Breeders, opinions please.

[Steve_Warner]

Hi all,
My eggs have hatched into wigglers(about 80% rate) within the last hour and I want to know when I can do a W/C and when can I start to raise the conductance of the W/C water? I have them in a 20 gal by themselves and there is about 5 gals of water in it. They're looking good, wiggling hard!

Steve

[Discusgeo]

Steve don't do anything until they are free swimming and feeding off the sides of the parents. I don't start changing the water on my 29 gallon breeders until 48 hours after swimming with the parents. I then remove 2 gallons of the tank water and replace it with aged tap water, once in the morning and once in the evening. Once I have changed at least half the water (15 gal) I remove 5 gallons and replace it with aged tap water once a day, all this is done with a slow water pump once I am up to 5 gallons. This is how I do it and it works for me.
George

Only 5 gal of water and the babies just hatched. It takes another 3 days before attachments. Keep an eye on the PH. Never let it drop below 5.5. With little water in the tankl. It can easily drop to that level if you start feeding the parents. Add warm tap water to keep the PH up to avoid acid burn to the fins and cause deformities esp. on dorsal fins. Conductivities is not important after hatching. If the parents are not the PB strain. there is no need to lower the water level for attachment. I'm not comfortable with only 5 gal in the tank if the water is very soft. Beware of PH crash and wipe out the whole brood.
Jimmy.

[Steve_Warner]

Hi all,
Thanks for the advice George & Jimmy! I think I didn't make myself clear in the post, though. I have ONLY the fry in 5 gals of water(20 gal tank). I had issues with low pH and didn't feel like moving the parents as I tried this once before and it stressed them out bigtime! I am experimenting with the total artificial method to see what I can acheive. That is why I'm looking for opinions on when to W/C, hardness, temp, etc. They are wiggling still and I've noticed the rotten eggs are starting to fungus. I want to remove those and do a W/C if that would be ok. What about a slow drip of harder water into the tank over a period of hours? Do they need the major minerals at this stage in thier lives or is the yolk sac nutrients enough?


Steve

Steve: You've got me confused. Are you feeding the wrigglers with egg? Hold off till they are free swimmers. For artificial feeding. I used to make a 100% W/C after each feeding. Are you feeding them in a 20 gal tank?. The easier way is to collect them and place them in a small bowl and leave the feeding bowl sitting on top of the water to maintain constant temp. After feeding is done and do a 100% W/C from the water in the 20 gal tank. The temperature should be the same. Hope I'm answering your question.
Jimmy.

[Steve_Warner]

Hi all,
Jimmy, sorry for the confusing posts. Ok, here's the deal. I started out by pulling the pot with the eggs laid on it out of the community tank of discus I have(only tank I have). I pulled them about an hour after they were laid and fert. I put the pot with the eggs on it in it's own 20 gal tank(I only put about 5 gals in it) with the same water conductance of my community tank, just that it was fresh water, not the tank water. My eggs have hatched and the wigglers are doing good in the 20 now, but I see that fungus is beginning on the non-viable eggs and I'm afraid it will spread to the fry. I want to begin uping the mineral content to give them nutrients they need for growth at this critical stage in their lives! I was asking if it is ok to do this now and with what type of water(extremely hard like my tap=850uS, mildly hard=400uS, or same as the water they are in now=175uS) I will probably trickle it in through 1/4" tubing from a 5 gal bucket supply. Thoughts?

Steve

[EthanCote.com]

Just a thot.

When u were removing the pot with the eggs, did it gets exposed to air? or did you do the whole thing under water?

Just curious.

Question: If eggs gets exposed to air, does it kills the fries in the eggs and does it cause fungus bloom?

Always wanted to know answer to that question.

Danks.


Cheers,

Chi.

[darcy]

Chi
I have always pulled my eggs and they did get exposed to the air. it didn't kill the fry's and I did not see any fungus either.
Darcy

[EthanCote.com]

Thanks Darcy.

As a follow up, what was the hatched rate out of curiosity? 90%? 100%? I wonder if exposing eggs to air reduced hatch rate or not.

Danks.


Cheers,

Chi.

[darcy]

Hi Chi well I believe I only had 8 eggs not hatch out of I don't know. There were not a giant batch of eggs maybe around 130 or so. Hard to count them. I don't know if this is normal or not but I was very happy with that hatch rate.
Darcy

[limige]

that's is a good hatch darcy, healthy number. congrat's!! if you ever need to find a home for some babies i have free space!!

Darcy: you take over the answer. It's your specialty. How's the fry. Where did you get the BB eggs. It seems like you have a poor hatch rate with all these unhatched eggs remain at the bottom. Add a bit of baking soda for your next batch. It will impove hatch rate. or use your R/O discharge.
Jimmy

[darcy]

Hi Jimmy. The fry are doing great!! They are eating the bbs!! I took some of the bbs and put some in a different bowl and looked in with a magnifying
Glass and there were tons of bbs swimming around!! You were right it's cool watching the fry swim around trying to attack those bbs!!! Thanks for all your advice and help!!!
Darcy