Baby Danios?

Just over a week ago I put some water aside thinking that the Danios had spawned, but what with the fighting and the fish I thought had spawned being returned to the shop as the ring leader (with all weight returned in hours of seeing her 'slimmer') and then the white spot, which meant a 20% water change this morning, I forgot all about the bottle of water until yesterday afternoon.

I was actually meaning to empty it out, but something made me look at the bottom of it and it was then that a tiny movement caught my eye. I'd picked up the bottle, so all of the gunk in the bottom was moving, but this movement wasn't a steady movement, it was random zigzags. But it was a tiny dot of a thinh, maybe 1 to 2 mm at most and not recognisable. Then I saw more, and more and more.

Getting quite excited about it I was using a torch and then spotted 2 or maybe even three shapes moving at the top of the bottle - but these were 5 to 6mm long and most certainly fish shaped. And careful late night inspection of the main tank with a torch in the dark revealed another of these tiny shapes.

So at lunch time it was back to my favourite fish shop, where I bought some "TetraMin Baby" food ground flakes. I'm adding a bit of that to the bottle and tank and will need to keep an eye on what's happening.

Having said that, out of the 2 or 3 larger shapes I saw last night I can now only see 1. It could be the same one all of the time or different ones. There's no way of knowing. But with dozens of little dots also swimming around the bottom of the bottle, there's a good chance of at least one or two surviving. The owner of the shop said she would expect it to take about 12 weeks before they are a 'decent size'. I'll leave them where they are now - I'll lose too many if I try to move them. But once they are bigger (hopefully...) then I'll move them into an old tank. OK, it won't be cycled, but I can start it with water from the main tank and its size realtive to the size, and potential waste output, of a few baby danios should mean that it's not too much of a problem. After all, they are surviving in an old lemonade bottle at the moment.

I expect this means that now I have to keep my eye on my waste water to make sure I'm not throwing out baby fish!