Taeniacara Candidi

[Matt2609]

Haven't done any waterchanges while the fry have been free swimming, but suppose it could have happened anyway.
But yea.. I'll keep feeding them lots of bbs and live mosquito larvae, aswell as some freezedried australian blackworms which actually seems to be one of their favorites. And then hopefully I'll be able to get them to spawn again soon.

 

[wethumbs]

It may just be too small a spawn that the female decided to not invest anymore energy on them. It could also be you are feeding too much and causing the water quality to deteriorate to the point the fry just died. Not doing any water change while constantly feeding the tank is not a good strategy. I once lost over 50% of D. maculatus spawn through a period of two weeks when I got 'busy' (more like lazy) and didnt do any water change while still feeding them twice a day. The tank was heavily planted but that didnt stop them from dying.

Since then, I have started using WordPress to document all the water changes as well as spawning for each of my tanks. I even note the moving of fish from one to another, as well as water parameters. I can just pull up all the notes on one tank and get a history of what has been done to the tank. No more guessing when I did the last water change on which tank.

 

[Matt2609]

You're probably right, but was afraid to do waterchanges while the fry was that small because the female tends to get really stressed when I do the waterchanges.
And I've been wondering why the spawn was so small. Could it be that my waterparameters still aren't right? Or is it just because it's their first time?

 

[wethumbs]

Typical Taeniacara spawn size can be from 20 to 100 with 50 to be the norm. Obviously the younger the female, the smaller the spawn. With proper conditioning, she will be ready in about 3 weeks. If the water conditions are not ideal, some of the eggs would not hatch which may attribute to small number of fry.

 

[Matt2609]

Figured that may have affected the size of the spawn as well, but I'm at about 170 µS. So lowering the conductivity should probably be my goal.

 

[wethumbs]

Depends on what your KH is, but 170µS is definitely too high.

 

[Matt2609]

kH is about 0 and same goes for gH and my pH is 5.6.
But yea my conductivity is quite high, which was what I thought could have affected the size of the spawn.

 

[Matt2609]

Seems like they're gonna have a go at it again.
Female is back in the black colors, and been like that since wendnsday this week.
Hoping for a larger spawn and that I'll be able to raise them this time...

 

[Matt2609]

Just wanted to throw in a couple of pictures I took today..
They're the best I could manage. My water is really dark and they're fast. And as a bonus I had a reflection of some kind.
Couldn't figure out what caused the reflection.

 

[Matt2609]

Didn't have time to raise the last spawn (final exam project going on in school), but there's eggs once again. And I actually do have time now.
Since this is my first time breeding dwarfcichlids, I've got to ask kind of a stupid question..
Would it be okay to do waterchanges while the female is taking care of the eggs and fry, or should I wait till the fry is a specific number of days old? So that they perhaps can handle a chemistry change (will ofcourse try to match the water in the tank)
It's been a week since the last waterchange now, and they have spawned just recently.. Just want to make sure I don't mess it up this time as I'm probably gonna move when I'm done in school, which most likely will make it impossible for me to keep any aquariums at all..

 

[Gwendal]

Really nice pics and nice Discus.





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