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I did a water change on our big tank this afternoon, and it seems that this has induced our blue acaras to spawn again (not that they need much inducing ). I spent most of the evening watching the female laying row upon row of eggs on a 2 inch river pebble and the male following close behind fertilising them.

This pair have spawned three times before and have had at least one batch of eggs hatch, but as yet no fry have survived to adulthood in the tank (being a community tank I'm not that surprised). The first lot of eggs were laid on a leaf and disappeared overnight - presumed eaten by parents or other tankmates; the second hatched and fry were seen for a couple of days being guarded by the parents before they all disappeared and the third batch (again on a leaf) disappeared overnight again.

Now that they are done I was having a close look at the eggs and noticed that most, if not all, of the eggs have a small white spot on the side of them (see pics below). I'm not sure if the spot was there when the eggs were laid as I was trying not to disturb them by getting too close.

acara eggs 1
acara eggs 2

I haven't noticed these spots on any of the previous batches of eggs, but I also didn't watch the spawn or get a look at the eggs so soon after the event with previous batches.

Is this spot or is it the start of fungus?

Parameters are as currently as follows:

temp = 26C (78F)
pH = 7.4
Ammonia = 0 ppm
NitrItes = 0 ppm
NitrAtes = 40 ppm
GH = 120 ppm
KH = 40 ppm

Thanks for your help

G_T

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Thats completely normal, thats the growing embroyo, its attached to the egg wall.

Heres some day old blue acara eggs, this batch hatched.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/longhairedgit/IMG_4238.jpg

What will really do your noodle in is the day they lay another batch of eggs 3 weeks after the last, thus giving the 3-4 mm babies a batch of new fry to feed on. Twisted. My blue acaras are doing that at the moment.The young are swimming about the fry picking the odd one off, and the parents are protecting all of them.

Thanks for the reply LHG. Wow ... protecting eggs and fry at the same time, that's amazing. The parenting style of the acaras is just fascinating to watch.

Unfortunately our BGK decided to make a snack of the eggs at feeding time the same night. He managed to eat about half of them. Mum put up a heck of a fight protecting the eggs (dad was too busy scoffing down bloodworms at the other end of the tank!) but the BGK kept coming back for more.

I was getting worried about the ferocity with which the BGK was protecting it's new food source so I ended up moving the rock with the remaining eggs to a separate tank.

The eggs have been placed in a 1 gallon bowl with water from the main tank, and I have added an airstone near them to keep the water moving.

Is there any likelihood that the remaining eggs will survive separated from the parents? If so, is there anything more that we need to be doing to help the eggs along other than maintaining water conditions in the bowl?

I'm not even sure at this stage if we really want to raise any fry that may hatch to adulthood, I was more concerned about possible damage to the female acara by the BGK at the time and removing the eggs stopped the confrontation. We may need to reconsider accomodations if it is decided that we actually want to raise any acara fry in this tank in the future.

Thanks again for the assistance so far.

G_T

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Well the problem is that the parents tend to both fan the young and wash them, and chew and spit food remains over the pit, presumably to encourage aufwuch growth near the pit for the young fry to feed on, and when a pit gets dirty in a couple of days they dig another and move the fry to it. Raising fry is a tricky balance of micro-organism production, and then moving on before conditions get too dirty in the pits, and the fish are a much better judge of that than I am.

Without this service and constant attention, fry survival rate might not be too good. The parents also tend to cull sickly fry themselves thus preventing disease taking hold. I know people have raised them away from the parents, but unless truly kitted out for it, it might not work too well for most people. I've always let my acaras raise their own young, I dont frankly think i'd be better at it than they are.

I think from what you have done so far the fry may well hatch if they dont succumb to fungus, but as for getting the fry past the first week, well thats another matter. A lot of people think that everything is going well , then 5 days later when the last vestiges of egg yolk are gone, its curtains.

Hope it works out a bit better for you though, but one thing is certain after day three of hatching, if there isnt infusoria and aufwuchs etc the young are so tiny they stand little chance. Liquifry doesnt always cut it, but sometimes a grungy old bit of algae infested bogwood, or a batch of dirty moss will often do the trick, getting them through the first week with grace until they are big enough to take the tetra baby fish food, even then it often has to have broken down for a couple of days before they eat it.Whenever an acara has a batch of eggs I dont know about and the young are surviving, its because theyve nested near moss with detritus in it and a little diatomic algae nearby ( usually an annoyance as a result of using black quartz gravel, but a positive advantage at breeding times) , and this invisibly seethes with the aufwuchs, and consequently the tiny quantities of protiens it takes to survive and grow. Quite often they are just extracting a little nutriment from the parents poo , no doubt. You can be entirely too clean when raising fry, they need the food, but if the water quality turns bad they will be unlikely to survive. One trick I learned way back, was to cover filter inlets with fine filter cotton wadding, and then the filter actually becomes a feeding ground rather than a threat. The ammonia is still handled by the filter , but it leaves a lot of detritus in the tank, and that is as close to a feeding ground without being too polluted that I can manage. I still gravel vac very carefully around the pits every 2-3 days just to get the worst of the cack up, usually with the adult acaras kicking the hell out of the the vacuum head, but this makes for a steady series of 5-10% water changes that sees the young through a period that would otherwise result in high nitrates. Im a big believer in not performing major water changes of 20% or above until the fry are at least 6 weeks old.

Hope all that rambling helps you work something out for the fry.


These red breasted acaras were raising their own fry for the first few days letting the young browse the xmas moss with no help from me, i've only just started feeding them.


http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/longhairedgit/IMG_5703.jpg

Thanks for your continued assistance LHG... very informative as always.
Like you I don't presume that I would be a better parent to baby fishies than their parents, but having now removed the eggs from the care of the parents I don't imagine that they would be accepted again and I can't bring myself to destroy them so I will do the best I can and see what happens.

Update:

About half of the remaining eggs got fungus, but last night we noticed something wriggling in the bottom of the bowl. It appears that at least some of the eggs have hatched.

A quick count this evening revealed around 30 tiny fry wriggling around.

We have some nice scungy java moss at the bottom of the big tank that we will transfer to the bowl shortly and may have some greenwater outside that we can put in there. Hopefully there will be enough goodies in that to get the little fry through until they are able to accept prepared food.

G_T




Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Another update:

It's now been a full week since the eggs were laid. As reported in the last update we had about 30 fry hatch after we relocated the eggs to a separate container.

I am please to report that we don't appear to have lost any of the fry yet . The baby acaras have progressed from being two groups of teensy weensy little wriggly things congregating around bits of food at the bottom of the bowl to being free swimming 5mm fry darting around all over the bowl.

The plan for this weekend was going to be shuffling fish in some of our smaller tanks to free up one for the acara fry. Unfortunately our male sparkling gourami has become ill and has required quarantining thus putting a hold on that plan for a few days at least (or maybe just gave me an excuse to acquire another tank ).

Up until now the fry have been feeding on liquid fry food, crushed flakes and whatever microscopic stuff was imported with the rock and the java moss from the main tank. I think they will be almost large enough to manage some BBS over the next few days so I will try that in the near future as well.

I'll update again in another few days, hopefully by then they will be big enough to photograph properly.

G_T




Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

man G_T, I cannot wait to see the pics of your new lil fellers! I am glad to hear that things are progressing well for your new family! Hopefully the Gourami will recover quickly!

Yeah, how did it go GT?