Help! Came home to 50-100 baby Jack Dempsey

[Cleiting79]

Came Home from a 3 day business trip tonight and found a school of baby fish in my aquarium, first I didn't even know eggs had been laid, second I have no clue on the care of fry. Someone help . Another question, the parents are a EBJD and a regular JD. At this age is there a way to tell apart the EBJD from the regular JD fry?

 

[convict360]

Came Home from a 3 day business trip tonight and found a school of baby fish in my aquarium, first I didn't even know eggs had been laid, second I have no clue on the care of fry. Someone help . Another question, the parents are a EBJD and a regular JD. At this age is there a way to tell apart the EBJD from the regular JD fry?

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First off, good job! No need for panic, the parents will guard the fry; all you need to do is source some suitable foods for the fry, for example microworms, then brine shrimp etc.

These shouldn't be hard to procure quickly, even local hobbyists usually carry cultures of these.

Extra precautions are up to you, such as moving fry etc but quite honestly I'd recommend leaving them in with the parents, and perhaps moving other fish out of the tank that will suffer aggression by the parent JD's

 

[tlindsey]

The food you feed the parents can be crushed up fine and offered to the fry.

 

[tlindsey]

I think I read that both parents would have to be EBJ's in order for fry to develop into true EBJ.
Congrats

 

[duanes]

The more "small" feedings you can per day do the better.
Also allow as much algae to grow in the tank as possible, the fry will graze to it in between feedings.
I often use a turkey baster to shoot clouds of food into the school of fry.

Crushing up food old in a little tank water works well, I also sometimes use thawed peas. The use of a moving cloud from a pipette or baster will stimulate a feeding response.
Since you seem inexperienced growing out fry, you should expect 2/3 to die, so trying to pick out specific ones is premature. It could be a couple months before you can tell which will be more blue.
But if you end up with a dozen or so healthy fry in the end, this is a success.
In nature, if only two make it to adulthood, it would be a success.

 

[YankeeJack]

That's cool, what a surprise! They'll do the best if you can give them live baby brine shrimp. If one parent is a EB and the other is a regular jack dempsey (aka JD), then all of the fry will be normal in appearance. They'll carry the blue gene though, we call them Blue Gene or BG.

If you spawn two BGs then you'll get 25% blues. Thus, if you raised these fry to spawning age and bred a brother to the sister, then you'd get 25% EB.

If you spawn one of these fry with the EB parent, then you would get 50% EB.

EB x JD = 100 BG (all look normal but carry the gene)
EB x BG = 50% EB
BG x BG = 25% BG

Unfortunately, I have never heard of a EB x EB spawn having any successful spawns. I've not been successful either. Tried about a dozen times, the fry would hatch by never make it more than a week.

Good luck with the fry! For fastest growth, feed them baby brine shrimp at least twice a day.