I was given a 50 gallon aquarium a few weeks ago. I set it up in the dining room, cleaned it, filled it, and did a fishless cycle. Friday night I brought home our first fish.
I bought 2 pleco catfish (the kids call them suckerfish), 3 mollies (none gravid), 6 neon tetras, 7 glo-light tetras, and a betta. (I'll be adding more fish later.)
Saturday morning, I noticed the glo-light tetras were spawning! They must've liked the water. As soon as the eggs would fly, all the other fishes (and mom and dad fish too) would swarm the area and eat the eggs. I though they got them all. Apparently not.
Now I have 11 tiny fry in the breeding net. The betta hangs out there, trying his best to get in there to eat them. Every once in a while he gets mad a goes off to chase the other fish. Haha.
Anyway, I've been feeding the fry crushed up tropical flake food. They seem to be able to eat it well enough, but is there something that's better for them that I could be feeding them?
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rotfl.. and here I figured you had been struck by lighting. brineshrimp or bloodworm crushed into powder sometimes helps too. And you should be able to purchase "fry food" from your local aquarium dealer.
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Awesome! My in-laws have a huge pond in the back yard, and have gone from 10 fish to 4 dozen. Thomas named one Nemo and one Dory. Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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We have a small 10 gallon freshwater tank and goldfish out in our back pond. That's about as much as I can keep and I'm not very good at that. I do like the larger tanks, though. Its hard to choose what one or two types of fish to put in a 10 gallon tank.
Posts: 1777 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Thank goodness I misread this title... I thought it said "I've been fired!"
As for the fishies, I've never had fries survive their parents and the other adults in the tank, so I have no suggestions there.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Started up the tank Then got tetra-fried Kept thinking I could never feed so many little fish But I spent so many nights thinking how I could crush food They grew strong I learned how to carry on and so they live in a big net I just walked in to find two more and I don't know where they're from ... They will survive
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We had swordtails and black mollies that had babies. They were cute, but I think they got sucked up into the filter, and not as part of a grand escape plot.
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I thought you misspelled a very sad job action. Glad to know it's a happy event! Yay!
I have nothing to contribute! Nothing at all! Yay!
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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They like First Bites brand fry food.
They are molly babies, but I haven't figured out which one is the mom yet. Probably never will.
There are now 22 babies, and I bought another breeding trap and 4 more mollies yesterday. I don't think I'll be buying any more fish for a while...
And it's a good thing I bought the extra trap, because now the betta has decided the mollies are bettas, and that he should attack them. They're faster than him, so during the day this is fine. I'd like them to get some rest, though, so I put him in the trap at night.
Now the kids are bugging me to get another tank so we can get a female betta and breed them, too. "Liberty needs a wife."
Best part of this whole adventure? The kids know what oviparous, ovoviparous, anabantoid, labyrinth organ, and species mean, along with tons of other fishy terms. Yay!
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27 now, I think. It's hard to count them. This is fun!
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We're up to over 30 baby mollies. I'm still not sure who the mom is. LOL
I went to the pet store again today to have my water tested, and to pick up a small filter for my hospital tank, and there were some platys there that begged me to bring them home. So I did. Three of them, two females and a male.
By the time I got home with them, there were five fry in the bag.
How in the world am I going to tell the platy and molly fry apart in the tank?!? I guess I really don't need to, since same-sized fry won't eat each other, but still.
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Baby mollies are great. When I was a kid, we had black mollies that mass produced themselves. I loved it! I thought it was especially cool that mollies are live bearers (they're easy to breed because of it). Have fun with your fishies! The regular fish food worked fine for them.
I'm a little surprised that you have a Beta in a tank with other docile fish - they are notorious for fighting with other fish. You might have a similar problem with the catfish when they get larger, but not nearly as big a problem as you'd have with other bottom feeders (like a Chinese algae eater).
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I had a beta in my previous tank. I never had any problems with him attacking the other fish, though I had been warned about the possibility. For a while there I though he had been decimating my Neon school, but it turned out to be my Synodontis nigriventris which I had added to my tank about the same time. About halfway through the school he stopped killing them since the remainder were too large for him to get in his mouth.
Man, now I'm tempted to get my aquarium in working order and start keeping fish again. I know I need to replace the filter, I wonder what else I will have to replace.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Generally, unless it's an unusually aggressive betta, they won't bother tankmates unless they are either other bettas, or guppies. I think the long finnage on fancy guppies confuses them.
You can keep several females together, but not less than 3 if you put a male in there too.
The general rule is not to put a male betta in with anything else, as some are more agressive than others. IME, though, a single male betta will be fine in a tank with at least 15 other community fish...just no other bettas or guppies.
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