Pitch Black Rams

[Charlyc11]

Make sure the BBs are small enough for them to eat. San Francisco brand/strain are the smallest. I had that issue when I started.

[jwcarlson]

Make sure the BBs are small enough for them to eat. San Francisco brand/strain are the smallest. I had that issue when I started.

I'll have to try to time a SFB strain hatch with their free swimming debut.

[coralbandit]

I know feeding the BBS to the parents was mentioned but I'll repeat it.
By feeding the BBS to the parents you get several results.
The parents will learn themselves to eat the BBS thus possibly helping the fry to know.
It also lets the parents know there is a proper food source for the fry to survive. I see where some has believed the parents eat their fry when they do not feel the environment is proper.
It will assure you have a fresh batch when the time arrives.
Using the Brine shrimp direct eggs I never needed the SFB type. I always used the premium grade. https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/pr...eggs-16-ounces

I also took fry away from parents to artificially raise and they never had trouble with the BBS.
If I never artificially raised I may never have learned how to raise fry.

[jwcarlson]

I do usually give the parents a squirt of BBS once or twice a day. This particular pair less often probably and usually only once they have wigglers, I'll start putting some in every time I feed BBS, which is twice a day.
I'm chalking it up to them not being seasoned, but maybe they should be by now. I wasted a lot of time with water that eggs wouldn't hatch in, so I've hamstrung them a bit.

I was actually worried that the parents might think the babies were plump, premium baby brine.

After seeing they'd eaten the babies I did a full tank scrub down and big water change and they were mad as hornets. The male wouldn't leave my hand alone and when my hand wasn't in there... the end of the siphon he was going crazy for. Spent a decent amount of time right inside it trying to kill it from within the belly of the beast.

[brewmaster15]

Jacob, the first couple of days on bbs you really wont see pink bellies.. they eat like a single brine shrimp and settle down.. then eat another. Baby Brine shrimp are able to to be taken by them but its just barely imo. The fry grow fast though and soon they will be gulping down big time.

[Charlyc11]

I used both SF strain from Brineshrimpsdirect.com and grade A both worked for me.

[Charlyc11]

Golden bellies

[brewmaster15]

Golden bellies

Age?

[Charlyc11]

I think less than 2 weeks. I had posted these on my thread Pitch Black Rams in Fishlore.com so I tried to trace back.

[brewmaster15]

That fits with mine . Thx!

[jwcarlson]

20240428_162507.jpg

Much bigger spawn this time.

[brewmaster15]

Nice Jacob! Congrats! Looks like a good size spawn.

Al

[Charlyc11]

Nice going Jacob...

[Second Hand Pat]

Looks like those parents will be busy Jacob, congrats
Pat

[AquaticNerd]

Congrats, that's a lot of fry!