New NOTHOS fry

[wcknight]

Hi gang,

I have had my first semi-successful hatch of Nothos (guntheri gold). I was expecting a bunch more, but I am happy to get the 5 that made it.

I think that gives me about a 1 in 16 chance of having all males or all females... and that is only in there is a true 50-50 chance in M-F probability.

I was amazed at how tiny they were. I thought betta fry were small ! These were almost microscopic. I scooped them out with a teaspoon, and it was a trip chasing them around the hatch tray.... next time I think I'll have a bit less depth and use a bigger spoon... I was going to use a chinese soup spoon, but couldn't find one.

I think there may not have been that many viable eggs to start with. I look through the peat before wetting, and I did not see any eggs that looked 'eyed-up'. I did see what I thought were some eggs fungused (white) or deteriorated. It was a freebie sample so I really can't complain.

I will try to wetting again in 2 weeks, but doubt the results will be much better. Question - IF I were to leave the hatch tray as is without drying and rewetting, would the remaining eggs (if any) continue to develop or do they stop deveoping altogether after being soaked ????

thanks, Wes

[TyroneGenade]

Hello

GUE are the only Nothos known to have gender determining chromosomes so your odds are about 50-50 with this species. Your odds are higher than 75% of getting a pair from 5 fry.

The fry are able to take bbs from hatching so don't panic.

The odds are there are some more eggs but if they were dying in the peat before you wet it your fears are justified. The peat maybe polluted and so killing the eggs---or the eggs were already well developed and died waiting to hatch.

The eggs will continue to develop as per normal. Dry the peat ASAP and rewet in 2 weeks. You may be lucky.

Best of luck.

[whuntley]

Something sounds wrong, here.

GUE babies are usually far larger than Bettas, and that is why they can take bbs right away. Tiny babies suggests a problem with the parents or their conditioning. Perhaps this was their first try and they are young?

Good luck with the 5 and lets hope more show up in the next wetting.

Wright

[TyroneGenade]

Betta babies are actually quite big (in my experiance) and I had few problems getting them to take bbs as well. :-) Then again I think Bettas have been selected for larger fry over the years. The GUE fry I just got were also small---much smaller than KOR fry---and they took bbs.

What ever the case, toss in some snails and Java moss. That should generate enough infusoria till the fry are big enough to take the bbs (if they can't already).

Notho fry, when viewed under the microscope, are pretty much mouth, stomach and tail and 2 eyed. I've watched thierryi glup down bbs as big as their head.

Regards[/img]

[wcknight]

Thanks guys,

I started the raising containers a few days before wetting with Java moss and a couple of snails (water and plants from a well established tank). So far I have put in some BBS each day. I also have micro worms and vinegar eels. I've only put in food once a day.

I haven't actually seen any fry eat, but they are swimming about. 3 look fairly healthy (look like they may have eaten something), one is really tiny, and one other is slightly longer but much thinner than the rest.

I've also redryed and bagged up the peat for another try in 2 weeks. Which of the 3 foods (BBS, microworms or vinegar eels) is the smallest ? To me it looks like the vinegar eels are tinier.

Would feeding twice a day tend to pollute the water ?

regards, Wes

[keehoe]

I feed 3 times a day at least. About 5 times a day on weekend. The key is to let them eat until their stomach is a bit bigger than their head. My Notho. Orthonotus is good example. They are ready to spawn in a month time after they hatch.

[wcknight]

Well, I just lost 20% of my batch of fry

Not by anything natural, but my own clumsiness

I was cleaning out the raising container, using a turkey baster to suck out the debris, mostly snail fodder and sucked out one of the fry. That wasn't much of a problem, as I was putting the water into a smaller clear container just in case such an event might happen.

The problem arose when I was trying to spoon the fry back out of the container. Chasing the fry around the container proved to be more difficult than I thought, even though the container is only a 10 cm in diameter and had about 3 cm of water in it. Well, I thought I had the fry corner but accidently smashed it against the side of the container !

So one down and only 4 left. Next time if I happen to suck up a fry, I'll suction out the dirt and then pour the water and fry back in.

PLUS next time I hatch out fry, instead of using a spoon to get the fry out out from the hatching tray, I think I'll use a baster. I was hesitant to use the baster, hearing some stories about broken backs etc, but I think it is far more hazardous to the fry using a spoon than a big suction. Maybe a bigger spoon would work. I was using a plastic teaspoon.

The remaining 4 look okay, although one is still very thin and another is very tiny.

regards, Wes

[TyroneGenade]

using a turkey baster to suck out the debris, mostly snail fodder and sucked out one of the fry

What do you mean "snail fodder?" Do you mean snail doo-doo? This is generally a good source of infusoria and hardly pollutes the water. I never remove it---infact I get the best fry growth in such a setup. I just change the water and feed enough to fill the belly of the fry.

Good luck with the rest of the fry.

[keehoe]

Wes, baster beside making broken bone fry, it also make belly slider. It works base on changes of pressure around the fry. When you suck the fry into the baster, the baster pressure is lower than normal hence the fry get suck in. When you blow it out, the pressure inside is made higher to blow the fry out.

Ever try reel in a grouper from the bottom of the sea to the top in high speed? The grouper die immediately with eyes popout and blowup body. Imagine doing that on a small tiny fry with newly establish "lung" (not sure whats the name of the organ of fish, so uses man's equavalent.) And that kills more fry than broken bone. Newly hatch fry has soft bone. imagine they can curl up inside the shell before they hatch.

But again, it is your choice. That might be part of the learning process that everyone have to go through. I had mine too.

[erikthur]

Wes, baster beside making broken bone fry, it also make belly slider. It works base on changes of pressure around the fry. When you suck the fry into the baster, the baster pressure is lower than normal hence the fry get suck in. When you blow it out, the pressure inside is made higher to blow the fry out.

Siphoning fry should then do the same damage I guess.
Last summer I siphoned about 70 fairly newborn krib fry.
Some weeks ago I delivered 67 healthy kribs to the zoo shop.
So I did not cause any swim bladder at least to these fry.
I generally siphon newly hatched killie fry and I have very few if any observations of turning them into belly sliders. And if good swimming killie fry turn into belly sliders later it is generally not immediate after the siphoning - at least according to my experience

[hobbit6003]

Have you guys realised that these frys, when they're frist hatched, would have to struggle a few times to the surface? Well, they're probably taking in air to fill up their swim bladders (Kee Hoe, they're not lungs :-) )

If they're deprived of this, then they can end of as belly sliders right from the start.

Weaker frys may not have the strength to struggle to the surface, while other factors may have exhausted their tiny lives too much that they just have no strength left in them anymore to do so.

Perhaps, that's what the baster do to them? Besides causing physical trauma to them, the whirling and swirling may have caused confusion and deplete their strengths for the burst to the surface for air.

I think to prevent such possiblities, maybe it is wiser not to syphon or baster them out too early in their lives.

Cheers,

Kenny

[keehoe]

I agree with Kenny, it is best not to touch the fry for the 1st week except feeding them. I have try using baster transferring fry from one container to another with exactly the same water and all fry stay at the bottom of the try for the new few hours. After which about 20% will swim normal while the rest remain at bottom and eventually die. All these fry were healthy swimming around before the transfer.

While using spoon, i get survival rate of 80%. The fry will still go to bottom but will revive much sooner. I suppose that is due to fright.

[TyroneGenade]

Have you guys realised that these frys, when they're frist hatched, would have to struggle a few times to the surface? Well, they're probably taking in air to fill up their swim bladders

Killies do not have an open-gut connection to the atmosphere like some other species. They have to fill their swim-bladders with air difusing in from the blood. This air is then mainly O2 and CO2 but mostly the former. For these reason, I suppose, the O2 tablets prevent belly-sliding.

I just hatched some old FUR eggs Wednessday and while I got a good hatch many of the fry were weak and unable to swim properly. I tossing in another O2 tablet and closed the lid of the tub tight. Within a few hours they were swimming fine.

They were transferred from the hatching tub to the maintenance tub by large plastic spoon. I used to use pipettes but it can damage fry---I suppose mechanically rather than by pressure change although that is not impossible. With a sophon the pressure in the hose has to be the same as in the tank with a pressure drop only as the water spills out. But this pressure difference is small. How small?

( whip out the calculators boys and girls or skip ahead...)

Lets assume your fish tank is 40 cm deep, or 0.4 m. The pressure at the bottom of your tank is = pgh + Atm (Atm = atmospheric pressure are ground level, p is the density of water which 1000 kg/per cubic meter of water, h = depth of the water, g is gravitational acceleration) = 1000*9.8*0.4 + 101325 = 3920 + 101325 = 105245 Pa.

Unless your siphon hose has a change in bore size the pressure remains the same throughout the hose. The fish tank pressure accounts for 4% of the total pressure of the water in the fishtank. If you siphon directly into a bucket with a depth of say 10 cm already you are only changing the pressure by 1%. The fish has to cope with this everytime it goes to the surface for food.

Now, in the pipette you DO change the bore size and this causes a large pressure change. This forces the water out of the pipette with quite a lot of speed/force. There is every chance you can cause the swim bladder to deflate or burst in the procedure. Although, I have rarely seen this.

[physics sermon concluded]

About not touching the fry, yesterday I had to perform micro-surgery on 4 fry that were too weak to escape their eggs. Of these 3 are fine and the 4th I never expected to make it any how. The fry are tough and can stand some abuse.

Surgery was performed in a big plastic spoon.

Regards

[hobbit6003]

Killies do not have an open-gut connection to the atmosphere like some other species. They have to fill their swim-bladders with air difusing in from the blood. This air is then mainly O2 and CO2 but mostly the former. For these reason, I suppose, the O2 tablets prevent belly-sliding.

Hi Tyrone,

Pardon me for generalising the anatomy of killies.

If the composition of the gas in the swim bladder is as what you've stated, then it is very highly possible that it is a close system, unlike many other fishes.

As far as killies are concerned, I'm a newbie!

Are all killies the same?

Cheers,

Kenny

[TyroneGenade]

Pardon me for generalising the anatomy of killies.

No problems. Rereading my post I do get the impression I came accross a bit like a pretentious dark-and-smelly-human-orifice. Sorry. I will try to use more smily emoticons in future.

Yes, I think all cyprinodonts have the same morphology. I must have a good look and find the reference to where I read this... So you can trust someone other than me.

Regards

[hobbit6003]

Pardon me for generalising the anatomy of killies.

No problems. Rereading my post I do get the impression I came accross a bit like a pretentious dark-and-smelly-human-orifice. Sorry. I will try to use more smily emoticons in future.

Yes, I think all cyprinodonts have the same morphology. I must have a good look and find the reference to where I read this... So you can trust someone other than me.

Regards

Haha, no, you didn't come across as a smelly rear to me!

No worries, I think I can trust you on this....

Cheers,

Kenny

[Shae]

You are very lucky to have these fish, they are very beautiful, Hope all goes well, i just managed to obtain a trio, I am now the third person in NZ with them.

Shae

[wcknight]

Down to two

I have one that is much larger than the rest. It is about baby guppy size now. One that is still very tiny, barely larger than when it was hatched. Two are missing presumed dead. One of these was the extremely thin and the other was very tiny from the start. No bodies found, snails may have eaten the remains.

I've separated the larger one, as it may think it's sibling is food. It is about 5 times larger that the smaller one.

The smaller one barely eats as far as I can tell. There is a small possiblity of the other 2 turning up as there is some java moss in the tray.
regards Wes

[wcknight]

Down to one

Only the larger one remains. The last of the small ones disappeared. No body or sign of it around. The day before, it looked like it had not eaten since the hatch day. BBS and vinegar eels may have been too big for it.

In the hatch tray, I had put two drops of Methelyne Blue and Acriflavine to prevent fungus and velvet.

In the raising trays I had one drop of Acriflavine.

I had a bunch of Java Moss but took some/most of it out after the second day as it was too hard to spot the fry. Was that a mistake ?.
wes

[TyroneGenade]

Your last fry was probably consumed by the bigger one which is probably not a GUE at all... Where did you get the eggs from? Some one is doing a sloppy job (which is easy to do and have been guilty at least once).

The fry would of been able to take vinegar eels. I've looked at Aphyobranchius fry under the microscope and they are big enough to take the eels! (But they don't because they are fussy little s...fry.) Also, my tiny GUE fry had no problems with bbs.

I don't think the J.moss was a mistake.

Rewet the peat and this time put the BIG fry seperately.

Good luck