Posted by jschaeferrhs on February 14, 2003 at 17:10:45:
In Reply to: What Now?!?! posted by Tetra9026 on February 09, 2003 at 17:00:00:
Regarding your previous post:
I've bred black tetras before with very little effort, but never did get my serpaes to breed. All I had to do was put a small school in a separate tank with tap water at 80 degrees and the next morning they would start going at it when the lights came on. I can't say why yours won't, because mine are like clockwork and don't seem to care about anything but procreating.
Now for this post:
By now, you should have little clear slivers sticking to everything at the bottom of your tank. This is what I do:
Suck up the unfertilized, fungusing eggs.
Refrain from water changes for about a week.
Then do 10% water changes once or twice a week.
Once swimming (not just sticking to stuff), feed them the smallest food you can find or make. If you have plants from other tanks (especially mosses), throw some in there. They are hosts for lots of tiny creatures that the fry can eat. Considering that you probably don't have the means or time to grow infusoria or fresh baby brine shrimp, I would feed frozen baby brine shrimp (can be bought at most fish stores), finely powdered flake (which can also be bought or you can do it yourself), or an egg infusion (search the web for instructions).
Suck up any visible waste.
Keep the current to a minimum.
Make sure that the fry aren't getting sucked into filter.
Basically, if you keep the water extremely clean and let them sit around and get fat on food that they can actually eat(very important), you'll have fry that will start to look like the parents in about a month.
P.S. Results from prepared foods haven't yielded great success for me, but they'll work and you'll still get some fry. In the future, it would be wise to prepare by starting some infusoria or microworms. Good luck!
