very fragile?

I've never kept this type of whiptail, so I don't know best practices with their eggs. Is there a reason you don't want to leave the eggs with dad?

If these were corydoras eggs, I'd say use a sharp razor blade, or just roll the eggs with your finger tips. But I don't know if you should collect these eggs without a particular cause.

Cheers, Eric

Yeah, in the original post I noted that I'm worried about the two cichlid I have in the tank eating the fry when they hatch. I watched them munch on guppy babies so... I ordered an egg tumbler that will be here a day or two before they hatch. I'll try to use a razor to transfer them when I get that. They're on an extremely flat rock so it should be pretty easy. Famous last words lol

[seb47]

I've seen a few videos on YouTube about moving them with a credit card but never done it as I don't have any whiptails (yet).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQXQgvngw5Q

Eric I think desskit wants to move them to protect them from the tank mates when they hatch.

[bekateen]

Eric I think desskit wants to move them to protect them from the tank mates when they hatch.

Cheers, Eric

[desskit]

I've seen a few videos on YouTube about moving them with a credit card but never done it as I don't have any whiptails (yet).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQXQgvngw5Q

Perfect!!!! Thank you! I watched another video in that series, just not that one. Those look to be almost exactly what I have, so I at least have some sort of expectation of what it will be like to move them. So excited!

[daveupl8]

I have spawned them successfully. Look up their incubation time in days and scrape them off the glass just before they should hatch. Put the eggs in a shallow dish with water and gently rub them with your fingers and they will hatch. It's really cool! I then went down to my local pond and got some leaf litter from it and put it in a 5 gallon tank. I found a dragonfly larve that needed to be taken out. The fry survived on all the creepy stuff in the litter along with eating the maple leaves. They were not fond of the other types of leaves. I also gave them spinach leaves.
What might also work is to get some Christmas moss or simular, and crush spirulina flake and let it fall down on the moss. They might graze on that. That worked on my Red Lizard Whiptails.

[TwoTankAmin]

I only kept one farlo species which spawned for me a few times in a community tank. Up until that point my experience with fry was mostly with corys and plecos.

I expected to see wigglers and the farlos I had did not work that way. The fry developed inside the egg and broke out to hatch. I also expected the them to hatch out together, and they did not. As a result, I lost them all to the lunch menu for the other fish. The next spawn I pulled the eggs to a net breeder trap. I got lucky and it was right before they were ready to hatch and moving them caused then to hatch. I had no experience with farlo spawns and began feeding them bits of Hikari algae wafers.

[desskit]

Thank you both of you! TwoTank and Dave. I tried to scrape a few off the other day and ended up killing 5 of the 6 eggs I got. The other has been developing fine and his egg sack is going away. Thinking about pulling the rest of the eggs/hatching them today or tomorrow. How long were yours in eggs TwoTank?

[daveupl8]

When the eggs are ready to hatch the dad gently nibbles on the eggs to hatch them. If you pull them, you will have to do that more than likely. It don't take much manipulation. I can see how netting them would cause them to hatch if they were ready.

[desskit]

Took way more manipulation than I anticipated. But only two of them died from hatching!

[daveupl8]

They probably were not quite ready to hatch. Maybe another day or two. When it's time they will hatch very easily. For mine, on the 6th day of incubation I used a scraper and scraped them into a net and then transferred them to a dish of water, then barely touched them and they hatched.

[desskit]

They're doing great still! I had to pull 2 dead ones yesterday though. They were moved from that plastic breeder in my previous pictures to a mesh one. I put in some pure spirulina this morning and quite a few of them started swimming around and sucking onto the surfaces of the breeder where the granules are getting trapped. Of those two dead ones yesterday I think one died from hatching that I didn't notice during my first death check. The other was kinda still alive but I let one of the barbs eat him out of his misery. That one likely died from being weak yeah?

[TwoTankAmin]

I was ignorant when I got mine. I never expected spawning. I did it all wrong initially. But the hardest part was rasing the fry after birth. They are the hardest fry to raise I have had to date. The dad will also mouth the eggs to keep them clean:



I also discovered that the eggs do not necessarily all hatch at the same time.

[desskit]

One month later and the first batch is doing great still. They are almost 4 weeks old. And the parents have spawned again! 66 eggs this time around. Much easier to count when they are on the glass

[seb47]

Congrats! Any pictures of the little guys?

[desskit]

The best I can get with the dirty glass. Been able to count 22 at one time now that I have them in the 55 gallon. I know there's a good number more than that, though! The second spawn all got eaten by my electric blue acara 2 days after they laid the eggs. Gonna be removing them as I was iffy about them anyways

[bekateen]

sweet