Hard Work!

I really had forgotten how much hard work goes into raising fry and it is a bit of a shock to the system, I have to admit.  I think its harder this time around because we have the 7 month olds too - isn't that what parents say when the second child comes along?

One of the problems I have at the moment is that I'm short of tanks.  We've managed to break quite a few in recent weeks and so need to get more.  I think I want to try a different type of set up next time.....we'll see.  Anyway, I finally managed to count the fry, and we have 145 so it just goes to show how many must have been lost to other fish in the tank (probably between 200 - 250).  145 is a much better number to work with given that nursery tanks are few and far between at the moment.  In total, we've been losing between 1 - 2 a day, which I don't think is too bad at all (remember many of these were fished out of the filter, so I expected to lose a lot more than I have).

I think I'm now fully in the swing of the brine hatching again - at least having the dwarfs around means that I never stop doing it entirely.  Making sure that they are properly enriched really is the absolute key.  At the moment I'm using selco, tetra and Dan's Feed. The brineshrimp goes through three phases - Step 1.  24 hour hatch, rinse and move to clean vessel.  Step 2. Feed with tetra  3. Remove enough food from the feeding vessel for 12 hours worth of feeding, and enrich with DF or selco.

 

The babies in the pictures above have nice red digestive tracts which shows they are eating well.

This next picture shows a baby that looks to be slightly bigger and more developed.  I suspect that he is probably one of the older babies, which now will make him three weeks old (the others are one week old today)

I did take some more pictures of the 7 month old H.erectus fry but I just really can't get any great photo's.  As soon as the camera comes out, they all seem to scramble to the front blocking the view of the one that I'm actually trying to get a picture of!

I have two that are my favourites (shhhh don't tell the others) and I'm trying so hard to resist keeping them.  My husband already put first dibs on one of the boys - and we really don't need any more boys!!!!  My two favourites are a yellow girl with crazy crazy cirri.  This is a beautiful headshot of her.  I know, I know, its rubbish but honestly she spends most of her time at the back of the tank and so this was the best that I could get!

And then in this pic you can see her as she quickly scoots away (the smaller seahorse in the picture is one of her 4.5 month old siblings).

I think that the photo's don't really do them justice, so here is a video that I took of them too.  I hope you like them as much as I do.  Enjoy :)

As I've managed to spend the last few blogs talking about the H.erectus, I think its time that the dwarfs get a look in.  We're actually preparing a new tank for them which I hope they will be moving into within the next couple of weeks.  Watch this space, and I promise to blog about the dwarfs...