Just had a big hatch of orange laser corydoras (either CW014 or CW023, if they are separate species), using the ramshorn + alder cone + airstone technique.
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 27 Jan 2017, 09:34
by francoisMtl
Congratulations MChambers !
It is a nice picture with lots of baby cory!
You had Alder cone and air stone for hatching. Did you saw any species for which it made an improvement in hatching rate? So far, for the eggs from species that have spawn here: all fertile eggs seems to hatch just with ramshorn in aged water.
Looking forward for more species to add or new breeders to duplicate species already in. Independent duplicate in different fishroom comforts previous results.
Keep this list up and growing!
Catfish:
Loricariidae - Plecos et al
Ancistrus sp. (Gold)
Thanks Eric! Parent adults cory do all the hard work, I am just a slave of my corys... raising their progeny batch after batch, and then moving fish around to find space to grow up fries. It looks like a never ending story.
Cheers,
Francois
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 27 Jan 2017, 13:16
by MChambers
Francois,
I've never tried hatching the eggs without the alder cone and airstone. I've got plenty of alder cones and enough airstones and pumps (unless my corydoras become even more productive), so I use them.
Matt
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 25 Feb 2017, 00:52
by jcorey
My paleatus cories started spawning last week, so I set up an additional experiment. I separated ten eggs into each of five cups. One I did nothing as the control, one I had an air stone, one I used five mini ramshorn snails, one with three medium sized ramshorn snails, and a last one with IchX (I didn't have meth blue on hand, and I now realize I messed up the dosing conversion and they all died in the first day).
Here's my video diary of it all.
I did daily 90% water changes in the cups using the same tank water they came from. In the end, it broke down as:
Nothing - 5 fry (Edit: found one more alive when dismantling them)
Air stone - 7 fry
Mini Ramshorns - 4 fry
Medium Ramshorns - 7 fry
The air stone cup had most of its fry hatch on the fourth day, before any of the others. Each had only 2-4 turn white, with the remainder never hatching or just partially hatching.
Now I see my albino aeneus have spawned so I may set it all up again. Are the water changes really necessary in the ones without snails? Less maintenance is a plus.
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 25 Feb 2017, 00:58
by bekateen
Hi jcorey,
Welcome to PlanetCatfish!
Nice design, too bad about the last bowl.
jcorey wrote: ↑25 Feb 2017, 00:52Are the water changes really necessary in the ones without snails? Less maintenance is a plus.
About your daily water changes - when did you start? The day eggs were laid? or after the eggs hatched? Or after the fry started eating? Daily water changes should not be necessary (for any of the cups) until after the young have used up their yolk sacs and they are starting to feed. The main issue is waste from urine, feces, and uneaten food.
Good luck with the aeneus eggs.
Cheers, Eric
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 13 Apr 2017, 07:26
by francoisMtl
Another snail story extracted from :
Biulu from Montreal,Qc wrote: In the Post : Spawning season! (Canadaquaria forum)
There were about 30 eggs and I divided them between the 'ramshorn snail method' and an improvised device of a coffee filter, methylene blue and a bubbler.
I got 7 fry, all with the 'ramshorn snail method'. ...
Catfish:
Loricariidae - Plecos et al
Ancistrus sp. (Gold)
A few weeks ago I got a Cobalt Aquatics Egg tumbler at an auction. Two days ago I had an opportunity to use it again with C. aeneus.
As my last batch in the egg tumbler fungused completely (my fault; the air setting was too high), I decided not to take any chances and put some ramshorns in with some of the eggs (15 from the 40+ I collected).
Now guess what?! Yesterday, so 24 hours later, several of the egg tumbler eggs were fungused and since several were clumped together, starting to affect others.
However, in the ramshorn snails batch none had gone bad and none had disappeared. So, I disconnected the tumbler and put the eggs together with the ramshorns.
Today (day 2) I have about 30 viable eggs left.
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 11 May 2017, 21:03
by Biulu
Last night the number of eggs had diminished greatly; I am down to about 12. As most were scattered and not clumped together, I can only conclude the eggs were eaten before fungusing.
On a more positive note: there are 4 wrigglers today.
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 12 May 2017, 16:35
by Biulu
So nothing more hatched; I have 4 fry from 40+ eggs; a very low hatching rate.
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 13 Mar 2018, 15:06
by francoisMtl
I should add since a while Corydoras eques to that list. Made them last year and never added them to this list of cory eggs incubated with planorbes snails...!
Catfish:
Loricariidae - Plecos et al
Ancistrus sp. (Gold)
I have had my sterbai corys spawning almost every day for over a month now. The first laying I saved 50+ eggs, which I kept in a hang on breeder box, I set up a second breeder box and saved the eggs from a few consecutive layings and then a week or so ago there was another big laying of 80+ eggs. I kept about half of those. All of these hang on boxes I have put a thin layer of fine sand in the bottom, and used a few cherry shrimp to guard the eggs. For the second one I also added small ramshorn snails. For the third one I had malaysian trumpet snails at hand. In the first batch I don't think I had any eggs go badly. The second batch maybe 5 eggs werent fertile and didn't become fungusy and in the third batch I didn't see any bad eggs at all but one of the fry became infested with fungus and died (weird because everyone else was fine). Of the eggs that I saved, almost all of them hatched and produced healthy fry. I missed many eggs, some I dropped, some were in awkward places in the tank, and one female had a habit of laying a big thick pile of eggs all in the one place over and over and I think she knocked some of the previous eggs down each time. I have found at least 9 "free range" fry that grew in the parent's tank with 7 adult sterbai corys and no particular care or special feeding from me (since I didn't know about them until they were quite big and brave enough to come into the open).
Final result, I have more sterbai corys than I know what to do with! I feel like the shrimp only box did the best but they were also the first eggs of the season so I think they were overall very healthy and good. And it is really hard to say what worked best because all of the hatchings were too successful. The cleanest fry box with the best flow was one I got from ebay, it sits inside the main tank and has mesh on two sides and an airlift in the middle of the box, this produces a good flow. https://i.imgur.com/3pxmBXo.jpg
The satellite style boxes that hang externally don't keep the same temperature as the main tank and because they are longer the flow does not keep the box as clean. I also tried making my own floating tray breeder box but this didn't work well!
At the same time as the sterbai breeding, I have had some scanty eggs laid by panda corydoras, every single egg infertile or fungused and no amount of help from snails or shrimp has made any difference. Strange!
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 10 May 2019, 16:26
by dw1305
Hi all,
I recently read a scientific paper that suggested that at least one of the nitrifying Archaea "sp." was very sensitive to methylene blue. If these findings are applicable to a wider range of nitrifying Archaea that might also explain part of the success of using snails, rather than methylene blue, with
Recent research suggests that nitrification in aquarium filters is likely to be carried out by Nitrospira bacteria and Archaea ("Freshwater Recirculating Aquaculture System Operations Drive Biofilter Bacterial Community Shifts around a Stable Nitrifying Consortium of Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea and Comammox Nitrospira"(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5276851/), I wonder whether methylene blue's detrimental effect on nitrification might out way its beneficial effects as an antimicrobial?
I'm not aware of any research specifically on the anti-archaeal properties of Alder (Alnus spp.) "cones", but I would be interested if any-one has seen any? Alders form nitrogen fixing root nodules with microbial partners (Frankia), but I'm not sure whether that makes it more, or less, likely that they are active against Archaea.
cheers Darrel
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 10 May 2019, 16:44
by bekateen
Interesting. Thanks for sharing this, Darrel. I've never used alder cones, so can't comment on that, but it's a good question.
Cheers, Eric
Re: Live tips to save cory eggs
Posted: 11 May 2019, 08:59
by dw1305
Hi all,
Alder "cones" are fairly widely used in Europe by fish keepers. It was in a post by @Coryman on PC that I originally heard about them as a methylene blue alternative. This is the post (from 2005 (http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... ilit=Alnus))
Alder leaf discs are the standard leaf used in aquatic decomposition studies, and there has been some work on Alnus spp. as antimicrobials and biomedicines in aquaculture ("Herbal biomedicines: a new opportunity for aquaculture industry" https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 009-9253-7). I just couldn't find anything specifically for Alnus, nitrification, biofilters and Archaea. I expect there is some research somewhere (possibly from a German University?).
I have Alder cones (and Oak leaves) in the tanks, but I keep heavily planted tanks, with floating plants, so I'm not too worried about how much nitrification is occurring in the filter, I don't have it as a single point of failure.
