A few years back our fairly old Gold and Green Severum cichlid fish had babies. So many and often in fact that I decided to buy more tanks to help raise them. Well… I was feeding the fish today and noticed something. I look in the big fish tank and see 2 fish guarding a spot on the back wall. Then I see it. A few dozen fish fry swimming around.
If I leave them in, they would just be eaten by the other fish. I am pretty sure that happened to most of them, as they lay something like 100+ eggs at a time. Most hatch but not all of them.
I cleaned out the 10 gallon quarantine tank I use for sick fish. It was empty because I haven’t used it in forever. Then I hooked up a sponge filter, heater, light, and filled the tank with the big aquarium. This way I don’t have to cycle anything, it just is ready to go.
I picked up a cheap turkey baster and went to work.
Now my fish are pretty large so I had to bring a distraction so not to be nipped at. These fish can break the skin and its no fun. I grabbed a piece of pvc pipe so if they attack that it wouldn’t hurt any fish.
Good thing I used that pvc, the one fish (green severum) was attacking it pretty hard. Then while I kept them busy I just scooped up the fish in the baster and moved them to the 10 gallon.
So how do you feed these things anyways?
Well they have tiny mouths so they would eat small things. Seems pretty simple. However fish food is not small enough at this point so the best thing to do would be to make your own.
Baby brine shrimp come in handy here. I bought a nice bottle of brine shrimp eggs a few years back that I keep in the freezer. Just 2 scoops of eggs and 1 2/3 table spoons of salt in 1 liter of water and you are ready to go. Just add some air to keep the eggs tumbling and park it in front of a incandescent light bulb for warmth. Just takes 24 to 36 hours to hatch the shrimp. When you go to feed them, you either use it all or toss it. and start over. Just keep the cycle going.
I use eggs that I buy off amazon. They seem to be of high quality where I don’t have to worry if I will get any to hatch, they just work. Grade A Brine Shrimp Eggs, 1.75 oz
Whatever is left over, I give to my other fish, everyone eats these things in my tanks.
In the photos you will notice a soda bottle with the light and a tube out the cap. This is how air is brought into the bottle and also how I siphon off the shrimp when I harvest.
These caps are so awesome. You don’t have to rig up anything just take the old cap off and screw on this new cap. These are the ones I use, they come one to a pack but I found that these are worth the money in terms of them holding water back securely. You do not want eggs all over the place! I believe their main use is for DIY CO2 diffuser systems for planted fish tanks.
The only thing I do is every so often I mix up the eggs to make sure they get hydrated. I just do this for the first few hours as they usually will soak up the water by then.
I’ll post me feeding the babies tomorrow. There you should see me siphon off the eggs and feed the fish fry.
