LA
Lots of leafy plants for egg scattering barbs to strew their eggs upon..
Prologue:
We intended to spawn roseline sharks (actually
roseline barbs, Puntius denisonii), when one of our customers
traded in some community fish toward a Florida gar. Amongst her
trade-ins were a male and female red glass barb and a couple of their
progeny. She said they kept laying eggs and she just didn't want any
more barbs. Her adult red glass barbs were in the 2.5 to 3-inch range
and looked as healthy and happy as hefty Iowa hogs.
LA
Good looking female red glass barb full of eggs.
LA
Male red glass barb looking for a good-looking female.
Step One:
We usually try to condition our potential breeders
prior to spawning. These red glass barbs arrived at our door step
pre-conditioned. He was bright red. She was pleasantly plumped
up and positively chock full of eggs. We dropped the male into our
roseline spawning 29 setup and put the female in a 10. We fed them
small cichlid pellets. The next day, I re-assigned the roseline sharks to
other quarters, and moved the female in with the male. It was re-love
at first sight.
LA
I think he likes her..
LA
He's a chaser.


LA
A dedicated chaser. Usually she goes along but not always.
Why Egg Scatters Scatter Their Eggs:
Some fish protect their eggs in a nest, carry
them in their mouths, hide them in a mass of bubbles, or even hatch their
eggs inside their bellies. Egg scatterers strew their eggs all over,
willy-nilly. Think carp. They rely on quantity. Survival
of the winners in an aquatic game of hide and seek. Most of their eggs
become a part of the aquatic food chain. Ditto their fry.





LA
Still at it day 2.
Day Two:
We Removed the pair and put them in separate tanks to
"recover." Done or not, we figured that they'd put enough effort into
the process already. By the way, we fed them several times a day to
distract them from looking for eggs. We saw no eggs, just lots and
lots of egg scattering activity.
LA
Had to remove the outside power filter so it wouldn't suck out the fry.
LA
Left the Sponge Filter:
Sponge filters work well in fry tanks. They
can't suck out the fry, and they will grow small edible protozoans the fry
can snack on -- mostly rotifers. Sort of like an all you can eat fry
food buffet.
LA
Very hard to photograph at 0.25-inch size. This taken day 12.
Day Six:
Lots and lots of tiny eyeballs against the glass --
much too tiny to photograph. Too small for the camera to focus on them
-- about as tiny as a blonde two-year-old's eyelash. It took about 30
tries to get this shot. Mostly you see their eyeballs.
LA
Here's a couple more. The penny's not for size. It's to give the
camera something to focus on.
LA
Since they were free-swimming, we started feeding them
Infusoria.
Fry Foods:
Small egglayer fry are way too small to eat newly
hatched brine shrimp. So we keep a culture or two of infusoria
percolating all the time -- mostly paramecia. In a large tank (the
eggs were laid in a 29) sufficient infusorians exist to satisfy the
hungriest fry until they're large enough to eat their slower growing
siblings. After a couple days, we also added powdered flake food.
Most fry won't touch powdered flake food until later, but it does feed the
bacteria which in turn feed the infusorians.
LA
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LA Productions
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