Fantail Darter Eggs

my fantail darters have layed eggs in my 2.5 gallon tank today so i removed the adults and the power head i have a small sponge filter running and i was wondering how long they take to hatch and also what to do about feeding them. i have a small tank which has just snails and gammarus and there are hundreds of little specks that shoot around the tank i was thinking maybe just scooping some of this water into the tank once they hatch. need some help, thanks

There are three things I would suggest:
1. Baby brine shrimp
2. Microworms
3. Grindal worms

The first one, baby artemia (brine shrimp), is very convenient in the sense that you can buy a vial of brine shrimp cysts [eggs] from your local pet store for about $4. Then they take about 24-48 hours to hatch. But they're my least favorite food to feed to fish because of the clean up. There's this nasty 2 liter bottle afterwards with all these gross cysts and they're saltwater and non-sustainable, so you've always got to be setting up new hatcheries every two days. So, my least favorite. But they're awfully twitchy and your baby darters would love to eat them, so they get the job done.

The second one, microworms, is my sustainable solution to baby brine shrimp. You can order them for about $4 including shipping on aquabid.com and they'll arrive in about 2 to 3 days. I use tupperware containers with some holes in the lid, oatmeal, coffee filters, and a sprinkle of yeast to culture them. What I do is I make up some oatmeal, then I spread it about a centimeter thick on the bottom of the tupperware. Then I rip a coffee filter in half. Half goes to cover about 2/3 of the oatmeal, half goes between the tupperware lid and walls, to keep bugs out. Then add the worms and the tiny tiny tiny amount of yeast. You don't even have to cover the surface of the culture with it, just a few specks is all you need. The yeast makes it smell like baking bread instead of worms. Then after about a day the worms are ready to scoop off of the coffee filter. I use a dedicated worm spatula for the job. I run three cultures at one time and end up re-seeding one of the cultures about.... once a week? Maybe? So you can see there why microworms are better than baby brine shrimp in one way; they have less upkeep. Instead of having to refresh the culture every few days for baby artemia, the microworms culture produces at maximum output for about 2-3 weeks.

Lastly, the grindal worms. The first two foods were for when the fry were super small. Microworms and baby brine shrimp are both very, very tiny. Grindal worms are about a half inch long (ball parking it, not really sure). They're also wiggly, tasty, and will encourage your couple month old darters to keep eating. There's a stage in between larvae and adult where they're not quite big enough to eat big kid food but the baby food is way too small. At that point the grindal worms will really come in handy. Also you can train the fish to love you with grindal worms. Sit in front of the tank and drop live worms in one by one, and those fish will soon associate your face with food and come forward when you're there.
How to culture grindal worms: My method is to get a plastic shoe box, drill air holes in the lid, stack two layers of four inch+ thick dollar store sponges in it, fill the shoe box with water up to the second layer of sponges, add worms on top, add Kibbles 'N Bits®. The upkeep varies depending on how many worms you have. Mind are at the point where they're eating four pieces of kibble every two days. At this population size, I clean out the worm box once a week to maintain a smell-free home for them. They start to climb up the sides of the box if there's a smell, you see. To clean it, I take the box to the sink, lay the lid down, put the top four sponges on the lid with only a mild squeeze, and then thoroughly sanitize the bottom four sponges and the nasty bottom of the box. Then I put the bottom four sponges back in, put water in, put the top four sponges back in, put box back in drawer under fish tank. It works better if you refill the box with room temperature dechlorinated water. I happened to receive a faucet water filter for Christmas that removes chlorine with its filter, so I use that. If you do it right the worms are back to feeding within a few hours of the cleaning. If you do it wrong all your worms can die. That's why I keep two cultures of grindal worms, so one culture can reseed the other if I mess up. It has been a while since one crashed but even so I still make sure not to clean them both at the same time just in case.

Two things:
Yes, the water with the little specks that shoot around the tank is a good first food, but you can't know how renewable that resource is. That's why artemia (brine shrimp) and microworms are a good investment.
Darters are footprint fish. The footprint of the tank (how much space there is to sit on the bottom) matters. I'd move them to a spare 10 gallon if they were mine. Fry can be downright mean to one another if they're overcrowded.

Edited by EricaWieser, 23 March 2012 - 07:02 AM.

Almost all eggs that go bad turn white / opaque within 48 hours. Remove bad eggs at 24 and 48 hours. Add Maroxy if you have some.

I do not know the size of fantail fry. NEWLY hatche brine shrimp IIIFFF they are big enough.

If not, and as a good second source of food, add live paramecium, and sprinkle dried chicken egg yolk on the water surface.

p.s. Small vials of brine shrimp eggs from a local pet shop are often expired. Buy 1 pound online instead. $38? Lasts years.

thanks i havent noticed any white eggs so thats pry good

Can you try to take pictures of the fry as they develop, for example a picture every day, and upload them here? I don't know of many other sources to find documented darter development. It would be a great resource for people looking at this topic in the future.

yeah i can do that