How do you raise darter fry? I'm used to swordtail fry, where the technique I use is to keep the top few centimeters of the aquarium dense in live plants and feed crushed flake food. How do you get food down to the bottom of the aquarium where darter fry live?
How to raise darter fry?
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, Jul 19 2010 06:55 AM
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#2
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Posted 19 July 2010 - 11:11 AM
How do you get food down to the bottom of the aquarium where darter fry live?
Actually, I'm not even sure if darter fry stay on the surface or in the depths. I assumed they would be on the bottom because darters lack swim bladders, but this website http://www.biokids.u...ma_blennioides/ says that greenside darter fry spend the first two weeks of their lives at the surface.
Edited by Okiimiru, 19 July 2010 - 11:12 AM.
#3
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Posted 19 July 2010 - 09:10 PM
One method is to use a plastic tube suspended an inch or so above the substrate. Drop sinking food into the tube, and it will fall to the bottom, bypassing the other more pelagic feeders. I would suppose that brine shrimp nauplii, or daphnia would be your best bets for food, or even pond water rich in zooplankton would beat prepared foods. Honestly your best bet for some of these answers would be to go back to the source. PM Brian. He is way more successful than most at captive breeding native fish, and is very happy to help others out. http://forum.nanfa.o...ser/153-smbass/ Good luck, and keep the tank cool, I saw that you had added additional powerheads, remember that heat is a by product. Sometimes a bigger air pump, can cause quite a bit of current, without the added heat. And sponge filters are the best filtration for smaller native tanks IMO. They work great, and generate virtually no heat. I have often kept two or three in a tank, just in case I decide to set up a new tank, or need a hospital, or fry tank. I can take a fully cycled sponge filter out, pitch it in the new tank, and you are good to go.How do you raise darter fry? I'm used to swordtail fry, where the technique I use is to keep the top few centimeters of the aquarium dense in live plants and feed crushed flake food. How do you get food down to the bottom of the aquarium where darter fry live?
#4
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Posted 20 July 2010 - 12:31 AM
I'm sure others will have different methods but this is what worked for me. Let me point out that I have only raised Johnny and Fantail fry to this point which might be different than Orangethroats that I assume you are referring to. But hopefully some of this info will help.
First the difference between my fry and orangethroat's are how the eggs are laid. Since mine were laid on the underside of rocks I was able to remove the rocks and place them on their side in their own tank with a bare bottom. Since the fry tank is on the same system as the breeders there was no need to acclimate them. The tank does have a bit of a current which I believe not only helped with my hatch rate but the survival rate also. There were other fry I found later in the breeder tanks that were removed with a baster and put in the fry tank. Adults will eat fry...
The bare bottom worked great for me because I could more easily observe the fry, food consumption and to clean the tank periodically of any waste which I siphon out using a foot long piece of hard air tubing with a length of soft air tubing that empties into a pitcher. I also keep my finger near the bottom of the hose to stop the siphon in case I would siphon up a fry.
These fry have stayed on the bottom since the day they hatched but at times will dart up to the upper water columns if they are aggressive enough and spot some food.
I don't know how small newly hatched Orangethroats are but I can tell you that the Fantails were much smaller than swordtail fry and the Johnnies were about 2/3 the size of the Fantails. Even with my experience with raising egglayers the Johnnies were difficult to see until I trained my eyes to spot them.
Even though the fry varied in size they were fed the same foods and up until they were 11 days old were fed strictly live foods.
Day 1 - 4: Their diet consisted of green water, paramecium, Walter woms and Microworms.
Day 5: Newly hatched fairy shrimp was added to their diet since it is much smaller than newly hatched brine shrimp.
Day 8: Newly hatched brine shrimp was then added along with Moina. I could have kept feeding fairy shrimp but I wanted to grow some out to get more eggs.
Day 11: The first day they received food that wasn't alive. Decapsulated brine shrimp eggs were added though if I had them sooner I believe the fry would have been able to eat them as early as day 5 or 6. When these were purchased I was instructed to put some in a cup filled with water and let them get saturated which I did the first couple times. Then as an experiment I decided to just put some on the surface and let the eggs get drawn to the bottom by the current and since they weren't completely saturated the eggs remained suspended and would float just above the bottom. It was neat watching their heads bob up catching the eggs as they would float by. One thing that was unexpected was that when the eggs were completely saturated and fell to the bottom the fry would put their mouths on the bottom glass and bulldoze up the eggs. I'm not sure if that is natural or one figured it out and others followed suit. Yet others would follow to eat behind the "bulldozers" as they stirred up other eggs from the bottom.
One month and 9 days: Mosquito larvae was fed.
One month and 11 days: Blackworms were added to their diet.
Two months and 9 days: Some fry are able to eat frozen bloodworms.
This is where I am at today. I did try some crushed flakes a couple times but the fry would just spit them out. I have been keeping the system in the high sixties. I don't know if the fry would grow faster in low to mid seventy temps or not but this is a learning experience for me and I have time.
Hope some of this info was at least helpful.
First the difference between my fry and orangethroat's are how the eggs are laid. Since mine were laid on the underside of rocks I was able to remove the rocks and place them on their side in their own tank with a bare bottom. Since the fry tank is on the same system as the breeders there was no need to acclimate them. The tank does have a bit of a current which I believe not only helped with my hatch rate but the survival rate also. There were other fry I found later in the breeder tanks that were removed with a baster and put in the fry tank. Adults will eat fry...
The bare bottom worked great for me because I could more easily observe the fry, food consumption and to clean the tank periodically of any waste which I siphon out using a foot long piece of hard air tubing with a length of soft air tubing that empties into a pitcher. I also keep my finger near the bottom of the hose to stop the siphon in case I would siphon up a fry.
These fry have stayed on the bottom since the day they hatched but at times will dart up to the upper water columns if they are aggressive enough and spot some food.
I don't know how small newly hatched Orangethroats are but I can tell you that the Fantails were much smaller than swordtail fry and the Johnnies were about 2/3 the size of the Fantails. Even with my experience with raising egglayers the Johnnies were difficult to see until I trained my eyes to spot them.
Even though the fry varied in size they were fed the same foods and up until they were 11 days old were fed strictly live foods.
Day 1 - 4: Their diet consisted of green water, paramecium, Walter woms and Microworms.
Day 5: Newly hatched fairy shrimp was added to their diet since it is much smaller than newly hatched brine shrimp.
Day 8: Newly hatched brine shrimp was then added along with Moina. I could have kept feeding fairy shrimp but I wanted to grow some out to get more eggs.
Day 11: The first day they received food that wasn't alive. Decapsulated brine shrimp eggs were added though if I had them sooner I believe the fry would have been able to eat them as early as day 5 or 6. When these were purchased I was instructed to put some in a cup filled with water and let them get saturated which I did the first couple times. Then as an experiment I decided to just put some on the surface and let the eggs get drawn to the bottom by the current and since they weren't completely saturated the eggs remained suspended and would float just above the bottom. It was neat watching their heads bob up catching the eggs as they would float by. One thing that was unexpected was that when the eggs were completely saturated and fell to the bottom the fry would put their mouths on the bottom glass and bulldoze up the eggs. I'm not sure if that is natural or one figured it out and others followed suit. Yet others would follow to eat behind the "bulldozers" as they stirred up other eggs from the bottom.
One month and 9 days: Mosquito larvae was fed.
One month and 11 days: Blackworms were added to their diet.
Two months and 9 days: Some fry are able to eat frozen bloodworms.
This is where I am at today. I did try some crushed flakes a couple times but the fry would just spit them out. I have been keeping the system in the high sixties. I don't know if the fry would grow faster in low to mid seventy temps or not but this is a learning experience for me and I have time.
Hope some of this info was at least helpful.
Edited by Ken, 20 July 2010 - 01:29 AM.
#5
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Posted 20 July 2010 - 07:54 AM
Hope some of this info was at least helpful.
That is very helpful.
I don't think I have any chance of removing the orangethroat fry. Their eggs are buried in the gravel, where I wouldn't notice them, and when they first hatch they will probably be tiny and invisible hiding in the floor to ceiling hornwort.
Having read that post, I have ordered a culture of microworms on aquabid, and will hopefully be able to feed the extremely small fry worms when they first hatch. I do already own brine shrimp eggs, but I haven't been hatching them out recently because the swordtail fry survival rate has been hovering around 100% without them, and I find hatching brine shrimp to be kind of a pain.
I think I'll start adding a small amount of microworms to the tank every four hours or so, since I don't know when the darter fry will hatch, and since I hear that you have to use the culture or it starts to smell. So I'll just add worms to the tank as though there could be fry at any time. That's what I do with the swordtails with the crushed flakes; I feed fry food many times a day. Often the fry get their first couple of meals before I know they've been born.
I think I should mention that my tank is practically a pond. It's chock full of live plants and there are little creatures swimming around in there. Maybe there will be enough infusoria for the darter fry to eat. Hopefully the fry will be able to hide themselves within the hornwort. The parents are able to crawl and swim all the way to the top of the tank, and are as likely to be found amongst the plants as they are at ground level. So that's a good sign.
Also, I've noticed that the darters are not able to catch and eat the swordtail fry. I watched three darters unsuccessfully pursue a less than one day old swordtail fry at the same time. Its head was still all fetal-looking, so I'm positive it was just out of the womb. That's when they're most vulnerable. And they couldn't catch it. It did panic a little bit, which isn't good for its health, but it lived. Didn't have a scratch on it. Maybe that means that there is enough plant cover in the tank that darter fry could survive as well. I don't know yet. I guess we'll see.
Edited by Okiimiru, 20 July 2010 - 07:59 AM.
#6
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Posted 20 July 2010 - 10:35 AM
One method is to use a plastic tube suspended an inch or so above the substrate. Drop sinking food into the tube, and it will fall to the bottom, bypassing the other more pelagic feeders.
The food can get past the pelagic feeders, it's just that once it reaches the bottom, it sits there and eventually works its way into the gravel. The reason why feeding crushed red flake food to swordtails is so successful is that they live within an inch of the surface for the first week or so. Usually their heads touch the surface. So when they see that red thing dart past (the flake moves in the current), they try to bite it. And it fits in their mouth and they learn what food is. It's cute ^_^ They spit it out the first couple times out of sheer surprise.
But with bottom dweller fry, I'm afraid flakes would just sit idly on the bottom. (Fry should never be exposed to strong currents. Swimming a lot takes away the calories they need to grow. So I think they'll be in a stagnant part of the aquarium.) The flakes wouldn't move, so the fry wouldn't be tempted to bite at them. That's why I'm getting micro worms. I think they'd wiggle. *nods* I'll report here once they arrive about how well that works and how long they can wiggle underwater.
Edited by Okiimiru, 20 July 2010 - 10:37 AM.
#7
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Posted 21 July 2010 - 10:04 AM
Update:
The swordtail fry that were born over the weekend have all officially disappeared. I wondered if I just couldn't see them because it was a small batch, around 5 to 10 (the mother's first, and she was sickly) and there is duckweed in overabundance covering the surface of the water (that's new for the tank) and possibly hiding the fry from view. I had figured that the darters' eagerness to climb up into the hornwort and towards the surface was a response to the presence of fry, and that they might be investigating the fry as a potential food source. But they don't quite sit right at the surface, which is where the swordtail fry are, so I figured the swordtail fry were safe. But I forgot one thing: the powerhead. The problem is, swordtail fry growth is at its maximum when current is at its minimum. The energy to move around and swim takes away from energy they would otherwise use to grow. And growth within the first week of their life is very important for survival. So although I don't think that the darters are eating the swordtail fry, I do think that the death of this batch of fry is related to them because the powerhead probably is the culprit. I will rotate it so that it disturbs the surface of the water less. It's too bad, too, because this batch of fry was calico (the colors I'm breeding the swordtails for), black spots on red and white.
So I guess what other people can learn from this is that if you want your darters to occupy the entire aquarium instead of just the bottom, simply add a couple livebearing females and some plants that stretch from ground to surface, and the darters will climb up to the top to be near the fry. I'm not sure whether or not they successfully eat said fry (I saw them fail, spectacularly, several times when pursuing the fry, even when multiple darters were pursuing one single fry).
Edit: I have decided to remove the duckweed because it probably obscurs the crushed red BettaMin flakes that I use as fry food. A combination of not seeing the food and having to swim for their tiny lives in the strong current... no wonder the swordtail fry couldn't grow and survive.
The swordtail fry that were born over the weekend have all officially disappeared. I wondered if I just couldn't see them because it was a small batch, around 5 to 10 (the mother's first, and she was sickly) and there is duckweed in overabundance covering the surface of the water (that's new for the tank) and possibly hiding the fry from view. I had figured that the darters' eagerness to climb up into the hornwort and towards the surface was a response to the presence of fry, and that they might be investigating the fry as a potential food source. But they don't quite sit right at the surface, which is where the swordtail fry are, so I figured the swordtail fry were safe. But I forgot one thing: the powerhead. The problem is, swordtail fry growth is at its maximum when current is at its minimum. The energy to move around and swim takes away from energy they would otherwise use to grow. And growth within the first week of their life is very important for survival. So although I don't think that the darters are eating the swordtail fry, I do think that the death of this batch of fry is related to them because the powerhead probably is the culprit. I will rotate it so that it disturbs the surface of the water less. It's too bad, too, because this batch of fry was calico (the colors I'm breeding the swordtails for), black spots on red and white.
So I guess what other people can learn from this is that if you want your darters to occupy the entire aquarium instead of just the bottom, simply add a couple livebearing females and some plants that stretch from ground to surface, and the darters will climb up to the top to be near the fry. I'm not sure whether or not they successfully eat said fry (I saw them fail, spectacularly, several times when pursuing the fry, even when multiple darters were pursuing one single fry).
Edit: I have decided to remove the duckweed because it probably obscurs the crushed red BettaMin flakes that I use as fry food. A combination of not seeing the food and having to swim for their tiny lives in the strong current... no wonder the swordtail fry couldn't grow and survive.
Edited by Okiimiru, 21 July 2010 - 10:08 AM.
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Posted 23 July 2010 - 08:14 AM
So, I just got the microworms in the mail and I realize that they're going to sink down into the substrate as soon as I put them in the aquarium. I don't have a solution for this yet. Maybe the fry will be able to eat some before they disappaear. They do wiggle very tantalizingly. I imagine the fry will quickly eat whatever microworms they see. But they just won't see as many as if the tank was a bare glass bottom.
I have thought of something interesting. I have half inch diameter PVC tubing. I think I'll drill some holes in it with a screwdriver and submerge the tubing in the tank. That way, the fry (if they are actually ground dwelling) will have a hiding spot that their parents can't fit into. Might have to cap the ends, not sure yet.
I have thought of something interesting. I have half inch diameter PVC tubing. I think I'll drill some holes in it with a screwdriver and submerge the tubing in the tank. That way, the fry (if they are actually ground dwelling) will have a hiding spot that their parents can't fit into. Might have to cap the ends, not sure yet.
Edited by Okiimiru, 23 July 2010 - 08:15 AM.
#9
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Posted 02 August 2010 - 03:18 PM
So, I just got the microworms in the mail and I realize that they're going to sink down into the substrate as soon as I put them in the aquarium.
Ha ha, they never made it to the substrate. Everyone loves microworms so much that they get eaten before they ever hit the ground. Looks like I've found a new food for the small swordtails.
In all seriousness, though, this microworm thing will probably work as long as I breed more of them so there is enough food to be able to reach the bottom. I'm amazed at how they wriggle all the time. The next test is to submerge some microworms and see how many hours they survive under water. I'll update after I do that.
#10
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Posted 03 August 2010 - 01:41 PM
Update: Microworms survive for at least 10 hours completely submerged. At least, that's how long I've had this cup full of tank water with microworms in it, and they're all still wiggling. I imagine that in a tank setting they would have either been eaten or have worked their way into the substrate by the time 10 hours had passed. I'm going to keep them in the water and see if they're fully aquatic, just for curiosity's sake.
And an update on the surface of the water. The duckweed is all gone now, so the surface is not obscured. I still haven't been able to find out whether Etheostoma spectabile fry live on the surface of the water or on the ground, but if they do live on the surface, then feeding them would be super easy. There's hornwort completely obscuring the top five inches [deep] of the water (it's a bit overgrown looking, but whatever.) And I've got a mortar and pestle and some bright red BettaMin flakes to crush, which fry can't resist. And the microworms. It's all ready for fry. ^_^ Now if only the darters would breed...
And an update on the surface of the water. The duckweed is all gone now, so the surface is not obscured. I still haven't been able to find out whether Etheostoma spectabile fry live on the surface of the water or on the ground, but if they do live on the surface, then feeding them would be super easy. There's hornwort completely obscuring the top five inches [deep] of the water (it's a bit overgrown looking, but whatever.) And I've got a mortar and pestle and some bright red BettaMin flakes to crush, which fry can't resist. And the microworms. It's all ready for fry. ^_^ Now if only the darters would breed...
Edited by Okiimiru, 03 August 2010 - 01:45 PM.
#11
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Posted 04 August 2010 - 06:58 AM
Update: After 24 hours submerged, about half of the microworms have stopped wiggling. But that may be because they were overcrowded and ran out of oxygen. And it's a moot point anyway because in the aquarium, the worms would not stay suspended in the water colum for 24 hours. They would get eaten or work their way into the substrate.
Edited by Okiimiru, 04 August 2010 - 06:58 AM.
#12
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Posted 13 November 2010 - 09:04 PM
One suggestion, and this comes from studying E careleum (rainbow darter) that live in the creek that passes through my farm.
Very young rainbows like very shallow water. That's where I find them in the late spring and early summer after they hatch, right at the edge of the creek, where the water is 1-2" deep, and never in deeper water. So if you're trying to raise E spectible fry, you might want to provide them with very shallow water, preferably with rocks so they can hide. This may be to stay away from predators, but kids thrive where they're most comfortable, regardless of species.
Darned if I know what they eat, though. Baby craws are too large.
Very young rainbows like very shallow water. That's where I find them in the late spring and early summer after they hatch, right at the edge of the creek, where the water is 1-2" deep, and never in deeper water. So if you're trying to raise E spectible fry, you might want to provide them with very shallow water, preferably with rocks so they can hide. This may be to stay away from predators, but kids thrive where they're most comfortable, regardless of species.
Darned if I know what they eat, though. Baby craws are too large.
#13
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Posted 14 November 2010 - 08:40 PM
Very young rainbows like very shallow water. That's where I find them in the late spring and early summer after they hatch, right at the edge of the creek, where the water is 1-2" deep, and never in deeper water.
I have found that that's true with the swordtail fry I raise as well; they stay in the top centimeter of the water between the plant tips and the surface.
I actually gave up on breeding the Etheostoma spectabile, though. They kept eating every fry in sight (swordtail fry) so I figured that even if they were spawning, they were eating their own young. They would climb up into the plants and stalk the babies, hunting them down and eating every last one.
Edited by EricaWieser, 14 November 2010 - 08:40 PM.
#14
PBK
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Posted 12 March 2020 - 10:13 PM
Ive managed to raise rainbow darter fry. I vacuumed the eggs from the gravel and doused them with methylene blue to prevent fungus then put them in a well aerated bare 10 gal tank. I raised them on baby brine. I think I had maybe 20ish in the end. I was more successful with Iowa darters and managed to raise quite a few. Make sure no hydra are in the fry tank or youll have no fry.
Edited by PBK, 12 March 2020 - 10:14 PM.
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