Cichlid Fry hiding and feed

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silent1mezzo

Candiru
MFK Member
May 31, 2010
312
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Burlington
Hey guys,

My cichlid spawned her first batch last night (and my first time ever). I was really excited to see 25-30 little guys swimming around.

I have a carpet of fake plants that's providing them shelter in their tank and can see them hanging out on the bottom.

What I'm wondering is if they'll know to come to the top of the tank to eat food?

The mothers still in there and I'm trying to get her to fatten up before I put her back in the tank.
 
Well, the fry would not have much of a chance if you rely on them to go to the surface to feed. You would need something that sinks to the bottom and would flow into the fake grass. You did not mention what other fish are in the same tank.

anyway, I would put some algae or other sinking tablet on the grass and the fry can munch on that.
 
Not 100% sure they will get the food efficiently if you add it at the top of the tank. In my case with my convict fry, I got some cheap plastic pipettes and mixed up a solution of hikari first bites with a little water in a shot glass, and I squirted the solution onto the sand around the fry. Seemed to work pretty well, and they'd have it all cleaned up within an hour. I also noticed the parents occasionaly taking a piece of their flake food and chewing on it for a few seconds then spitting the shredded tiny pieces into the middle of the fry swarm.
 
The only other fish currently in the tank is the mom. I'll be moving her out in a day or so. I have sinking shrimp pellets that I could use..I don't have a pipette though currently so I could buy that if the shrimp pellets don't work.
 
What kind of cichlid, how large are the fry? You could probably get by with powdering some flake food, taking a small pinch and releasing it underwater next to the fry.

Easy way to powder the food is to put about a tablespoon of regular flakes in a plastic bag and just roll the bag between your fingers for 5 or 10 minutes to mash it up. Just keep mixing it and squeezing. If you have a sturdier ziplock type bag, after you have it ground up pretty good just smack it a few times with a hammer. Will effectively render it into a very fine powder small enough for most fry.
 
Yeah, you really only need the grass if there are other fish that might eat the fry. It probably does lower their stress level a bit though in either case. As they get a little bigger they will spend more time out of the grass swimming around.

But yeah, try some powdered flake, or maybe take a trip to a LFS and see if you can get some hikari first bites. It's only around $3 I think for a little packet of powdered food, enough to last you several fry spawns. I only used about 25% of the packet getting my convict fry big enough to start eating the bigger pieces of flake.

If you have them available, you could try brine shrimp too. Fairly easy to hatch them with an empty pop bottle and an air line, though I didn't find it as easy to separate the hatched shrimp from the unhatched eggs as everyone makes out. Can find alot of plans for the DIY bottle hatchery on the web. Overall I found them to be a bit of a pain, but the fry did like them. Not sure I'll be using them again unles I get fry from a fish that are too small for the first bites or powdered flake.
 
Update:

I removed the grass and they're cruising along the bottom. I had to remove the mom because she ate a couple.

Dark Jester - I followed your crushing the flake method and it worked perfectly! They ate it up. They're currently so tiny that they don't show up on my camera. I might have to bust out the macro lens :P
 
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