New steindachneri

[james595]

From what I hear steindachneri work well in a harem. However my tank is rather small and the steindachneri are rather large. The tank is heavily planted(I will post a pic soon), but when they go into their "kill mode" they are relentless and stop at nothing to find the fish they are pursuing. Luckily for my female, when the male is being aggressive towards her, she can go into the coconut cave and he leaves her alone.

They spawned again on Sunday night( about 45 hours ago). I have added about 3g of distilled water so we will see if that helps. So in about 5 more days I should know for sure if there is success.

 

[dw1305]

Hi James,
Hope it goes well for you, sounds promising. Lots of caves the female can hide in certainly helps with male aggression.
cheers Darrel

 

[james595]

It appears that they have failed again. Today is the third day and the female is no longer spending any time in the cave. She is just roaming the tank, foraging, and displaying aggressively for the male when she sees him. Her breeding coloration has reduced a bit and she is no longer aggressive towards the dither fish. There is a chance that the eggs have hatched and she has moved them somewhere, but she doesnt seem to be defensive. At least the male is still being nice to her.

If they have failed, I guess I will continue trying to get the hardness down by adding distilled water. I was also thinking could it be that I have too many other fish in the tank? I currently have ~10 guppies, 2 neons, 1 otto and 1 SAE in the tank with my pair.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
James sorry to hear that. Might be a water issue, or your male might be infertile, or just not ready yet.

I would certainly remove some of the fish if you can.
I'd remove the 1/2 of the Guppies, the 2 tetras and the SAE. I don't think the Oto will make any difference to the cichlids, but they aren't meant to do very well on their own.

cheers Darrel

 

[james595]

Thank's for the advice Darrel, I think I will trade some of those fish in towards a few more ottos.

 

[james595]

There have been some updates to the tank:
5 of the largest guppies were removed
The SAE removed
+5 ottos today

The Apistos failed at spawning again last week, currently the male is being abusive and the female is hiding behind the heater or above the duetto filter. I have now cut their cave in 2, so now I have 2 caves, and I can see inside to figure out what is going on. The water has become a lot softer thanks to the addition of distilled water. Last I checked the total hardness was about 77mg/l. I just gave the male the mirror today to take his aggression out on. Took some pics:

 

[james595]

Oh yea I removed the 2 neons too.

 

[james595]

The pair spawned again. This time in a half coconut pressed up against the front glass. I got to witness the whole event, and it appeared that the male attempted to fertilize the eggs. There was a huge patch of eggs about the diameter of a half dollar, I would est. 150+ eggs. I have a pic so I will be able to get an actual count later. The eggs were kind of a peach color. She tended them well for the first 24 hours, then at approximatly 30 hours in, I noticed a few missing, but I just thought perhaps there were a few bad ones. By about 31 hours, I would estimate 70% were gone and it was evident that she was eating the eggs. Then by 34 hours roughly 95% were gone. I thought about trying to steal the remaining eggs at this point but it was 1 am and I had no where to put them. Today at around 40 hours they were all gone.

This was about her 5th failed spawn, but this is the first time I actually got to see the eggs. Every spawn has failed thus far. The eggs looked viable. I am considering two options for the next spawn. Maybe the pros can tell me which is best:
A) The first night after the spawn when the lights are out, cover the sides of the tank up with paper and just ignore the tank for 1 week except to add a bit of food. Thus they will not be disturbed by people watching them.
B) Remove the eggs within the first 24 hours and attempt to hatch them out in a small 5g tank.

 

[james595]

I counted the # of eggs in her last spawn, it came out to be 280.

 

[Apistomaster]

I would remove the coconut shell with the eggs within a few hours after spawning is completed and hatch them in a 5 gal tank treated with enough methylene blue to tint the water enough to make it difficult to see the eggs. As soon as the eggs hatch begin making partial water changes to reduce the blue color.

 

[james595]

She spawned again 3 days ago. I had a 5g incubation tank set up this time but I was reluctant to move the eggs into it as the only heater I had was a 150w submersible heater to heat the 5g. So I was worried it would fry(by fry I mean kill) the eggs. However like clockwork she began to eat the eggs about 24 hours after laying, so I stepped in and pulled the cave. She had already eaten her fill of the eggs by the time I was able to remove them. I added some(maybe 1 ml) H2O2 to the tank every 12 hours during incubation, and I would guess about 25% turned white. I set the coconut cave bottom up on top of the airstone so there was heavy aeration around the cave. They must have hatched last evening some time (~ 50 hours post laying). I have about 30 fry. It is not 280 but it should provide me some practice raising the fry. I sucked one up with a modified pipette and looked at it under a disection scope. The larvae was beating its tail constantly and it was really cool to see the heart beating and the blood flowing through its circulatory system. Here is a pic at about 72 hours post laying:

Now I am thinking about what to feed them. I have a small vial of artemia cysts but they are pretty old and dont seem to have a very good hatch rate any more. I have some live rotifers ( Branchionus plicatilus) at my disposal. Do you think the fry would eat these?

 

[Mike Wise]

Rotifers are an excellent food. If they just hatched, the fry won't need to be fed for another 3-4 day when they are freeswimming. Try hatching some of the old brine shrimp eggs. It is surprising how long some last.

 

[dw1305]

Rotifers

Hi James,
Like Mike says the rotifers are good. I got a squeezing out of a filter sponge yesterday morning for a microscopy class, and there were loads of rotifers in it.

When I got home I pipetted what we hadn't used to some fry, and you could see them chasing and eating although you couldn't see what it was that they were eating.

Interestingly the Otocinclus in the tank also showed a keen interest in the filter residue, I've never seen them react to any food added to the tank other than their vegetables, and they've never shown any apparent interest in microworms.

cheers Darrel

 

[james595]

Today is 4 days post spawning. I looked at one this afternoon under the scope. Today it had developed a mouth that was gulping frequently. It was also becoming more mobile. I have a pic I will post later.