- Messages
- 15
- Location
- the Netherlands
After a couple of failed attempts it looks like this time I am going to have a succesful breeding attempt. The other attempts failed because they were in a community tank, where all the fry were eaten, or in a "fresh tank", which hasn't ripened to create the one-celled creatures that are food for the fry.
So, learning from these lessons, I had a tank ready for the Cacs, with some small ancistrusses in there, and some redtail shrimps. I put my Cac couple in there and waited. After a week or so I noticed that the female was hiding, and a couple of days later i saw her again with the fry. Unfortunately she died after another week, but there was still a lot of fry left. I removed the male, because i thought he might feed on the fry without the female there to chase him away. Since a week or so the fry are eating dry food (decapsulated artemia) and they've started growing quite fast. I was actually suprised to see that the 1cm fry are already starting to display "adult" behaviour. FGor instance, 2 of the will be swimming side to side, and start flashing teir tail, as the adult do in courtship.
Anyway, I have about 12 of them left, without going through any difficulties. I just made sure that the tank was heavily planted with elodea densa, which creates lots of surface where one-celled creatures can grow, and that the tank was matured so that these one-celled creatures also had enough time to multiply. That provided plenty of food for the fry to survive the first weeks. Now they eat dry food, so i never had to feed them BBS or other self-prepared live food.
They are growing very hard now, every day they look bigger. The biggest ones are now about 1.5 cm, the smallest about 1 cm. I am trying to see if i can determine sexes, but i cannot tell yet. I've read somewhere that the easiest way to sex them is by looking at the fins they have behind their gills (dorsal fins?). The females have them black, the males don't. But none of the have black fins at the moment. I do start to see some color in the back fin, which i consider to be a male trait. I also wonder what kind of colors they will have. I know that the male is a double red, but i don't know for sure if the female is too, since they all look the same.
So, learning from these lessons, I had a tank ready for the Cacs, with some small ancistrusses in there, and some redtail shrimps. I put my Cac couple in there and waited. After a week or so I noticed that the female was hiding, and a couple of days later i saw her again with the fry. Unfortunately she died after another week, but there was still a lot of fry left. I removed the male, because i thought he might feed on the fry without the female there to chase him away. Since a week or so the fry are eating dry food (decapsulated artemia) and they've started growing quite fast. I was actually suprised to see that the 1cm fry are already starting to display "adult" behaviour. FGor instance, 2 of the will be swimming side to side, and start flashing teir tail, as the adult do in courtship.
Anyway, I have about 12 of them left, without going through any difficulties. I just made sure that the tank was heavily planted with elodea densa, which creates lots of surface where one-celled creatures can grow, and that the tank was matured so that these one-celled creatures also had enough time to multiply. That provided plenty of food for the fry to survive the first weeks. Now they eat dry food, so i never had to feed them BBS or other self-prepared live food.
They are growing very hard now, every day they look bigger. The biggest ones are now about 1.5 cm, the smallest about 1 cm. I am trying to see if i can determine sexes, but i cannot tell yet. I've read somewhere that the easiest way to sex them is by looking at the fins they have behind their gills (dorsal fins?). The females have them black, the males don't. But none of the have black fins at the moment. I do start to see some color in the back fin, which i consider to be a male trait. I also wonder what kind of colors they will have. I know that the male is a double red, but i don't know for sure if the female is too, since they all look the same.