Help! First Time Green Terror Breeder

[bakenbitz]

Hey all, first post on the site. I set up a 30g tank to raise up some GT's to pair them off. After just 2-3 weeks, I found my tank one day looking like this.

I've removed every fish, other than the parents and their fry. My question is, what's my next step? Thanks.

 

[owner222]

im not to sure but very pretty fish are they fresh or salt water?

 

[bakenbitz]

...They're Green Terrors, freshwater.

 

[SCGeordie]

Are you talkng about the fry lying at the bottom?
If so that is normal for a lot of fish, when some fry first hatch they will just lie on the bottom untill their yolk sac is used up (uually about 12 hours) and then start swimmig around looking for food.
Don' know if GT's are known to eat their fry but better safe than sorry by removig them.
You should have 'fry food' at the ready for when they start swimming, may need Infusoria or maybe Hikari First Bites will be OK (depends on the size of the fry), someone with more experience breeding GT's would be able to tell you if they can take 'First Bites' right away. If 'First Bites' is too big then I have heard of people using egg yolk - you boil an egg, break off a pea size piece of yolk and put it in a small container like one of the test tubes in the API Test kit, add some water from your tank and then shake it up untill the yolk 'dissolves'. Use an eye dropper or something like that to add just a couple of drops a time close to the fry, only use this a couple of times a day and don't use too much as it will dirty the water quickly. Tha should keep them going for a cople of days or so untill you can move them onto 'First Bites' or untill you can hatch some Baby Brine Shrimp.

 

[dlobom]

you got them to breed, and the parents are still babies themselves!!

or are they just really thin

 

[bakenbitz]

Hi guys, thanks for the replies. @SCGeordie - Yeah, the fry have been around for a day or so, they are swimming freely as the parents try to keep them in a certain area. When I fed the parents flake food, the fry seemed to try some. The problem is, I don't really have other tank space for these guys, the male is VERY aggressive. Do you think I should keep the fry in this tank? I can set up a smaller tank easily, but moving the parents is not really a viable option.
@dlobom - The parents are very young, yes. The male is about 4 inches while the female is around 3. As I said, I only got these guys 2-3 weeks ago.

 

[Sab_Fan]

the female doesn't look very robust, but it might just be the picture ...

is your intention to raise the fry and then sell, trade or give them away?

from my experience with other SA cichlids (Port Acaras), there is no serious danger of leaving them with their parents for a while ...

I don't make a big deal of feeding special foods to fry ... I find they do fairly well feeding off of detritus from the parents' foods, and I would also feed them smaller foods like brine shrip and daphnia ... also, algae wafers were very popular, and there is something really cute about seeing all the fry hovering over an algae disk ...