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My brichardis have bred again! And there are about 20 little babies on the bottom of the tank. Maybe I'll try to take a picture of them for all of your benefit (no guarantees, they're really tiny and my pictures usually turn out blurry... need to borrow the tripod). It's so exciting to have more little baby fishies Hopefully they will all grow up big and strong and when they get big enough the parents don't want them around they will have another tank to live in. Now I need to get some brine shrimp eggs... And set up a reminder system so I remember to feed the little guys. Aww the babies are a lot of work but they're worth it. It's so fun having a little swarm of baby fish in the tank, and them being able to be raised by their parents and siblings because they want to take care of them and not eat them.

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Morning Day #2 and they are still quite alive! One looks sick though. When I turned on the light this morning all but one were hanging out on the rocks where they were hard to see, and this one was swimming around the tank! (not at all normal for a day-old fry... they tend to hug the bottom) It was the only one I could see and I panicked and thought it was the only one left. And I saw three of the bigger fish pick it up in their mouth and then spit it out (with the first one I was worried because it held it in its mouth for a couple seconds... I was like "hey you, don't eat your baby!" I believe that was the male of the breeding pair too) And I thought all the babies had been eaten or got sick But then I saw all the little fry sitting as only a tiny sliver of a fish can do on the rocks. And they were just fine.

Also, my mom started some brine shrimp eggs for them last night So by tomorrow they should have some yummy little live foods!

[span class="edited"][Edited by superlion 2004-08-02 18:40][/span]

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Evening Day #2. Some of the brine shrimp hatched and I put in the pin-prick sized napulii in the tank. There are about twice as many fry in there now as there were last night. Which means I have about 40 fry . And they were all taking their brine shrimp (even the biggest fish in the tank was eating the napulii... even though they were so small you'd think they'd go right through her gills...). They're going to grow up big and strong if I have any say in this...

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Whoa, how large are the parents? Cant wait till my colony starts breeding, only 1 1/2 inchs right now

Well, the mother is about 4"... but the father is a bit younger and is only more like 3"... The first ones I had started breeding at maybe 2.5"

Beautiful fish, aren't they?

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The little guys have gone through two batches of brine shrimp now, plus liquid food. I can't wait for them to be big enough to eat the flakes (they're a lot of work to feed when they're little) Still a bunch of them in there though. When they're up and active they're like a cloud of locusts. When they're resting they're about invisible.

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