We have a 25G long that we've devoted to holding moms. (Yeah, I know...We were trying to get out of the breeding a bit...)

We just removed two female zebra Long Pelvics last weekend, and placed their fry in a grow out tank. Before that, there were countless holding moms in this tank...socolofi, acei, Mbambas...You name it, a holding mom was in there. A Cyno. white top holding female moved into the 25G maternity suite last weekend - she is due to be stripped this weekend.

The tank stays dark most of the time, I try to keep the holding moms as stress free as possible.

Last night, I noticed tiny movements in the tank and turned on the light to discover about 20-25 fry in the tank, so my first thought is that the White top has spit.

Nope, her mouth is still so full that she can hardly close it... Nooooooo

I have no idea where or who these fry came from. Absolutely NO CLUE!

They are tiny, just like they were just released, but no food has been going into the tank, so that could explain their size.

It should be fun trying to figure out what in the world these are, since we keep all our fry species seperate!

Wish us luck, but be prepared for us to have to post pics and our stock list and take a poll!

I hate when this happens... Faint

Kim

NO FAIR!

I have to search high and low for fish of halfway decent quality and you just find them in your tank?

You are the only person I've heard of producing fry out of thin air! the Clap

Kim, have you had any problems from having multiple holding moms in the same tank? I had always assumed that they'd be a threat to each other's fry.

I have one holding female at my office and another at home, so I figure it's just a matter of time until I have two at once in the same place.

My Msobo, Acei and L. Mbamba tribes have not produced fry yet, and I appear to have decent M:F ratios in all three groups. Seems like that's what will produce multiples.

Thanks!

Don

PS: You tell her, Aura! :lol:

I think my biggest fear at this point is that this group of "mystery fry" may be a combination of different species!

We've not been keeping up with things like we normally do, and I'm afraid multiple moms have released one or two here and there, giving us this "potpourri" of fry!

Aura, I keep telling you guys that all you have to do is send one person up here and they can take a load of fish back into the US and ship them all over the place! We will share! :D

Don, I've had females in the past that I could not keep together while holding, but it was always in smaller tanks, like 10G tanks. In those cases, we used a divider in a 10G with a heater to share, and a sponge filter on either side of the divider.

But with this 25G long, and several well placed rocks, we've been able to keep more females in the tank together. For those who fight, we run breeder nets along the sides of the same tank. We just have to keep an eye on things when we first drop them in to make sure they aren't going to ikill each other! My two zebra females did really well in there together, and so did my two Mbamba females...No problems at all!

We used to have a female auratus that would attack and kill anything left in the tank with her when she was holding. And our old female Cobalt lost all her eggs once trying to kill a small pleco that I accidently left in the maternity tank.

You just never know until you try it!

I don't have a problem with using breeder nets if necessary/ I just take some fake vine and put it in the breeder net with the holding mom for extra security, and put a sticky note on the glass in front of her so I know when she's due! IMO, holding moms just want to feel safe and secure, and they don't move around that much, anyway, even if you give them a whole tank to themselves!

Kim

Kim

I dont think its an issue of assorted fry.Many times in my tanks the mom will release certain fry earlier than the rest.Its kinda like she is cleaning house and making room for the rest of the fry to develop.So the advanced fry will get released earlier in order to make room for other fry to grow Basically.It is for your exact reasons of concern that I do species only tanks and when I strip the fry they go into their own tank.It keeps things organized for me that way I know exactly what I am breeding in a tank

Hope this helps

Derek

I can't keep "species only" holding tanks, that is my problem. I have this one 25G long that I use for all my holding females, and I'm not sure when these fry were released or by whom!

I'm hoping they are zebra Long Pelvic fry! We had one female that only had a few fry in her mouth when we stripped her - she was holding too long and needed to go back in the main tank to take the heat off another female. Hopefully, she released these little guys when we tried to net her or something.

I know they are pure, I just don't know who they came from! Faint

Time and better lighting than I have on this tank will tell the tale. The zebra fry will be brown like mom for a bit.

I'm going to keep some of my zebra Long Pelvic and some of my Cyno. White top fry, and add them to the adults, and have a tank with just these two species in it. I really like both of them!

Kim

Thaks for the info. At this point I'm trying to use the 6G Eclipse tank/filter/top/light sets (which I can get for less than $50 each in Chinatown) for holding moms, but I may run out of space at this rate. The darn heater costs almost as much as the rest of the setup!

A heater is the most important thing you can put on your holding mom tanks! Lower temps delay fry development, so you don't want to go without the heater. However, you might be able to cut some corners by using a hydrosponge filter rather than a HOB filter. You could actually get an aerator to power two of the 6G tanks, and save some $ there.

Kim

HAHAHA, Kim, this happened before to you...although I don't recall the species! You make me laugh!

This stuff always happens to me, Steph!

The last time it happened, I found fry in my main tank, so obviously someone slipped a spawn past me, and that is hard to do...

They turned out to be fuelleborni, so I didn't feel quite so stupid, since their mouths are hysterically funny looking anyway!

Kim