Tatia intermedia spawned!

[bekateen]

I checked the tank again today. Collected 10 more live fry off the Matten and witnessed over a dozen dead in the Matten (I'm sure some of the dead fry are the same ones I saw yesterday, but others look freshly dead); I also witnessed another 10+ fry alive and swimming loose in the tank. Then I removed the mop from beside the Matten and rinsed it in water, from which I collected another approx 135 live fry and about 4 more dead fry from the mop.

Since the fry move so fast in the cup, I video record them then freeze-frame it to do a head count. On today's harvest, I counted 133 more fry in the first try and 136 fry in the second. Thus my estimate of 135.


After an hour, I rinsed the mop again and collected 10 more fry.

Together with yesterday's harvest, I've got about 255 live fry!

My conclusion? The mop doesn't stop the fry from burrowing into the Matten, but the mop is very appealing to the fry and it's much easier, less stressful and safer to collect fry off the mop. I think I'll add more mops along the matten going forward.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

P.s., my daughter took this photo yesterday. Apparently this is what I look like when inspecting the fry tray. Ugh, with that extra chin, it looks like I have two mouths.

[bekateen]

Another attempt to harvest Tatia intermedia fry from the tank today. First I collected 12 more fry from the matten. It seems peculiar that I never get more than about 10 or so from the matten even though I see more alive in the foam. That really comes down to how deeply the fish have burrowed into the foam as to whether I can suck them out with the turkey baster. Also, all truth be told, leaning over the tank eventually hurts my lower back, so the operation is somewhat self-limiting.

Then I turned to the two mops in the tank, the large old mop and the smaller extra mop I added to the tank yesterday. Both mops are positioned against the surface of the matten, the new mop near the posterior wall of the tank and the old mop towards the front pane of glass. I collected only 6 fry from the new mop, but a lot of fry from the old mop. As time goes on since hatching I feel like I'm collecting more dead fry than before.

In total, from both mops, I collected approximately 125 (+/- 4) fry. About 8 were dead when I collected them, but I'll leave them in the count just so I get a better estimate of the total number of eggs originally laid [but acknowledging the estimate will never count those dead in the matten or those still loose (dead and alive) in the tank].

Then I turned to the fry already in the fry tray, which I collected yesterday and the day before. I knew some of them were weak swimmers when I caught them. Today I removed between 15-20 dead fry from the tray.

Photos below show only today's harvest from the mops, including dead and alive fry. From my video, I screen-captured three different frames, which I used to count the fry. As before, I avoided counting objects that might just be reflections the walls.

Overall, across both days, I've collected between 390-400 fry, about 30-50 were/are dead already or died since collection.


Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

One more collection today. In total, I collected 102 (+/- 2) fry, 4 of which were obviously dead: 21 live fry were suctioned from the matten or from loose in the tank (16 initially, which are included in the photos below, plus 6 more later), 8 live fry from the recently-added smaller green mop, and the rest from the original mop, a large brown & green mop (estimate 73 fry from the large mop, including the 4 dead fry from it).

In total, I've collected about 490-500 fry. There are still live fry swimming around on the tank (I can see them but can't catch them) and there are many dead fry (now old, I think) in the matten, so the original spawn was well over 500 fry. I still don't know if that was one female's output or more than one's, but @Catfish-ologist tells me he has one female that puts out 450 eggs per spawn, so this could be from one female.

The bigger mystery for me is, where the heck are these fish dumping their egg masses? This is the second spawn where I didn't find the bulk of the eggs (in this case, none of them). 500+ eggs sitting in a tank for days before hatching should have been visible and I inspect the tank daily, often 2-3x/day. I know the kinon and other plants make the habitat very complex, but sheesh! What I haven't been inspecting are all the pleco caves in the tank. Any chance these fish are spawning in caves and I'm just missing that? My

Tatia gyrinus

laid their last eggs as a mass in a cave-like clay "calvus" (although she may have just dumped unfertilized eggs, as all the eggs melted within 48 hours).

Sweet mysteries of life!

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Caught 22 more live tonight, and two more dead.

After that, I removed about 10 dead from the fry box. These are fragile fry, or maybe 500 in one breeder box is too many.

[bekateen]

This morning I started by removing 24 dead fry from the fry tray. Then I collected 12 live fry from the Matten and an additional 41 fry from the two mops. Of the 41 fry, I removed 4 that were already dead in the mop before doing the photo count, so 37 live fry in mops.

Total collected now exceeds 550, although many (about 15% is a rough guess) have been or eventually died already. That still doesn't count all the live and dead fry in the tank.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Feeding these babies is a bit of a mystery for me, as I'm not sure how big a bite they can take at this age. So I'm throwing a lot of different foods at them:

1) Live microworms (ideal, but I can't produce them fast enough for this many fry)
2) San Francisco Bay brand frozen baby brine shrimp
3) San Francisco Bay brand frozen cyclops
4) Hikari "First Bites"
5) SeaChem Nutridiet Shrimp Flakes (pulverized with a mortar & pestle until it is a fine dust)

I've always wondered how close in size the frozen cyclops are to the frozen baby brine, so today I put both under a microscope and took photos. The two are almost the same size, but the frozen BB are definitely smaller overall. That said, I get the impression from my photos that the bigger size of the cyclops is more their length than any other dimension, whereas the frozen BB are spherical, so while I think the frozen BB are better for smaller mouths, the uniform diameter of them might make them bigger in one dimension compared to the seemingly flat frozen cyclops.

Anyone have better info than that?

Cheers, Eric

[characinkid]

Hi Eric, Congrats on getting so many fry! I've used microworms and decap BS eggs as first foods in the past along with Hikari First bites. Never quite sure which one they are eating but it does seem to give me higher success rate than when I first started and did Microworms only.
Good luck.

[bekateen]

Never quite sure which one they are eating but it does seem to give me higher success rate than when I first started and did Microworms only.

Thanks. Yeah, that's my issue too. What are they actually eating? That's why I use so many foods at once

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Today it's a case of diminishing returns. First, I removed 24 dead fry from the fry tray. Then, I collected 26 live fry (and 2 dead) from the two mops and I collected 8 more live fry from the Matten; total new fry = 36.

Combined with previous numbers, total collected from the tank (live and dead) approximately 590.

I still see live fry swimming in the tank, with several of them hiding under the false floor. I can also see a few of the fry have made it all the way across the Matten and are just a millimeter or two away from the last pore before they are able to escape into the chamber behind the Matten, where they might get sucked into a canister filter or pumped back into the gravel bed of the waterfall. Neither of those will end well although the canister offers a very minor chance of temporary survival, if I clean the canister soon.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Began today by removing 34 dead fry from the tray, then went on to collect 48(!) live fry from the Matten, with one of those live fry being collected from the back side of the Matten, in the filter compartment with the canister filter intake and the pond pump intake. That little one doesn't realize how lucky it is!

I also collected only 13 live fry from the two mops. Is it a quirk that the number of accessible (not buried too deeply) fry in the Matten was so high today but the number in the mops was low? Probably yes, but who knows. Just glad to be in the positive again (more new live from tank than dead removed from tray).

Total live intake today, 61 more fry. Combined with previous catches, this puts the number of fry at over 610! These fry are still the same sizes as the fry from the last few days, I still expect they're all from one night's spawn, although I still have no clue if they're all from one mom, vs. from multiple females ovipositing on the same night.

Cheers,
Eric

[bekateen]

Now it's moved to the negative: Collected 18 live

Tatia intermedia

fry from the mops and another 8 live fry from the Matten, total 26 new live fry, but removed 40 dead fry from the tray.

Now that I split a third or more of the fry from the tray to the 10 gal tank, I can't accurately track losses anymore, since they disappear in the 10 gal tank. So this loss of 40 is just from the fry tray in the parent's tank. Hopefully survival is better in the 10 gal tank.

Total fry collected as of today is over 636, probably over 640. I started collecting these fry 7 days ago (exactly), and they were probably a couple of days old when I started seeing them. I'd hope by now their numbers start to stabilize in terms of deaths per day; they're well into feeding at this point and I see them skimming the water surface and scouring the tray floor after dark, so they're eating something.

Cheers, Eric