Removing fry from Texas pair

[slipshodman]

Hi All,

I have two display tanks that i thought i had only males in ... well guess who was wrong.
Anyway, 1 pair in each have breed and both batches are at wriggler stage.

The large male from one pair has breed before and i have some of his off spring in a tank but he was brutal and killed of his partner over night after the second brood. Both broods he had eaten most of the fry. (this was in a 4ft breeding tank with just the female)

This time i want to save some of them

I have set up a 100 ltr fry tank to grow some of these littlies out (with a bit of luck) and i am planning on taking about half the brood of each.

Just after some advise on when to remove the fry. Obviously both tanks have other fish that will happily have fry for lunch , dinner or a snack in between

I was going to go with free swimming but figured there are people here that would have done this many times before and would be able to offer advice

Cheers

 

[BIG-G]

I have taken fry at every stage from various cichlids.
The longer you can wait the better.
You really have to decide how much danger the fry are in from being eaten and weigh that against their likely survival.
If you believe they will not make it to free swimming then I would go ahead and move some.

 

[MrsE88]

^i agree. And would add to keep in mind it will get harder to catch them the longer you wait.

 

[slipshodman]

Thanks for the suggestion, i was thinking free swimming to minimise disruption to the parents
But will keep the risk factor of being eaten in mind and how much harder ti would be

I was going to use a siphon hose to remove them

Is half about the right amount to still let the parents go through the motions, i don't want to disrupt their mental/instinctual process of raising fry either

 

[MrsE88]

Half should be fine.
No way to know how the parents will handle the disruption, but I’ve had it work fine with my terrors.