Long finned blue eye lemon BN

[Niki_up]

Update day.

One male abandoned his eggs this morning and didn’t return to his cave. I stripped his eggs and added them to the homemade egg tumbler and moved the male back into his original home. His eggs are doing great and are on schedule to hatch today or tomorrow.

one male is sticking with his babies in his cave like a good day, it’s been 4 days since his eggs hatched. I stripped him of his fry and moved him back into his home so he can resume eating. He hasn’t eaten in over a week.

the eggs that were abandoned as soon as they were laid and fertilized and were getting eaten by another female are doing great in the tumbler and are also scheduled to hatch today or tomorrow. It’s a large batch of at least 100!

the 1 month old fry are in the process of getting re-homed. 8 of the 20 are spoken for and will be picked up by feb 1st. At which point the remaining fry might go to the lfs.

 

[Niki_up]

So most babies have hatched today.

I also think I know why my Male abandoned his eggs in the cave. It seems some of the babies were not developing properly and had problems hatching out of their eggs. Some came out deformed, some half hatched out underdeveloped.

I have been helping the babies hatch since yesterday, with some of the eggs in such tight clumps a couple were getting stuck in the middle of the clumps.

and they were struggling were quickly dropped in with the guppies so they didn’t have to suffer long. The guppies relished the extra protein snack.

at this point I’m not sure how many fry I have, but it is a lot!

 

[Niki_up]

I just counted 190 hatched fry ?

 

[Fishnerd360]

Congrats, that’s a lot of plecos! National algae cleaning squad right there in a few months for emergency’s lol

 

[Niki_up]

Congrats, that’s a lot of plecos! National algae cleaning squad right there in a few months for emergency’s lol

I wish!! They eat more zucchini than algae haha

 

[Fishman Dave]

That’s one heck of a batch!!!!!

 

[Niki_up]

That’s one heck of a batch!!!!!

This is one large batch and one small batch.
The big batch was probably 170ish and the small batch was maybe 30ish.

the female of the big batch was a mature female at 5 inches long!!

 

[Niki_up]

Sad update.

so I setup a plastic tote for the 200 baby bn fry. I pulled a cycled internal filter from another tank to use in the tote with the fry. Added a heater and away we go. Baby bn grow out.

moved all the fry over and within 24 hours 1/2 were dead. The surviving 1/2 were at the top of the water line trying to escape.

I quickly did a water change and added a bubbler. They seem to be doing fine today though there looks to be less than 1/2 left and I cannot find bodies.

im concluding that the internal filter didn’t cause enough surface movement for gas exchange causing them to suffocate.

in addition to the low oxygen I put a regular large slice of zucchini with the fry and it may have spoiled causing ammonia or nitrate spikes in the water.

happy news.

almost all the older lemons have been sent to their new homes and a male just hatched another batch of lemons.

my three longfin browns I keep for breeding are now sexable. I have two females and one male. They were hatched October 5th. They are just over two inches.

 

[Fishman Dave]

Sorry to hear.
with bristlenose fry, I find they suffer much more from lack of surface and water movement than they do from poor water quality.
(Although I advise good water quality with lots of airation).
If you fill a pop bottle with zeolite, drill a small hole in the neck and lots in the base, stick a bit of sponge over the open neck, put your airline in the hole at the neck and stand it upside down in your tank you have a biological filter and bubbler all in one.
These are real handy for bristlenose grow on tanks as you can vacuum waste and still have biological filtration all the time without loosing surface agitation.
Have just got my first two batches of blue eyed lemons to solid 2” and sold 25 each to two LFS.
Currently have four grow on tanks set up and two breeding tanks but gonna need more grow ons as don’t really want to keep more than 100 fry per 25g. Don’t really want to sell them on till good 2” either so thinning them out as they hit 1” and again at 1.5”, but now have 3 batches on the go so gonna need to double tanks.

 

[Niki_up]

Sorry to hear.
with bristlenose fry, I find they suffer much more from lack of surface and water movement than they do from poor water quality.
(Although I advise good water quality with lots of airation).
If you fill a pop bottle with zeolite, drill a small hole in the neck and lots in the base, stick a bit of sponge over the open neck, put your airline in the hole at the neck and stand it upside down in your tank you have a biological filter and bubbler all in one.
These are real handy for bristlenose grow on tanks as you can vacuum waste and still have biological filtration all the time without loosing surface agitation.
Have just got my first two batches of blue eyed lemons to solid 2” and sold 25 each to two LFS.
Currently have four grow on tanks set up and two breeding tanks but gonna need more grow ons as don’t really want to keep more than 100 fry per 25g. Don’t really want to sell them on till good 2” either so thinning them out as they hit 1” and again at 1.5”, but now have 3 batches on the go so gonna need to double tanks.

Yea I am quickly learning about the oxygen levels!

I’ve kind of included mistakes I have made in this thread in hopes of other people learning from my mistakes if they stumble across this thread. We seem to enjoy sharing our successes but not our failures. I see failures as part of success.

congrats on your lemons!!! You will quickly run out of space raising them to 2 inches haha. I start selling mine at 1 inch and if they are not sold by 1.5-1.75 inches they go to the fish store. However will keep some longer for a customer if requested.

do you have a thread for your lemons?