Apisto babies

[mseguin]

Finally, some progress. This time I took the coconut shell with the eggs away from the mother (she looked rather confused for an hour or so) and put it in a bare bottom 10 gal, and lo and behold, I have wrigglers. Now wish me luck in keeping them alive. Any hints?

[james]

Hi
Make sure you keep the water clean, use a sponge filter and also make sure the tank has a couple of snails. The later keeps your tank clean and also they break down the excess food  Their poop makes good food for frys

Good luck
& congrad

James

[mseguin]

Thanks, I do have a sponge filter in there, there are several MTS in there, and the main challenge will be keeping the water and the bottom clean. Actually I'm starting to beleive snails were one of the culprits in the previous spawns failure, as when I took out the shell there were several snails on the shell that the mother seemed incapable to remove (something I also noticed in the past).

[BigDaddy]

Lots of small waterchanges.  If you can change 10% of the tank daily, do it.

Pre-treat your water before adding it to the tank.  I know you can add conditioner at the same as the new water, but apisto fry are very sensitive to any form of nitrogen in the tank.

Get those BBS hatcheries going... you'll be going through a fair bit of it!  I have a microworm culture I could get a starter culture going for you to vary their diet.  Plus, microworms are smaller than BBS.  If you have some runts whose mouths are too small for BBS, then they can take the microworms.

And slap a big ol' piece of java moss in there.  They can much on the infusoria when you aren't around to feed them.

[gvv]

Agreed with mentioned above except, it is better to put snails after fry begin swimming, otherwise snails could eat eggs.
Also, instead of using tap water I use water from tank where parents live.
Regards

[mseguin]

Thanks fofr all the advice. Babies are swimming and doing fine. Gonna be hard in the next few days to get the waterchanges and enough feeding done, working 10-9 (two jobs).

[Woody]

Way to go Matt. You'll manage to squeeze in the extra time, seen myself doing W/C at five in the morning.

Keep us informed.

Woody