Badis badis spawn

[aquanatix]

Been sometime since my last post...Recently stopped on my pygmaeus spawns and decided to house a pair of Badis Badis. A love at first sight fish ever since i saw the bugger as a picture on gene's avatar. Finally landed myself a trio and have been consistently feeding them frozen BW as they seem to reject all other forms of fish foods be it flakes,granules or sinking bits. The trio are all housed in a M sized Gex tank with a simple sponge filter providing aeration and light "vegetation" Anyway...awhile ago my male started colouring up nicely a change from his usual drab reddish hue and started turing real dark.Turning aggressive he started harassing both my females. Did some light maintainance and realized that one of my females looked noticeably beaten up and skinnier.It was only when i lifted up some of the DW that i discovered a batch of eggs laid snugly on a driftwood DESPITE my attempts to place a ceramic pot inside as a breeding site. Here are some pictures of my spawn..hope everything goes well.

Setup:


Male:



Females:



Spawning site:



Male guarding eggs:

[aquanatix]

Update...Most eggs have already hatched with wigglers taking on more defined shapes while father fish is still on constant "fan" duties.Egg yolks clearly seen now and should be able to start baby brine shrimp and microworm in about 2days.

[aquanatix]

Update...as of today,all eggs have hatched and fries are all free swimming.Egg yolks have all been consumed and they are now fed with BBS.Problem is they aren't exactly "free" swimming,preferring to stay hidden in the driftwood crevices and what not.Question is,should male be removed as of now since guard duty is over and possibly prevent him from consuming fries?Or should i continue to leave him inside to fully fulfill his father duties?Hope to get some insight from anyone here whom might have bred these fishes before.

[aquanatix]

Anyone whom might be able to offer some insight to my situation?As of today,fries are swimming all over the base but i have yet to observe any form of cannibalizing of fries.From what i've found online,some are saying remove fries once free swimming while the other half are recommending to leave male alone as he will exhibit full parental duties. Quite confused myself...

[WiNd08]

i believe you should leave them as it is. had bred badis before and i left them alone

[aquanatix]

Thanks for the advice wind,they're currently together as it is since I'm lacking of space to separate them out.Hope father doesn't start turning aggressive!

[doppelbanddwarf]

Wow congrats, very clear pictures too.

[exotic_idiot]

wOW, Congrates bro... So has the fries growing up well?
Tried before once on these little cuties but they quite timid and also can't seem to find them in my tanks after sometime all disappear... Only kept before in a 1.5ft tank...

[barmby]

Give me one fry to raise

[aquanatix]

Update...so far i managed to fish out 17 pieces from the main tank,not sure if the females or male cannibalized their young but numbers were definitely dwindling in main tank from the initial 40 odd that i counted.The 17 are all doing well in a bare tank with only some spikey moss tied on a wire mesh as base.They're fed periodically with microworms with about 10-20% water change on alternate days.Hope they do well with me. Meanwhile,breeding tank has now been rearranged in hopes of easier egg harvesting in future. My 2 females are starting to look full again,time to try in a couple of days! Not to worry guys,i will eventually release young if they make it to at least a month old!*cross fingers*

[aquanatix]

Update...so far a total headcount of 19 fry,raised separately in a 20inch cube tank with very light aeration and some spikey moss tied on wire mesh. So far so good with no deaths,microworm diet seems to be doing well as observed by their constantly swelling white bellies?Trio of adults are now undergoing conditioning phase and my females have already began to plump up,should be expecting some more action hopefully soon. On a side note,managed to get some small claypots from daiso today,looks pretty good.Anyone here has experience with them?Planning to use this as a substitute cave for easier retrieval of eggs.Will post pics on my next post.

[aquanatix]

It's been about a month since my last update so here goes.Initial 20 batch of fries left with about 10.I've been doing 20% water changes via siphon every 2days and feeding microworms consistently. As you can see from my pictures attached,growth rate is pretty slow considering it's been roughly 2 months since they've hatched.The few survivors have all taken fish form,with visible pigmentation and internal organs.Eyes have also grown and have started adopting more fish like behavior. Have not experienced such slow growth rate in fries,could it partly be the pure microworm diet that i've been implementing? Could BBS have been a better alternative?

[surfsgan]

Hi Bro,
Congrats. Try getting live Daphnia. Some of the bigger ones can go for the $1 packets of smaller sea-monkeys(BBS) too. Microworms are more for filling up their stomach only.
Is your pair starting to breed again ?

Thanks...
Shawn

[CrazyPlantLady]

I have a pair of Badis badis that have spawned also. I've been told both to leave the male in and to take him out. It looks like you said you left the male in. Did that work out well for you? The fry are still attached to the cave wall they laid in, not freeswimming yet. They spawned on Monday April 13th. The male guards them well, even chases my stick away (that I drop worms to him with).

I have another tank I can move him to. Also, my female appears to be full of eggs again. Is that possible? Or perhaps she didn't lay them all the first time around?

[aquanatix]

My pair has stopped breeding surfsgan,i had to stop them as i'm really running out of tank space!BBS is definitely a better choice,just that i got kinda lazy hatching them!Already hatching them as we speak,so we'll see how that goes.
Congrats on your spawn as well crazyplantlady,leaving the male in was definitely ok for me...even after free swimming the fries are left alone.It's the females i worried about as they definitely cannibalize fries whenever they get a chance!So do pay attention and remove them ASAP.I'm not sure about yours but my females almost always breed when looking gravid.Only introduce your females in when you've already removed all fries into another tank.Do update us on your progress as well.

[CrazyPlantLady]

I re-homed some bumblebee gobies this morning and will move the female and all the microrasbora to the vacated tank tonight. Hope to get some pics of the wigglers (is that what you called them - it fits!) tonight too. I'll keep the male in there with them for now, but just fear he might eat them too. Once they are swimming, I'll move him to be with his 'wife' in the other tank.

[CrazyPlantLady]

Trying to figure out how to get light into his cave to get pictures of the fry, but here is proud pappa

[aquanatix]

No worries,the male is perfectly fine with strong parental instincts to boot.My male was left in main tank till about day 30 with no issues.After 3 consecutive spawns,the females are definitely a bigger threat then anything else even when fed fairly consistently.Not to worry,your batch will do fine!Do update us on your progress again

[CrazyPlantLady]

Hello friend Aquanatix!

I still have my male Badis in the heavily planted aquarium with the fry, but I'm not sure how much longer they can be called fry. They are about 1/2 the size of an adult neon tetra now.

Sadly, a few days after the eggs were laid and before the fry were free-swimming, the male chased and attacked the female and during the night she died It was a very sad day for me, as I was going to be moving her that next morning to a new aquarium.

I acquired 4 more females that have been kept in a hospital tank for over 30 days now. I have conditioned them on live foods and also frozen bloodworms. All look like they are now gravid.

I do not know if I should put the male in with all of them, or just one of them, and move the other three to another tank. I've set up a flowerpot for a cave that the male can use. My plan this time would be to remove the female or females to a new tank as soon as the eggs are laid.

What do you think would be best?

[aquanatix]

Great to hear about your fries,they seem to be doing well!As mentioned,males can get pretty aggressive during their "guard duties" so i guess your female's death was inevitable?Hence i usually remove mine as soon as i notice the males coloration darken.

My setup includes 3 females to 1 male so i'm guessing 4 would do just fine as well? i suppose the number would help spread out aggression? If any case,since you have four females a good idea would be to try out 2 at a time.

Lastly,for my group flower pots usually get ignored!No matter how bare the tank they seem to refuse to lay their eggs within the pots but instead choose to lay theirs on the side of driftwoods or even on the gravel!My suggestion would be to try it out...if they do spawn in cave,it would be much easier to remove entire batch should you raising them artificially.Keep us updated with pics next time!