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Saturday night last weekend, I set up my 5g tank half full,
temp 82 with heater, sponge filter, and a single layer of glass marbles on the bottom. I took a plastic rock structure, and stuffed java fern plantlets in all the openings to create a sort of planty rock.
Anyway, baby makin heaven for fish, kind of.

So after a good feeding of frozen bloodworms, I spent an hour trying to catch pearl danios. I have 5 altogether,
2 male 2 female and 1 still unknown cuz its small. Both females were huge and full of eggs. So i caught both females and both the males (1 young one is older), and just popped said fish into the spawning tank.
Within minutes of being in the tank, the males started harrassing the females for spawning.
The next morning I looked in, and the fatter of the 2 females was skinny.
I left the fish for one more evening and on the 3rd morning, Monday morning, both females were skinnier than the males!
I then removed the adult fish back to the main tank.

I have since done nothing. I have not added anything for fungus, never added any food to the tank when the adults were in. I am relying on the seasoned sponge filter and plants to provide infusoria for any fry.
So last night, Thursday, I looked into the tank with a flashlight (cuz it has no light on it), and lo and behold, there are fry clinging to the glass walls of the tank, and everywhere, there are so many!!
Today some are starting to swim.
I am so excited. I had instructed a friend how to use the marble/sponge filter method of spawning danios and she was successful, so I guess the method works, cuz now so am I!

So now I just wonder how long to allow the fry to feed on the infusoria on the plants and filter? How long before this food source ceases to be enough for the baby fish?
I can easily prepare some crushed flakes and egg yolk for the fry, and I have brine shrimp eggs. Should I start a batch of BBS now?
Anyway Im so happy I was successful. I hope I have a decent survival rate. More fry are appearing every hour that goes by.

I am hoping to have 5 more pearls from this hatch to join the adults in the 75g tank, but may keep more. I am planning a container pond this summer and danios may be the way to go Im thinking.

As I have only raised angelfish fry from eggs to maturity, I know that these fish take approx. 4 months to reach sellable size from the time they are born.
How long will it take the much smaller danios?

Anyway so happy and glad to share! Looking forward to any answers/suggestions/advice on the raising of danio fry.


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Supplemental feedings of Liquifry liquid fry food (if it's available where you are) will have two beneficial effects - one, help your fry pile on the body mass, and [2] fuel more infusoria (provided you don't overfeed drastically of course!).

I'd hold off on hatching Brine Shrimp until the fry have been free swimming for at least 7 days. After that, newly hatched Brine Shrimp and finely powdered flake food should give you a nice lot of fry in no time. However, you may find you have more fry than you know what to do with, because well conditioned and heavy females can produce up to 200 eggs each, and even if your females are first time spawners, they could have produced 100 eggs each. So if you want to rear that batch of fry, you'll be looking at a fair sized nursery at some point in the future!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Cool, I will pick up some liquifry tomorrow night
at my aquaria club meeting. Its at the LFS this month and hes doing good deals

I have another empty 10g tank, and a couple 25 gallon tote bins on stand by if needed for the fry
Im not sure how many I will have. I see lots so far, at least 3 or 4 dozen that I can see on the glass. Who knows how many are still in the marbles and on the plants.

An LFS near me will buy the young fish once they get big enough too, so thats good.

When do you think I should start with water changes?
With my angelfish I waited about a 10-15 days or so, then did small water changes of about 10% daily.



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