Guppy Fry Growing.

There's been a bit more bullying in the breeding net, and one of the Guppy Fry was laying on the bottom, being bitten by the others. But the moment food was available she was up to the top and feeding and seemed to recover. I think that maybe all of my comings and goings over the last few days have meant I've not been about to feed them enough, and there isn't much extra food floating in the breeding trap.

So tonight we set all of the female Guppy Fry free to the main tank. A worrying moment - would someone come along and eat them? They seem happy enough. Probelm is that I won't be able to feed them as heavily, but then if I'm not about, I can't do that anyway. And from Tuesday I'm away for 2 weeks so they will only be fed every 2 or 3 days. So they need to be out to scavange.

Hopefully they will be OK. They are starting to show different tail colours and some are showing body colouration. My daughter is planning which to keep and which she'll allow to go...

Also, bought another 6 bunches of plants, so the tank is once more looking nicely planted.

Another fish goes missing

Got back from our trip to London and all of the fish were ready for a feed! Some where quite quiet, but picked up once the food hit the water. But the male Guppy has disappeared - he's nowhere to be found. Not even a dead body!

The troubles plod on...

Neith of the 'sick' fish are showing any signs of their 'conditions' improving, although the female Panda Cory did appear twice - around feed times, although I hadn't added food - and hunt for food. The male Guppy continues to hide away.

And now there's a leopard Danio that's acting strangely! His colour, I've noticed this evening, has paled off and he doesn't seem to be able to hover without sinking. Maybe some infection that is affecting his swim bladder and mucus?

On a brighter note, 2 shrimps are now bearing eggs. Maybe one can go to term and produce some baby shrimps - which will probably be food for the rest of the tank!

Splitting out the Guppies

The female Panda Cory continues to plod on. She was eating today, but she is still very thin and worryingly so. Chucked in another load of bloodworm this morning. The Corys are loving this new daily diet!

The male Guppy was also looking quiet, but later on did perk up. There wer probably 2 danios spawning today - I think all 4 females have spawned this week, they are all looking thinner and not about to burst. But the result was that not many fish, apart from the Corys, wanted feeding this morning. Full of fresh eggs, I suppose. I'll keep my eye out for babies hanging around next week!

I've also removed 13 female Guppies to the second breeding net. I found one near dead and another small one with most of its tail bitten away. The near dead one died at lunch time. I dropped it into the main tank as feed, but the larger fish tried to eat it and spat it out. So I suppose the larger males, and much larger females, are probably safe from the hungry mouths.

With nearly all of the females removed - there are a few smaller ones that seemed to know to hide with the males, it should be less stressful for the males. More space for them all, and 2 nets for the danios to hide behind.

The nitrate readings are back up to 20ppm. A bit disappointing, since I changed water mid week. I do need a few decent bunches of plants as areas are looking thin, but apparently the plane bringing the plants in on Wednesday didn't turn up, so we are without new plants in the whole area!

I have bought the Fluval 3 Plus filter. Almost twice the capacity of the Fluval 2 Plus, so should keep the water cleaner. Although I've not plugged it in yet! I'm changing the water tomorrow so I'll need to move a few bits about. The only space where there new filter could fit in (it's a lot longer) is right over the air curtain. I was concerned that the filter would suck in the air bubbles and produce micro bubbles if positioned there...

Maintenance - nitrate 20ppm; 13 female Guppies into separate breeding net.

Never the twain shall meet...

The Guppy fry seem to have separated into 2 groups, except when I'm feeding them. I'd noticed a few days ago that there was a large variation in sizes and now we have half the fry at the bottom of the net and the larger fry swimming at the top. It only became noticeable because I moved the direction of the outflow of the filter, which meant that the fry were not getting as strong a blast as they had been.

It does look like most or all of the larger fry have gravid spots, whilst the smaller fry do seem to have the modified fin of the males. But it's funny to see the way they have separated themselves, but I suspect that I'm going to have to work out how to separate them shortly, else I'm going to be coming home to a dozen or more pregnant Guppies after my holiday (three weeks until I go...).

The sensible thing to do would be to get a small tank for the females and put those I'm not keeping in there - but I know what my wife would say... The fish are developing their colours well, and all seem to have their mother's eyes - totally, black, no white. They also have her black flecks on their tails, which are yellow (her's was red), which has probably come from my yellow tailed male.

It's a pity the other female lost her fry. They would have looked great as she is just a pale colour and should have taken his yellow well.

Also, we've finally let the Danio Fry loose into the main tank. He seemed to latch onto the Glass Bloodfin Tetras for some reason, and they didn't appreciate that. We darkened the room to give him plenty of time to settle in, but the lights were long since off, so hopefully he'll be OK on his first night in the full tank.

Maintenance - 'MadAlec' released to the main tank!

Amazing Gymnastics???

I managed to quietly catch the female Guppy I was talking about yesterday and placed her in the ice-cream tub. But I could see although the move had been easy and quiet - the net had only been used to guide her into the tub, she wasn't settled.

I checked on her 10 minutes later and she was quiet and with the lights off I thought she would settle for the night. An hour later, on my way to bed, I checked in and the tub was empty - jus the fake plant I'd included for cover floating in it. After 5 minutes' searching I saw her swimming around the back of the tank, possibly without the gravid spot.

This morning she is definitely thinner and not such a gravid spot, so either she had the drop or miscarried as she performed her gymnastics. Whichever way, there's no sign of any fry in the tank, even when I searched before the lights came on. So it looks like we have missed our chance there. Probably good in the long term - it would have been hard in 3 weeks tonight releasing small fry into the tank and probably watching some being eaten - the night before our holiday!

On a more positive note, the younger shrimp is carrying eggs again. I saw a female sized case floating around the tank, so I presume the other female has just molted. But what's the chance of being able to do anything with these babies - when they could be hatching just a week before our holiday? I suppose it would make a learning exercise to try to get them to hatch. Better to try now and lose them part way down the line and then get further with the next batch.

Maintenance -

Is other Guppy about to have a drop?

The other (and only surviving) female Guppy is looking very rounded and her belly is flattening off. The gravid spot is huge and she does seem to be hiding, although took her food well this morning.

Her dorsal fin is down and she's swimming a lot, but just holding position. Maybe later I'll catch her and either try the ice cream tub trick, or put her in the 2nd breeding net and remove the Danio - best done at night. Give the Danio the best chance to adjust to the full tank whilst she will be close to having them (if the drop is tonight) whilst not confined too long. It's a reasonable size net, so not too much of a restriction for her. Hopefully the drop will be sooner rather than later, as any babies would need releasing 3 weeks tomorrow - the night before we go on holiday. And the current babies, which are 5 weeks old, are only just of a size at which I think they would survive (from 8 mm to 15mm).

Some of the fry are showing lovely colours from their parents - yellow tails from their (presumed) father and the black patterns on the tail from their mother. They should look nice! Of course, if the other Guppy does have fry and they can survive, it will be hard knowing which to keep and which to take away. And how full will the tank be when that happens?

Also, if there's a drop tonight, will it be 4 or 6 weeks until the next one? 4 weeks and we'll be away, 6 weeks and we'll have been back for a week. I expect we'll be able to work it out before we go.

The nitrate is a little higher than I'd like after a 20% water change yesterday, but the colour almost matches the 10ppm mark - so I shouldn't complain!

Also this weekend I've noticed the male halfbeak is finally starting to show some colour. Possibly a bit of black coming back and there's some pale blue on his tail and dorsal fin. Maybe finally he'll colour up and look the attraction he's supposed to be!

Maintenance - nitrate circa 12ppm.

Shrimps mating and a danio fry has survived

It looks like adding salt may just have done the trick for the shrimps! I should know for certain in a few days, but I've seen the older shrimps swimming around with him mounted on top of her. Quite a bizarre act to observe!

Last time around it was three days after witnessing the potential shrimp mating that I noticed her carrying eggs, so I'll have to watch carefully from Thursday to see if anything has happened.

It's just a shame that if anything hatches this time around it will only be 12 days before my holiday! I can always move her to the small tank after a week and take that to my in-laws for them to keep feeding!

Speaking of the small tank, we have found at least one Danio fry swimming in there, possibly 2. We're planning to release the existing fry to the expance of the main tank some time this week, so his breeding net will be freed up for anything in the tank to be moved to - if we are moving the shrimp in... Not sure then what killed the others off - could have been low oxygen or high wastes if moving them and adding some water saved this one or two.

Sods law is that if it's going to work it will be this time - just before we go away. I expect the Guppy will also decide to drop some fry soon! I have been watching her tummy changes for 25 days...

Quiet day, after the various upsets! The Danio fry is doing well - it must be reaching 2cm, the size of some of the small fish that have been put in, so I'm expecting that we'll be able to release him / her to swim with the older fish later in the week. The last few days have seen a lot of growth there since it's been on it's own.

Likewise the Guppy Fry have also grown well since the Danio was removed to its own breeding net on Thursday. They must be around 8mm - 12mm each. I think at least one has a gravid spot showing and some have been showing black flecks for a few days and one is also possibly showing some yellow behind the black on its tail.

Aside from that, the Danio Fry in the spare tank seem to have died off completely. Next time I collect eggs, I'll have to put them straight into the tank, or at least move them over quicker. I'm guessing that they all died in virtually the same 24 hours because of water quality - too many small fish in the one small volume of water. If it had been lack of oxygen, the fry that were alive when I moved them should have survived as that would have aerated the water. Either that, or there wasn't enough food in the water?

It's a hard learning curve - but I'm sure with experience I'll get there.

Another departure...

Not a good day! Blackie, the paralysed Guppy, was ddead when I looked in this morning. No idea what has happened there - nothing on the other fish. Then I did a good clean with a 20% water change. This had been planned for morning, but got delayed until evening.

I forgot to aerate the bottle the baby Danios are in and it was planned that they would come out of there today - I was intending to use the water taken from the main tank to set up the small tank. When I got around to that nearly all looked dead. There are maybe one or two that are swimming about.

Also, the shrimps haven't carried eggs for a while. Was pondering that and researching what could have got Blackie when I found a few diseases for which the treatment is salt. I've had salt in the tank occasionally, not often. I first added it when the female halfbeak had a strange growth - so the 26 April. 15 May I noticed the shrimp carrying the eggs.

She lost them after a large water change (and low oxygen) and at some point recently I added salt again, and I'm sure it was after that both shrimps carried eggs. Then the last few weeks I've done quite a few water changes.

Maybe, just maybe, the shrimps will only carry eggs when there is salt in the water? I'll hve to watch for that.

Maintenance - O2 normal; nitrate approaching 20ppm; 20% water change; 2 teaspoons tonic salts added; baby danios to spare tank.

Paralysed Guppy?

Not much recently, except today I noticed that the Guppy 'Blackie' seems to be paralysed from the waist down. She's swimming using just her pectoral fins, which doesn't look good. Her back has suddenly arched and she's lost her 'pregnant' look and her colouring has gone slightly.

It's all come on very sharply - I suppose it doesn't look too good.

How do you measure fish fry???

How do you measure your new fry to see if they really are growing??? I've read reports by people where they give detailed measurements as the fry grow each millimeter. No way do my quick guess measurements come up to that standard!

So, today I tried a new trick. A digitial photo of the fish with a scale held at water level. And for most accuracy - I'd just fed the fish to bring them to the surface!

The results - well the Danio (???) comes in at 12 - 13mm long - he / she had their tail bent, so it's still hard to be accurate (large fry, dead centre of the picture). Body width is much easier to measure at 2mm...

The Guppies - well they are all roughly the same, so only measured a couple and they are around 7mm long and just under 2mm wide. They are 10 days old and have increased by almost 50%. Not a bad growth rate, I suppose. Especially as there was no sign of growth for the first few days.

The whitespot returns...

The whitespot has returned to the halfbeak - what a nuiscance! Was talking to the lady in the shop yesterday and she noticed as I was talking to her that the whitespot had returned to her halfbeak. I don't know what it is about this infection, but even when I'm treating it (I put a dose of medication into the tank only yesterday) it can still reappear. I seem to have been dosing the tank alternate days for ages now.

The fat fish do seem to have shrunk a little, so the top feeders are on part rations for the next few days to sort that out. It's so easy to feed too much when I'm sat by the tank most working hours of the day. They can easily be over fed!

When we fed them this afternoon the water boiled - they were that keen to get to the food. But still continuing to feed the babies their full rations - maybe even sneaking an extra clean and feed in to keep them going.

More Corys

We've added a pair of Panda Corys finally today - it's taken ages for them to turn up in the shop - we've been pestering the lady for weeks! Hopefully she picked out a male and female for us - my daughter is absolutely desperate to get breeding more inhabitants!

The Albino Cory spends a lot of time swimming up and down frantically. Aparently, that can be the sign of a female looking for a mate - I already thought it was a female, so that backs it up. So it looks like I'll need to arrange a large albino male partner for her - no juveniles for her, that won't do the business!

The shrimp is still carrying the eggs and the tiny Guppies are continuing to survive, and might even have grown slightly - width if not length. They definitely are far more interested in feeding - I spent 5 minutes tonight dipping food into their tub after removing the waste from the bottom.

Also did a 10% water change today - although the nitrate reading last night was only 10ppm, 12 after the last water change. But I did notice the male Guppy looking like a barrel - and so are a few of the Zebra Dabios. I'm assuming / hoping that it's just too much food, so no evening feed for anyone tonight.

Another quiet day...

Nothing much has happened today - the Guppy fry continue to grow at an impossibly slow rate - will they really reach a decent size by 4 - 6 weeks as I have read? If I'm optimisitic, they might be a whole 6mm long now. The Danio fry does seem to be growing - maybe 10mm long. But it's hard to work out the size of any of them - they are all so active.

The best way of feeding the Guppy fry seems to involve gently chasing them around the tank by moving the floating plants. Once they are woken up properly they are really eager to feed. Or maybe it's just their age - they are more willing to feed.

Still the older shrimp carrying eggs. Sometimes I think the other might have a few eggs, but I think it's just her keeping her balance.

Apart from that, I've not noticed the dreaded whitespot for a few days. Hopefully, the cycle has finally broken. Now I need to work out why the halfbeak has lost his colour and get him back on form.

Are the babies growing?

Little sign of growth on the Guppies - but I am wondering if they are going wider. On a couple of the feeds, ones when I cleaned out their tub first, but didn't add water, a lot of the fry did come to the top of the water to feed. Maybe they are getting wider, before they grow longer.

No sign of growth for the baby danio and there's still one of the shrimps carrying eggs. I also noticed in the water removed from the tank over a week ago something swimming in the waste water. There are usually some little tiny insect type blobs swimming around, but I also saw some longer blobs in 2 of the waste water bottles. Maybe if I moved them upstairs to a window, where they would be warmer and more light to create algae, then there might be some growth.

Watching the second female carefully, her tummy has also flattened out slightly and she's hiding around. So I think she's going into a container for the night...

The local shop had an arrival of Panda Corys yesterday - a pair of the cuties are reserved for us. Was tempted for a trio, but apparently they aren't easy breeders. Save the space for some Corys that might breed.

The babies continue...

I'm continuing to change small amounts of water for the Guppy fry and feeding them regularly, but at most they have grown 1mm to 6mm - but it's hard to measure any of the fry in the tub. They are only 48 hours old, but I'm impatient! I wasn't sure whether they actually fed for the first 48 hours or not, but with the Danio fry also in the tub, some feeding was required.

I am a little disappointed that the eother Guppy doesn't look heavily pregnant, but reading up on how many fry are usually in a drop, it looks like this wasn't Blackie's first drop - there are still about 30 survivors - and I don't know if she ate any of them.

But I was looking carefully at her today and wondering if she is carrying a small number of fry - reading up last night, a first drop can be 8 - 25 fry. So watching her carefully as her gravid spot is speckled slightly, like Blackie's on Saturday. So I'll watch her behaviour tomorrow and see if her tummy flattens at all.

It's also a shame about the shrimps - the newer female, that was carrying plenty of eggs, has lost most of her eggs. There are still a few there and she's fanning them with her swimmerets, so there is still a chance of babies. Pity, my plan was to watch for when the eggs were hatching on the older shrimp and then to move the younger shrimp into a separate tank, expecting her eggs to hatch the day after the older shrimp's eggs. That plan is out of the window...

The Guppy fry survive their first night

All but one of the fry survived the first 24 hours - the one that didn't looked a bit deformed, or that could just have been the way it died. We had noticed one had an interesting colouration on top - too much black on one side. It was either that one that died, or the black patch has cleared up.

I dropped the dead fry back into the main tank and in the blink of an eye it was eaten - the little fry wouldn't stand a chance in there alone! They are still around 5mm long, but do seem to be trying to take some of the food off the surface. I expect that once they start eating, then as long as the water stays fresh etc, hopefully they will put on some decent growth.

It is fascinating watching them. They all hide at the back when I open the tank, but if I stand still and watch them they make their way to the top to find food. The Danio (???) fry is about 8mm long - possibly grown ever so slightly. Really need him to make some progress so he can be put into the main tank. It's almost a month since I recorded him as 5mm - 6mm in length. Mind you, I thought there were 3 of them then, but only found one the next day.

Come on little fishies - do some growing!

Last Monday is was the death of the favourite resident, today it's a birth. Well, births to be precise - 25 to 30 of them! The female Guppy, Blackie, whom I managed to catch late last night did indeed drop her fry this morning.

She was sitting quietly at the back of the ice cream tub, with most of the fry swimming around the other side of the tub. I was amazed that it happened so easily, that I guessed the right night (first time!) that they would be born and how big the fry are! I would guess that they are each 5mm long and actively swimming around.

The other baby we have - the possible Danio, isn't gowing that quickly, although it is growing. So since we now have a tub in the top of the tank setup for growing on (if only for a week...) we're in the process of moving him over as well. It means only 1 baby tank to care for but the benefit for him is that the water in that tank is far warmer - heated by the water around it and the lights overhead in the daytime.

I read that Guppies do show growth spurts when a water change takes place, and the danio fry has been in the same water with only small amounts changed. Given the position etc of the tub I'll be changing water from it quite frequently. I'm not sure how long they are in the tub before they get to a size at which they can be released to the main tank. I did read that they are mature at 1 month - so it can't take too long.

And the other good news is that I'm sure we have not one but two shrimps carrying eggs. I saw the second one for certain yesterday, without eggs, so she's only laid them overnight. Looks like one is making the other maternal. I suppose it's nature's way of producing more baby shrimps at the same time and thus increasing the chances of some surviving.

So the cold baby tank might have 2 shrimps in it soon enough!

Guppy Drop Update....

After quite a few attempts, I finally persuaded Blackie to swim to the front of the tank and then, with the lights long since off in the tank, gently netted her.

If only it could be as easy as it sounds... The male Guppy was also caught and I hadn't prepared a container to put her in. So I left them both in the net and whilst keeping it perfectly still with one hand, managed to move off the tank covers with the other hand and then lower a cleaned out 1 litre ice cream tub into the tank with the other. A bit of twisting and I released the male (I'd left him in to make her more calm) and then slowly raised the net up the tank, whilst still pressed against the glass.

This was the nearest to disturbed Blackie looked in the process - I don't think she felt properly netted in the dark. I was able to twist the net into the ice cream tub and almost fill it with water, so that it floated just below the lights.

With the addition of a few loose strands of plant and an artifical plant to provide plenty of cover, she looks quite calm and relaxed. I've also thrown the switch on the lights so that they don't come on in the morning - I should be well up by then, by it is the last day of the school holidays, so I might just get a late lie in...

I'll check on her first thing and I think if there's no sign of fry then I'll release her (rather than baking her under the lights once they come on) and try to catch her again tomorrow after lights off... I'm assuming / hoping that the fry will be born over night or early morning.

She definitely looked slightly more relaxed in the tub. But I'm too worried that I'll not be able to have the lights on or that the waste levels will get too high or the oxygen levels too low... I'm a worrier about my fish!