4 Females 4 Spawns 1 Tank

[DrunkenAlcoholic]

I bought some Apistogramma's just before x-mas, 3 female and 2 male Cacatuoides quad red(Super reds) and a pair of agassizii fire gold's. About a week after I bought them I needed to go back to work, I work 4 weeks away at a time. I didn't have to time to setup up their "forever" home so I threw them into a custom 4ft tank which is 4ftLx1.5ftDx1ftH. I just got home the other day and noticed every single one of females including the agassizii has fry, the agassizii doesn't seem to have as many as the other 3 cacatuoides. The problem is I would like to do a water change but the fry are small and due to the vast amount in there I am concerned about sucking them up when draining the tank and then filling the tank with fresh water if I don't get the temperature just right. Looking for any suggestions to help keep the survival rate up with the fry, I have other tanks but I think the fry are too small to move. By the way I had no intentions of these breeding so soon and the condition of the tank goes against everything that the internet says about breeding apistogramms, Ph is around 6.8 TDS 300 ppm I have 2 x 500 lph powerheads which combined turn over 1000 lph in a 160-170 liter tank, my wife is not the best at water changes and doesn't take much notice of what is actually happening in the tank, she only knows to drain 30% once a week, no gravel vacc ect.. So in my eyes these conditions are not ideal for apistogramma so you could imagine my surprise when all 4 females had fry in the same tank.

Any suggestions moving forward would be great

 

[Shane Puthuparambil]

Hey man, could you help one of my friends out? He has a very similar dilemma as you. Here is his post: http://www.apistogramma.com/forum/threads/cacatuoides-harem-or-pair.21771/#post-101309

 

[Mike Wise]

If you're worried about sucking up some fry, then just siphon from the top of the tank. 10% 2X (or more) per week for the first month should be adequate while they're small. After that you should be able to gravel clean.

 

[Phile]

First of all, whatever your wife is doing, don't let her stop. She seems to have a magic touch getting fish to spawn. I'm in awe that you could get her to do water changes. Maybe you could rent her out to other breeders. Second, those of us who have had many tanks and fry containers at one time have learned to scavenge odds and ends that are useful in maintaining eggs and fry. In this case, I found a small fuel syphon in the auto supply section of a big box type store. The hose is much thinner than one sold as am aquarium syphon. In addition, I found a Rainbird lawn irrigation sprinkler component that had a small basket filter that fit over the hose perfectly. I bought the component and kept the filter, tossing the rest away. The hose had a junky accordion type bellows on the end to start the suction. It broke immediately, so I tossed it and used a cheap turkey baster to start the suction. It works perfectly. I use it to drain off water from my 2.5 gal shrimp tank, which has a lot of tiny young shrimp in it. I use it on my 20 gal Ram tank as well. Works fine. I use a couple of cheap hobby clamps to clamp the hose to the inside of the tank and a 5 gal bucket. It helps to control the small diameter hose.

 

[DrunkenAlcoholic]

Nice suggestions Phile, definitely will take them on board, Its really weird because the agassizii fry is still small yet she laid more eggs last night, I don't think her current fry are much older than a week, I was expecting her to look after them before laying another batch, I do have another tank for the fry but I don't want to remove them too early, not sure on what the best time to remove from the parents are, I am guessing 1 month old is when you move them?

 

[Phile]

I have never tried to move any, but I would think that once the fry are free swimming and eating BBS they would be OK to move. Put them in a tank with gentle water flow and sponge filters. Some big wads of Java moss for them to hide in and feel secure would be good also. Najas grass works also. It sounds like you're going to have a lot of fish to sort out.
If you don't have enough tanks, large plastic storage boxes work great for raising fry. You can leave them bare bottom to clean easier. Just drop in a sponge filter and maybe a couple of oak leaves and you're good to go. The nice thing about the plastic boxes is that you can drill them and put in simple PVC overflows and put the whole system on a sump. Then you only have to change water in the sump, and you can put a submersible heater in there and heat your entire system. I raised a lot of killifish in my garage a few years ago on just such a system. It's relatively cheap also.

 

[Mike Wise]

For catching fry try a bottle trap. Do a search here or on line.

 

[DrunkenAlcoholic]

Thanks Mike I will try that in a week or 2, just want to give them time with there parents before moving them. managed to do a water change but didn't manage to clean the substrate, when I get them moved I will clean the substrate as I don't want to risk sucking them up.

 

[DrunkenAlcoholic]

So it seems the agassizii parents actually stole the fry from the Cacatuoides and raised them. It is only recently that the fry have started to colour up and its clear they are cacatuoides fry, I find this pretty strange as the agassizii parents was very protective over the fry, makes me think about if they actually knew or not the fry was not theirs.

 

[chris1805]

They probably didn't. There are stories of people feeding their Apisto's live daphnia and where the female Apisto started to protect the live daphnia thinking it was her fry.