Efficient practices to keeping Fry alive!!

Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to pick everyone's brains regarding the best effective method to keeping Cichlid fry alive.
Specifically, what's the best food to feed them? How often? Where to house them in the initial stage of their lives (Breeder Box etc)?
And if you have any additional info, links feel free to share, it will be greatly appreciated to everyone.

Thank you all in advance

I really like starting my fry on decapsulated brine shrimp eggs. They are shelf stable, don't need to be hatched, very nutritious, and just the right size for little fish to eat. I also like to keep a healthy supply of decaying leaves and java moss to add to tanks with fry so that the little microorganisms on them can provide a constant supply of food for little fish.

When they are really little I feed twice a day by stirring the food in a cup of water and using a pipette to squirt the mix into the fry cloud. When they get bigger, once a day.

I use golden pearls to feed fry, usually only once a day because I'm not home to do it more often. I have used the hang on Marina breeder boxes with some success recently. Breeder nets in the tank always fail for me, especially if there are adult fish in the tank. If I don't have a Marina box available, I use a separate tank.

With my cichlid fry I'll mix dried krill, pure spirulina, and nls and put it into a coffee grinder until its a fine dust, then I mix some with water, suck it up with a turkey baster, and gently squirt it at the fry. once they are big enough to eat flakes I feed them zoo med brine shrimp flakes and then once they are about an inch they get nls and black worms
The siquias are great parents so I leave the fry with them until they are big enouh to eat the flakes, then I move them to a 10 gallon, then a 15, and if I have lots of leftovers I'll move them to any other tank thats available.

Decapsulated or bbs
Micro worms
Vinegar eels
Crushed cobalt pellets
Nori sheets (but cut into ribbons they will sink)
Leaving a rock or decor with algae on it (so they can graze)

I've had success using and combining all those foods. Keep in mind size and type of cichlids you own....

But best result is leave mom solo with no stress dim/little light after she spits they will be big enough to eat flakes or sinking pellet...(soaked/softened)
With my jewels the parents eat food and spit it out in a weird cloud for their babies. Only took them 3 batches to get it right....



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For feeding it is hard to beat decapsulated brine shrimp and/or golden pearls in terms of efficency.

I use a lot of the Marina external breeder boxes for my fry. I have an in-tank acrylic fry keeper that is even better, but they are a little pricey.

Leave mine with parents if they get big enough to pull and grow out I stick them in another tank. Other wise they get eaten by parents.

Drew

I think it depends on what kind of cichlids you are keeping. Mouth-brooding African Cichlid fry are so different than West African fry which are different than South/Central American fry.

Can you give us an example of what kind you have in mind?

apistos- the parents are extremely efficient at raising their fry. I leave them in with their parents until they are 3 weeks old then move them to a 10 gal tank. I feed them twice a day de capped eggs during the first week. Then move them up to microworms (parents love these too so i mske sure they have enough) until they are big enough to feed on brine shrimp.

I love the great responses, keep them coming. Its very interesting to read the various practices. I also have several hanging breeder boxes and I feed them brain shrimp or frozen blood worms. Most of the fry seems to great for 4-5 weeks then recently, I start to lose almost 2/day. I was puzzled as to what I'm doing wrong. The breeder boxes are clean, they seems to be healthy one day and the next they just dies. Hence my probing from you all experts.
Thanks for the info.

Like Christine, I think we could give you better advice if we knew the species or the general type of cichlid.

Having said that, I wouldn't feed frozen blood worms to any fry. I'd do a mix of Golden pearls, decap BBS, and microworms, and then move them to small flakes.

Matt, they are all Haps & Peacock Cichlids.

Not fish that I've kept, so I'll let others with actual knowledge and experience weigh in, but I remain skeptical of the bloodworms.

madcobra216 said:

Matt, they are all Haps & Peacock Cichlids.

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If you are starting with free-swimming fry, at 4 to 5 weeks they should be ready to move to a grow-out tank.

I agree with Matt I would stop feeding the bloodworms.

When I was raising fry, I set up a couple of tanks (2'x2'x1') that were bare except for a couple of sponge and box filters....and net breeders around the edges.

As I'd get fry to raise, I'd dump them into one of the nets, label the net, and raise them in the net to ~1/2". Then they'd go into a 15g tank for grow out.

The benefits of this approach include: 1) being able to easily (i.e. without worrying about sucking up babies) do frequent partial water changes; 2) being able to raise several batches of babies at once; and 3) being able to concentrate feeding to a small area.

As others have noted, mouthbrooder fry tend to be much, much bigger and easier to feed than fry from substrate spawners. You can really start most mouthbrooder fry off on crushed flake food (Golden Pearls works as well).

The fry of fish like Festivums and Severums (among others) are tiny and require the smallest size of Golden Pearls and/or really small live food. I really don't raise many fry anymore (don't have time / just not a worthwhile endeavor outside of what survives with the parents), but when I did, I'd isolate some new wigglers of the rock/piece of driftwood to a dedicated tank/bucket/rubbermaid and raise them to 1/4" or so there (moving to a larger tank when possible). I actually don't use a filter or more than an airstone until the fish are ~1/4" - just do daily water changes.

Matt

dogofwar said:

When I was raising fry, I set up a couple of tanks (2'x2'x1') that were bare except for a couple of sponge and box filters....and net breeders around the edges.

As I'd get fry to raise, I'd dump them into one of the nets, label the net, and raise them in the net to ~1/2". Then they'd go into a 15g tank for grow out.

The benefits of this approach include: 1) being able to easily (i.e. without worrying about sucking up babies) do frequent partial water changes; 2) being able to raise several batches of babies at once; and 3) being able to concentrate feeding to a small area.

Click to expand...

This is what I do with live bearer fry but with the larger cichlids and bn plecos I feel that since their spawns normally contain 50-200 fry breeder nets dont give them much room so I rear them in the tank with the parents or in seperate tanks. With live bearers spawns will contain more like 10-20 and in some cases even 5 fry so a breeder net isnt that bad for the small amount of fry.

Beware: A lot of goodieds will pick on each other in a breeder net.

I have not tried it, but NLS now makes a powdered fry food.

Andrewtfw said:

I have not tried it, but NLS now makes a powdered fry food.

Click to expand...

It's great, the guppies and mbuna love it!


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Just like Jon I've been raising mine on Ken's Golden Pearls. It's a small enough food that the fry don't have any issue consuming and the pearls float in the water so they're more attractive to fish.

I'm usually able to feed some of the smaller NLS or crushed NLS pretty quickly.

My fry are in a separate 20L or 10g. I've been moving the female when she's holding to the separate tank. I wait a couple weeks (or until she starts spitting) to strip the female. I've got some older fry in the 20L that I moved the female to. The 10g is for the youngest fry.