fish breeding in planted tanks

[Shireen Gonzaga <whimbrel at comcast_net>]

A different twist on the breeding fish in planted tanks
thread ...

Something I've never thought to do till recently: I've
started looking for fry in siphoned-off water (from
water changes) from my tanks containing egglayers.

For livebearers, spotting fry is easy because they tend
to be larger than egglayer fry. Also, my Endler's Livebearers
and Heterandria formosa don't seem to find their kids too
appetizing. But I always figured that egglayer fry never
survive because they're eaten as soon as they hatch and
start moving around.

But that's not true in planted tanks where there are
lots of places to hide. Since this epiphany (sigh! OK,
so I don't always figure out the obvious ...) I've been
carefully looking for fry in siphoned-off water. In the
past 3 days, I've found 14 fry from 4 tanks, including
quite a few eggs. Makes me sick to think of all the fry
that must have perished in past years.

It's tedious and tiresome work, checking buckets of
water, but when fry are found, it's pretty exciting (nothing
cuter than a baby fishie that's all eyes! :-). And since I
don't know what species I've got till they get bigger, it
will be fun to watch them grow in rearing tanks.

So before you throw out that siphoned water .... :-)

cheers,
    sg

-- 
Shireen Gonzaga
Baltimore, MD