Spawning Egg Scatterers

I start by setting up for spawns a week in advance. As I've mentioned in other articles, I have a strain of daphnia which is spawning in my Hypancistrus rack. I begin by siphoning the waste from my Hypancistrus tanks as part of the regular water changes. With that water, I normally have a massive number of daphnia in the bucket. That bucket, waste and all, is dumped into a freshly cleaned 5 gallon aquarium or tote. After 3-4 days, most of the waste will have settled and the daphnia will have spred throughout the container. At this time, I use a net to scoop up what settled waste I can. This leaves a vast majority of the daphnia behind as a seed for the upcoming breeders and fry. The rack where the water initially came from is already cycled, and will also seed the bacterial filtration in the new tank. The final added advantage of using this water is the parameters. The rack consistently runs with a pH of 6.8-7.0 and nearly undetectable hardness. To make it short, it's perfect for most of the common tetras, barbs, and danios.

I have several very good reasons for adding the daphnia before the breeders. Initially, this was done to have a live food supply for the breeders on those days that I was unable to feed them as well as I should. It does do that rather well, but I've since found that I get a better hatch with the daphnia in the tank. I cannot say for sure why, but have theorized that the daphnia are keeping the bacteria in the tank under control well enough that more of the eggs are surviving to hatch.

After the tank has set with a running airstone for a full week or better, and I'm content that there are enough daphnia to keep the amount of bacteria under control, I start working on a breeding cage to put the fish into. Most of the species I keep are 1 1/2 inches or less so I've found that a cage which is 7 inches square and 6 inches deep satisfies their needs rather well. Because most of these species are exceptional jumpers, I also make a lid for the cages with the scrap pieces of craft grid.

The main body of the cage is held together by gluing the seams with a hot glue gun. Superglue is also acceptable for this, and can make a lot cleaner looking seam. However, unless you can find fast drying superglue, it can be a bit of a pain to hold the pieces while they are drying.

Once the cage is put together, and all the glue dried, I use pipe cleaners or twist ties to mount the lid and hang the cage. The lid is only connected on the back sid to make it easier to feed fish. In this way, I can simply open the top, similar to a hinge, and feed the breeders.

Depending upon species, in addition to whatever daphnia is so unlucky to swim into the cage, the breeders will also be fed live foods several times a day. This can include: fruit flies, fruit fly larvae, and micro worms. I also feed a high protein crumble food and freeze dried bloodworms on occasion. The breeders will see all of these foods at least 2-3 times over the next week. On the same day that the breeders are added to this aquarium, their next tank is also started getting ready.

As soon as the breeders have been in their initial tank for 1 week, providing that eggs or fry can be seen in the tank, I pull the cage (fish and all) to the next tank. In this way, I can keep my breeders consistently active and they are getting weekly water changes with exceptionally well conditioned water.

Raising the fry depends upon the species as some of these fish can require especially small foods. For most species, I start them on micro worms and expand their diet up to the point that they can take crumbled foods and daphnia from the tank. By the time they are capable of eating daphnia, they are fully capable of going into a larger tank with their siblings from other spawns. This is normally done on the first day of the month, and only those breeding tanks which are accepting daphnia are placed in the new tank.

Once combined in the new tank, they are trasitioned over to the same high protein crumble used to help condition the adults. Regular small water changes are also started at this time to help control the excessive amount of waste from the heavy feedings.

Just one final note about raising fry which are too small to initially take micro worms. For these species, I've found it easiest to culture infusoria and rotifers. Cultures are rather easy to make, or purchase, and I'll go over this in another article. However, the trick to consistently feeding the fry with these foods is what I want to share here. Kent Marine makes a product which is very similar to an IV drip which is used for adding kalkwasser to reef tanks. When rotifers or infusoria are cultured in these containers, it's as simple as adjusting the feed line to the tank and constantly adding a small portion of food to the tank. Just be sure to remember to pull a portion of the water from the tank each day so it doesn't overflow. I've noticed that the fry tend to congregate around where the food is going to drip into the tank, and can make quite a sight watching the feeding frenzy after a drop hits the water.