Hi all,

A few weeks ago, I moved about 6 Golden Endlers (one pair + juvies) into a 20 gallon long with the 7 Least Killies that were already in there. The female Endler dropped 2 fry a day or two ago. I thought it may have been Least Killie fry but the size seemed to be on par with Endler fry, another live-bearer. I don't know how big Least Killifish fry are supposed to be as this is my first time raising them.

Anyway, two of my killies are gravid (one looks like she's about to explode). Is it safe to leave them in there? My rule of thumb is fish will generally eat anything that they can catch or can fit in their mouths. I've always raised Endlers with their parents and it has been working out as they are a bit large.

Should I move them out to a temporary container (ice-cream bucket ) or is it safe to keep them in with the Endlers when they release the fry? The old Endler tank is currently being used to nurse a badly injured Convict Cichlid I adopted from my brother.

Love this forum. Thanks!

It's more likely that with a drop of only two fry, those fry are Heterandria formosa. Endler's livebearers drop in batches of ten or so. Heterandria formosa drop in batches of two fry a day for a week or two, I've heard. Quoting wikipedia,

Dwarf Livebearer have a unique breeding strategy even among livebearers. Rather than all the young being released at once, as many as 40 fry are released over a 10 to 14 day period, but occasionally over a longer period.

Source: http://en.wikipedia....warf_Livebearer

Mixing species doesn't really matter here because both Endler's and H. formosa are small, their fry are relatively similar, and as long as your tank is well planted, both species of fry are able to survive just fine with their parents present. It's not like we're talking about a darter or a gourami here, whose goal in life is to eat all the babies regardless of what other foods are present. (Really.) Both Endler's livebearer and H. formosa don't eat fry much when they're well fed.

You have to figure out how fry friendly your tank is. If the tank is fry friendly, then you can keep both the Endler's livebearers and the Heterandria formosa in the tank. But if the tank does not have enough hiding spaces or food, then the tank needs to be modified. You could add more hiding spaces, increase the feedings, decrease the fish load. But you don't know if any of these steps need to be taken because you don't yet have any percentages on fry survival. For example, it would be a bad thing if you saw 20 Endler fry get born and only 2 make it, because that would indicate a really low fry survival probability. But if these two fry that were born born both survive to adulthood, then it's an indicator that the tank is decorated and fed in such a way to be 'fry friendly'. This means that when future fry get born, they have a good chance of being able to grow up successfully. If there are enough hiding spaces for the fry, then it doesn't matter what livebearer parents cohabit the tank, because the fry will be able to hide and find food and they'll be fine.

Fish breeding tips:
1. Pack an area of the tank with a dense plant, such as Ceratophyllum demersum. If you don't like live plants (everyone loves hornwort, though, try it), then you can use plastic plants or an upside down plastic collander. What's important is to have a region of the tank for the fry to hide where their parents can't eat them. Ceratophyllum demersum works especially well because it protects the babies who hang out near the surface of the water, where the food is. When you add crushed flakes to the tank, it floats on the surface, and the babies who are hiding in the Ceratophyllum can eat it without ever risking their lives by venturing into the open water. The more surface area you give the babies, the higher a baby population you can have. Remember that if they're too crowded, fry will fight instead of eating, regardless of how much food is present.
2. Feed the tank every couple of hours. You'll be able to tell how often you need to feed them by watching their bellies. If their bellies are full and look like little circles, completely round in shape, then you can stop feeding them. Check by three hours later. Are their bellies still round? No, they're a bit flatter. If you feed them now, what shape do they become? If you keep the bellies round, you keep the fish maximumly fed. The frequency you need to feed the fish to keep its belly round decreases as the fish ages. When they're first born, they've got just an awful digestive system and honestly constant food is best. I usually keep the filter flow low and keep a constant supply of floating food on the surface of the water for the first two days. By the time they're about four days old, you'll see their bellies stay full for a good four hours ish. This is all highly variable on your growth rate. But eventually you'll see them staying full for longer and longer times, and after about a month or two they eat about as frequently as their parents. This brings me to point #3:
3. Feeding the parents multiple times a day decreases their desire to eat their babies. The perk to feeding the fry so frequently is that you can also feed the parents really frequently, and full parents are less likely to pursue their babies than starving parents.
4. If the babies have nipped fins, they're overcrowded and you need to separate them. What happens a year from now, when you have 50 new fish all reproducing and having babies? I've got a 10 gallon tank set up with guppies right now and it turns out (who'd've thunk it), that when you cram 40 livebearer babies into 10 gallons, they fight and their injured spots get a bit fungus-y. You don't have that problem right now, but you might want to think about buying a dozen shipping bags from the shipping supplies section of aquabid and being prepared to send off your extra fish to other breeders to prevent overpopulation, aggression, and fungus problems among the fry. It's a really, really good problem to have because it'll mean your fish are breeding and happy, and you'll make money selling your extras. Successfully raising your fish is a win-win, really. Here's a link to those shipping bags, look for the medium sized Kordon brand breathing bags: http://www.aquabid.c...on.cgi?shipping Then it's easy to use USPS 2-3 day priority mail delivery speed. *nods*
5. Kill the deformed. Seriously. I know it's hard, killing your precious babies, and it should be. You can't just be some hearless jerk who kills baby fish for fun, or you wouldn't enjoy raising them so much and you wouldn't have asked this question. But it's necessary. If you don't kill the gross looking twisted spine deformed fish, then they reproduce, and then more of your population looks grody. They have to be weaned out sometimes, it just has to be done. I am a soft hearted person myself, so if I can find a friend with a tank set up already and none of their fish are this species of fish, then I give the deformed fish to them so that it can live out its life without getting a chance to reproduce. So if you can do this, do it, but don't leave the deformed fish in with your other fish to breed.

Edited by EricaWieser, 23 June 2011 - 11:46 AM.

5. Kill the deformed. Seriously. I know it's hard, killing your precious babies, and it should be. You can't just be some hearless jerk who kills baby fish for fun, or you wouldn't enjoy raising them so much and you wouldn't have asked this question. But it's necessary. If you don't kill the gross looking twisted spine deformed fish, then they reproduce, and then more of your population looks grody. They have to be weaned out sometimes, it just has to be done. I am a soft hearted person myself, so if I can find a friend with a tank set up already and none of their fish are this species of fish, then I give the deformed fish to them so that it can live out its life without getting a chance to reproduce. So if you can do this, do it, but don't leave the deformed fish in with your other fish to breed.

I agree this can be hard, but if you have several tanks, you should have some sort of culler.. I am keeping a breeding pair of purplespotted gudgeons (not native, but awesome fish) just to eliminate any "deformed" babies in my fishroom.

Thank you! This is really helpful.

I added more hornworts to the tank. The adults like to come up and feed on microworms and whatever I throw in there so the fry stay out of the way and mostly hang around the bottom.

If I notice any deformities, I'll see if I can bring myself to feed it to my adopted Convict. I'll probably end up purchasing a 10 gallon just for the culls . I'm currently spoiling my Convict with Hikari Bloodworms .

Upon closer inspection, I noticed another fry in the tank today! I also noticed that some of my Endlers are in the early stages of fin rot . This may be from when I netted two Convicts from my brother's tank which were infected and then cross-contaminated to my tank. One didn't recover and died. I washed the net with hot water but I guess that wasn't enough.

I did a partial water change and added API Tetracycline treatment, a few teaspoons of rock salt, increased temp to 84F. The fish are still as frisky as before so here's hoping they stay that way.

What do you guys think?

I eventually want to turn this tank into a native biotope and take out the Endlers and add some pygmy sunfish, possibly E. gilberti. Should this be okay?

Thanks!

Thank you! This is really helpful.

I added more hornworts to the tank. The adults like to come up and feed on microworms and whatever I throw in there so the fry stay out of the way and mostly hang around the bottom.

If I notice any deformities, I'll see if I can bring myself to feed it to my adopted Convict. I'll probably end up purchasing a 10 gallon just for the culls . I'm currently spoiling my Convict with Hikari Bloodworms .

Upon closer inspection, I noticed another fry in the tank today! I also noticed that some of my Endlers are in the early stages of fin rot . This may be from when I netted two Convicts from my brother's tank which were infected and then cross-contaminated to my tank. One didn't recover and died. I washed the net with hot water but I guess that wasn't enough.

I did a partial water change and added API Tetracycline treatment, a few teaspoons of rock salt, increased temp to 84F. The fish are still as frisky as before so here's hoping they stay that way.

What do you guys think?

I eventually want to turn this tank into a native biotope and take out the Endlers and add some pygmy sunfish, possibly E. gilberti. Should this be okay?

Thanks!

Can't sleep so I did some late-night googling and it I found out my fish my have Flexibacter columnaris. The tank condition and sign of the fish match the description. The last diseased Convict most definitely died of this. Didn't get a chance to properly treat it as it progressed too far and quickly died . Not a pretty site.

My juvenile female that has it the worse actually looks better than the fish here: http://www.guppies.c...35&d=1119312106

This page has some pretty good info on it: http://freshaquarium.../columnaris.htm

The tank was reading 82F so I unplugged it as this bacteria thrives in warm water. The weather here has been unbearably hot with temps around mid 90's-100 but it finally cooled down a bit today. Yay!

This is a lot of information, so I'll comment on the things in order.

Your fry hanging around the bottom is a bit unusual (most livebearer fry automatically swim up), but this can be explained by the microworms. Microworms wiggle around on the bottom of the tank for a day or two after they're added to the water. The fry are probably eating these microworms off of the bottom, filling their bellies and helping them to grow really fast. They should flourish on this food, and grow up big and strong. Crushed flake food would eliminate the risk of single food source nutrient deficiencies, though, so you should continue adding it to the tank.

About the Elassoma gilberti: They're nice fish. I've got a topic going that talks about them in the pygmy sunfish section of this forum. They like planted tanks like you have, and they really like microworms (the fry looove them). They would be a good match for your aquarium.

About the columnaris: It looks like tetracycline is a broad spectrum antibiotic. Columnaris appears to be gram negative, from what I'm reading online. I'm not sure, would that mean the columnaris would respond to tetracycline? Probably, I think. So if after a couple days the symptoms go away, then you probably did have a case of columnaris. You would finish out the course of the treatment as directed on the box. But if the symptoms don't go away, then that could mean two things. One, that the antibiotic isn't doing the job, and that you have to buy a specifically gram negative antibiotic, or a different one that columnaris doesn't have resistance against. Or two, that it's not columnaris and actually a fungus.

This is one of those situations that should be proceeded with caution. Rapid changes in water temperature, medication level, and the changes in hardness and pH brought on by multiple massive water changes, these things can all stress a fish and worsen its condition more than they may be helping. Stress can kill fish, so whatever you do, do it slowly and gradually. Livebearer females are especially at risk when about to give birth, so you have to treat the whole tank gently to avoid stressing everybody out. Sometimes just keeping the water at 0 ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrite, and less than 30 ppm nitrate will clear up the infection as the fish's immune system fights it off itself. Buy some test kits if you don't have any, and test the water to make sure it's clean, and then don't change more than one thing a day. (temperature, adding salt, adding medication). And oh, remember to use activated carbon to completely remove any first medication before adding a second one. Meds can interfere with one another.

Edited by EricaWieser, 24 June 2011 - 02:33 PM.

I have had luck treating columnaris with Maracyn Plus (liquid). In fact, that's the only thing I've had luck with for it. Other people have used other drugs successfully, but not me.

Fry hanging around the bottom seems pretty normal to me. I have my least killies in a heavily planted 10 gallon tank and feed mine flakes. About once a week they get small daphnia. And all my fry hang around the bottom also.

Fry hanging around the bottom seems pretty normal to me. I have my least killies in a heavily planted 10 gallon tank and feed mine flakes... And all my fry hang around the bottom also.

Huh. That's interesting. I guess now we have an easy way to tell Endler's livebearer fry from Heterandria formosa fry. Endler's will go to the surface and H. formosa to the substrate. Neat. I wonder if that's a North American fish thing? My Elassoma gilberti fry prefer the bottom, too.