How Long?

[Obsidian]

Hello,
Something spawned in my 10 gallon tank (it has to be either an Oto or a Zebra Danio, could be both) and I don't have a really good solution for protecting the fry just yet. I have a 5.5 gallon tank that is not fully cycled yet so I was thinking about putting the adult Danios in there to reduce the chances of harm coming to the little fry. The tank is a little small for 5 of them though so I was wondering how long it would be okay to keep them in there?

The Danios are all adults. I have enough bacteria sources to get the tank to cycle quickly, but I don't think the fry would handle anything but an established tank, and right now I only see one little guy. Yesterday he was clinging head first to the driftwood so he might be an Oto cat. Today he was free swimming making bait of himself. At least when he was on the log he had places to hide! (He was hiding in a deep crevice). I am planning on leaving the 2 Oto cats where they are, I do not want to loose them, especially if they have spawned at all. I hear that is rare! I think with just the 2 of them in the tank the chances increase that the little guy will make it. Of course I also hope there are more hiding out

Thanks! I have to go and buy some fake plants for that smaller tank so there are hiding places for my danios!

Okay I thought about it. I pulled the 2 biggest Danio's and put them in my 20 gallon. The other 3 can go in the 5.5.

[oliesminis]

hmm any ideas yet i love hearing about fry

? can you get pictures of them ?

[Obsidian]

I might be able to get pictures later, but right now I know they are too small for my camera. I am not even sure how many I have! I need to check the filter when I can put the pantyhose around it.
I have 4 of the 5 zebra danio's out of the tank but that 5th one is a bit too smart to catch. The fry I have seen so far are really cute It's either 1 or 2, not sure! Hopefully with the majority of the predators out of the tank they will come out of hiding

Okay I was able to get the 5th one out (food works wonders) and I have seen 4 fry in a single glance so there are at least 4. My guess is there are more but they are so dang quick! The Oto's seem to be leaving them alone. One of the fry swam right up to one of my Ot's and the Oto never noticed. I have nice deco's in the 5.5 for the 3 danios in there. The 2 in the 20 seem to be mostly leaving the other inhabitants alone. I hope they keep that up, they are the 2 bully's so they might decide not to play nice in there. All the fish are fast enough to get away though so I don't think it will be a problem. Lots of hiding place there as well.

[Obsidian]

Well the 5.5 fully cycled so I moved the fry into there. Turns out I have 6! Hopefully no one else was hiding. I seeded with some food and stared for a good 10 minutes before I gave up. The 2 bigger danios that I put in my 20 gallon wrecked havoc in there (and got everyone else to start fighting in the meantime). So then I moved them all to the 5.5, and then they started fighting even more with each other (too small). Thankfully when I tested the water the ammo and nitrites were all gone so I just put them back into their original 10 ga tank and put the fry in the 5.5 They are hard to catch!!! I used a new Turkey baster. They are quick little guys! I put an algae wafer in the tank to keep it seeded since these little ones won't produce much waste to keep it cycled.

After I put the danios back in their 10 gallon tank the immediately started attempting to spawn again LOL. I think that might have been part of why so aggressive in the smaller tank. Everyone seems happier now in both bigger tanks. Only time will tell if the fry do well in the little tank. I hope so, it would be really neat to watch them grow!

[Sunaynire]

I like the hanging net contraptions you can place in the tank with the spawning fish. You don't have to worry about moving the fish to a new tank, having enough equipment for two tanks, and you can just release them back into the tank when they are old enough.

[fishbguy]

Any news yet? how are they doin? Have you found out yet if they are ottos or danios? they should be big anough now for pics.

Good luck with them!!

[Obsidian]

Welllllllllllllll

They spawned AGAIN while they were in my 5.5 gallon! So I had moved 6 little guys to the 5.5 and put the adults back into their tank. Then today I go to check on my 6 little guys and there were 8. And so I counted again and there were 10. So then I started looking over the whole tank, and well there are over 30. Shameless spawners! I think the "fighting" I was worried about in the 5.5 gallon was really them spawning a second time, and since I removed them to solve that problem the eggs all made it. Or at least a large number of them made it. Beginners luck in timing hehe.

My camera really does not like small objects, so still no pictures. I tried yesterday and they all came out looking like white blurry spots. I kow my LFS will take the fish so I am not worried about waht i will do with them. I will tell them this weekend that I have some danios that will be ready eventually. The small ones are all hanging on the glass or decorations, so I think they do that when they are still really young, and free swim later. So my belief is they are all danios. I know the second batch are danois as those are all that have ever been in that tank.

They are all so cute!

Edit: Well they are hopefully finishing hatching because now there were over 50 just on the glass. I couldn't even begin to count the rest of them. This is only a little 5.5 gallon tank! It's fine now but I can't imagine what will happen when they start to grow up. The only thing I can think of is I might have to put them in my 100 gallon. I think that is way more than the LFS will be able to handle. I think I will talk to her first and then I might let one of my other danios free in the nursery tank to have some snacks depending on what she says.

[Obsidian]

One of the pictures sort of came out, so here ya go:



You can count 5 of the 6 original fry in there. I tried to get pics in the 5.5 gallon but it's just not happening yet. This camera is good with most things, but really not good with small things.