Comps, Punks, and Tanks

Wow, it was a great weekend in my fishroom!

1. I got my tanks moved around to get the 55 gal tank that I got from Mike set up and filled with water (empty tank = lots of ECC auction fun). Thank you, Mike!!

2. My Alto comps spawned (Parents were from Tony, Thank you!!).

3. My new pair of Punks have free-swimming fry (parents from HOT...Good call, Sarah!!).

This club is awesome, it's full of people who are enabling my addiction! :lol:

Sooooo now I'm looking for advice from anyone who has raised comps and punks successfully.

Congrats, Chris!

For the Altolamps, I was trying to pull the cave, dump and tumble the fry... they are very small. I had decent luck with this, but I'd maybe recommend removing the whole cave (sans mother - she will eat them) and putting it in a small (2.5-5 gallon tank with only air - no sponge). When the fry are free swimming and start to emerge, feed them newly hatched BBS. Use a syringe with a piece of rigid tubing to shoot them down right towards the opening to the cave. Probably do this for the first month or so, until they start eating golden pearls.

Like I said, raising them is rough. They grow slow and die off quickly (or maybe cannibalize each other) if you miss feedings.

Good luck. I'm going to try it again next time I get a gold head spawn.

Thanks, Tony! She laid the eggs in a shell. I had all three comps that I got from you trying to fit in that one shell with the eggs simultaneously (much to the chagrin of mom), so i removed her and the shell to a net breeder. As of this morning, she hasn't bothered the eggs, but I'll take her out of the net when I get home tonight.

Now for the Punks....leave the fry with the parents or not?

chriscoli said:

Now for the Punks....leave the fry with the parents or not?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that they will care for their fry - similar to Julidochromis or N. brichardi.

The problem with the comps is that they view their own fry as snacks about as soon as they are free-swimming. :wacko:

I've had a different experience with my comps. I have 1m/2f in a 40 breeder. They will stay in there with the fry and leave them alone quite a bit. I've never caught them eating them. I usually remove as many of the fry as I can and the few that stay in the tank generally grow faster than the ones I remove. I have been able to raise very few larger than 1/4". Once they get to that size, they generally are pretty stable, but until they reach 1/4" I have a loss rate of probably 95%. They eat microscopic food, so I am guessing they are finding more on which to forage in a well established, well decorated tank rather than the sterile glass bottom fry tank I put them in. There is a thread on laketang.com currently that talks about raising them in big tanks, among other things to get better success. Good luck!

PS - dpn't feed the fry daphnia. They choke on it and die even when they are near 1/2". Lesson learned.

Remove the female as soon as you see them wiggling...

I have found the issue is water .... meaning any changes in water chemistry will lead to their death. Raising them up in the same tank in a small container like this will prevent the initial deaths from moving them...

http://www.kensfish.com/product3387.html

Then you have to deal with water changes... small changes are best... meaning 10% or less on a largish tank.

They don't eat each other IME....

Like Charlie said you need to feed very small food. I have found golden pearls ( the really small stuff to work best for these guys... but it's easy to over feed.)

Caudo's... leave them with the parents, they will generally make great parents. Glad they worked out

Thanks for all of the info, everyone! Comps are wigglers today, mom's back in the main tank.

I've never kept or spawned calvus or comp's, but if I was going to I'd use a poret foam divider in the tank. Move the parents to the larger side when necessary, and leave the fry in the same tank to minimize water chemistry changes. The giant sponge filter surface will also support a good number of micro-critters for the tiny fry to graze on between feedings.
A BN pleco would also be helpful for cleaning up leftover food, with no threat to the fry.