Happy Mothers Day to all the fish moms out there!

Its been a busy couple of weeks since my last post to say the least. We have reached max capacity as far as aquariums go and have to manage our resources effectively to avoid overstocking issues. This is a good thing I suppose since the fish are breeding consistently and providing a regular flow of young to raise. 

Our discus are still proving a challenge with several pair eating eggs. I have decided to try to artificially raise the fry. Basically, there are two methods that seem to work. Once is using chicken egg yolks and creating a paste that is smeared on the side of a bowl. This is a method that Jack Wattley perfected and was very successful at using to raise large quantities of discus young. The downfall to this method is that the egg yolk fouls the water and a water change is needed after every feeding. The second method is using newly hatched San Francisco strain of brine shrimp. The San Francisco strain is much smaller than the Great Salt Lake strain and can be eaten by discus fry. I’m going to start out using the second method to see how it works out. The down side to the second method is that the San Francisco strain of brine shrimp eggs are expensive. I paid close to $65 for a one pound container. This also adds to the cost of raising the fry where as the egg yolk method is cheaper, but more labor intensive.

As you may have noticed, I have not listed as many guppies for sale recently as we are raising more to larger sizes. Most will have dropped at least one batch of fry before they are listed for sale. 

Last, we are trying a new method of hatching/raising angelfish fry. Currently, ceramic breeding cones are used for egg laying and then transferred to a plastic holding container which hangs on the inside edge of one of our larger tanks. After about a week, the free swimming fry are transferred to a 5 gallon tank. The downfall with this method is that the water has to be changed after every feeding since there is no filter in the small holding container. Under the new method, we will use 1 gallon glass jars with sponge filters to raise the fry from wiggler state to 10 days old. This will hopefully reduce the time used for water changes and help keep the mortality rates lower.

Until next week, Happy Fishkeeping!