phylomius typus-need advice on raising fry

bossfish · Post by **bossfish** » 27 Jan 2006, 01:14

About 9 weeks ago I was moving some fish and noticed that my mustache cats had spawned. I moved the fry to a 10 gallon with new water and a seasoned sponge filter. I began feeding with frozen baby brine shrimp and cyclops eeze powder. all went well the first few weeks they ate regularly and stayed at the top of the tank in the corners. After about three weeks they started to hang out at the bottom more, under and around the sponge filter. I added two ceramic caves for them to hide in. At this point I started to add some spirulina 20 sinking sticks and was feeding three times a day and doing water changes about every other day. I have noticed that if the fish are startled some of them either swim irradically or just freeze and act like they are dead. Usually they snap out of it and are fine, but sometimes they don't and just die within an hour or so. And sometimes they just die for no apperant reason. Also I noticed that with more food I was loosing more babies so I am now only feeding once a day some baby brine or cyclops just before the lights go off for the night. This seems odd though because the parent's regularly gorge until it looks like there going to burst and they seem to thrive eating like this. I'm still loosing them at a rate of 3-5 a week and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I think my pair has spawned again so I'd really like to do better on the next batch. If there is anyone out there who has kept these fish or can give any insight I would love to hear from you.
thanks

bossfish · Post by **bossfish** » 03 Feb 2006, 02:13

just an update on the fish. I got a chance to speak with someone who has bred them in the past and he recomended blackworms. I was told that baby brine doesn't have enough protein and the cyclops eeze has like 66% it's way too much. I wasn't sure that they would be able to eat them but they can and the bigger ones seem to be doing a lot better. I'm still loosing the smaller ones though. Is this common with catfish? I regularly raise other kinds of fish with no losses so I'm wondering if I'm still doing somthing wrong. any tips would be appreciated.

sidguppy · Post by **sidguppy** » 03 Feb 2006, 06:29

baby Phyllonemus and baby Lophiobagrus are notoriously picky!

I've been breeding P typus and 2 species of Lophiobagrus so far, and I too have experienced heavy losses when I start feeding them with artificial or dead food.

in order to reach the young, overfeeding is swiftly done, and they do not handle nitrates or nitrites well......

THE food for them is LIVE artemia larvae; freshly hatched eggs.
as soon as they're feeding visibly on that, keep feeding it, and slowly add stuff like cyclopeeze, thawed cyclops, de-shelled artemia-eggs, powdered food etc in tiny amounts.

do NOT make sudden switches from 1 foodstuff to another; it can cost you an entire batch.

and ofcourse, due to the feedingregime waterchanges are essential.
fresh water should be treated with tonic (aquasafe for example), and added through a "showerhead" or airhose, so it mixes slowly (they also cannot handle sudden changes in waterquality).

patience and meticulous are the keywords here.

good luck

bossfish · Post by **bossfish** » 03 Mar 2006, 23:27

thanks for the information. I just wanted to update this thread. I started feeding them blackworms and havent lost another one since. they are a great food because they stay alive until eaten so the water doesn't get dirty quite as fast. I'm still doing water changes about three times a week and they are growing really fast. the biggest is nearing two inches. I think that there are about 20 left so I lost about 30. It was very hard for me to loose that many fish especially when I knew that my inexperience was to blame. At least I learned how to care for them in case they spawn again.