In over my head with fry!

[pinkie]

I've been keeping a.cacatuoides and a.agassizii since roughly June and whilst I wished for one of the pairs to breed, I never thought for a minute they would do so within 12 days of each other.

Each pair has their own tank. When they spawned, each male had to taken out.

The a.cacatuoides are about 14-15 days old and the a.agassizzii must be about 5-7 roughly, they were only seen today. They are fed on baby brine shrimp and liquifry.

How long can i keep the fry and female together?

I plan to give fry to my LFS, at what age would this be recommended?

When should I worry about fry being old enough to inter-breed? I really want to avoid this!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mike Wise]

My philosophy is to keep females and fry together as long as the female accepts them. This gives the female some time to rest before breeding again. This period is usually longer if no breeding partner is in the tank. I think that these non-reproductive rest cycles lead to longer life spans for breeders (fish, not the hobbyists). I think many breeders breed their fish to an early grave. Once the fry are too large for the tank to handle them all it is time to move them to a larger grow-out tank

Most LFS only want fish that are marketable. For apistos that mean sexible young adults, typicallyy somewhere between 6 - 10 months of age.

Interbreeding is not as bad a thing as it sounds, particularly for line-bred domestic color strains. If your apistos are domestic strains they most likely are line-bred. If one conscientiously culls defective fish everything should be OK.

 

[gerald]

If you have a local aquarium club nearby, that could be another way to find homes for them, and hobbyists will probably take them at a smaller size than the pet shops will.