Can fry survive on own once they can make it to surface unassisted?

[anasfire23]

I've had my fist successful spawn on the 26th Feb ( 2 days ago, though this is just when i noticed the eggs, they may have been spawned up to 24 hours earlier.) and already the fry have hatched and are swimming both vertical to the surface and horizontal. Up until about 2 hours ago the bubble nest was still well formed and the male was spitting the fry back into it only to have them wiggle and fall out again (majority of the fry were out of the nest and swimming to the surface of their own accord anyway). The nest has dissapeared but he was still sucking em up and trying to spit em back into bubbles that wouldn't stay formed so fearing he may start to eat them and may be getting a little stressed trying to keep up with all the fry (he hasn't eaten in 3 days either) I removed him. I figured the fry would be ok as almost all of them are making it to the surface now and have even attached themselves to the sides of the tank and styrofoam cup so they can breath. Though now that I've removed the male he's going a little pschitzo. Swimming around his tank looking for fry i think and he won't even stop to eat, I am guessing this behavior is normal and he should snap out of it soon?

Back to my question,

Will the fry be ok on their own now that I've removed the male? I can put him back in of course if need be but i'd prefer to be safe in the knowledge that my fry aren't gonna be eaten.

Any opinions and advice would be greatly appreciated...thanks to everyone in advance. xxxx

Also the water in the spawning tank is really disgusting, there's decaying food all over the floor and I've noticed a slight film across the water surface. How long before the fry will be big enough so I can do a water change and will the state of the water effect the fry that much? I'm gonna ahve to start feeding them egg yolk in the next day or two and i'm worried that this will foul up the water even more. so any ideas what i can do?

[(RC)]

The fry will survive at this point without the male. They do not breath at the surface like adults.A much bigger problem is the poor water conditions. I normally don't do much with the water until the fry are a few weeks out. If your water is crap you are going to lose some if not all the fry anyways so doing a small WC once you start feeding them might help.


RC

[anasfire23]

Today i got an old tukey baster and took about 50% of the water out with that , making sure I didn't get any of the fry in the process, and replaced it with twice as much clean water as i took out. I also tried to get as much of the decaying food off the bottom of the tank, but there are alot of fry still siting on the bottom. As far as I can tell they should be big enough in about a week to see better and remove with a net so i can do a proper clean out. I'm sure they'll be fine until then aslong as I change atleast some of the water every few days. I boiled my last egg last night and made some egg yolk water to feed them and a batch of bbs hatched this morn so i'm set. Wish me luck. I think I've got a pretty large spawn, of about 150 at least! Pretty good for a first go hey...but we'll see how many survive in the next few weeks.

[(RC)]

If you have BBS don't dirty the water with the egg yoke. 99% of all fry ca eat BBS from the begining. I started 100s of spawns with just BBS.


RC

[anasfire23]

They seem too small to eat bbs... but i'll try them. Can't do any harm . Most of them have started to lose that white oval around their heads I am guessing is their egg casing. Thanks for the heads up RC.




11:25pm 3/1/05

I just added a whole bunch of bbs to their tank and they all went nutso. I didn't realize how big the fry look compared to the bbs. All is going well.

[anasfire23]

I've just noticed a whole bunch of fry dead on the floor of the tank, in large part due to the bad water condition no doubt, so i've gotten my really fine fish net and scooped as many as I can out of the large tank into a small plastic container I had lying around the kitchen with about 500ml of treated water and added some bbs to settle them in. So far I've only lost 2 in this process I think that's a small sacrifice to save 100 or so. I'm just waiting for the debrie in the water to settle again and the fry to swim to the surface before I start getting the rest. I think i'll leave them in this smaller tank for a week or so until they start to get too big for it then transfer them back into my 5ga spawning tank. It's amazing how they seem to take over you life isn't it? You become obsessed with these tiny little fish's welfare. Well I can't speak for everyone...but I sure as hell have!