Spawning Log - Marlin and Pearl - Page 2

Chelsey · #11 11-29-2009, 06:57 PM

I pulled half of this nest and left half for them to raise to see if Marlin and Pearl would behave themselves or eat the nest. I got back from Thanksgiving and there were probably 20 or so eggs left that Marlin and Pearl were tending to, so they ate roughly 230 eggs! I can't say I blame them though, they hadn't been fed for the 3 days I was gone.

I did not take the incubator with the other half of the eggs home with me to Farmington because I had the larvae to contend with and so I took a gamble by leaving them behind and not doing the twice daily water changes that should be done. As a result of me not doing the water changes roughly half of these eggs got a fungus and died. So, I still have somewhere between 150 and 200 eggs that will hatch in the next few days. I'm going to see if I can get a good pic and count the eggs like I did with the LFS batch.

Chelsey · #12 11-29-2009, 07:17 PM

Looks like a rough estimate of 103 eggs:

A few of them are hatching tonight and it makes me wonder if the rest won't be following suit!

Chelsey · #13 11-30-2009, 12:18 PM

Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the nest hatched last night, hopefully the rest will follow suit.

Chelsey · #14 11-30-2009, 08:34 PM

Half (34 fry) of Marlin and Pearl's nest hatched today/last night, the other half will probably hatch tonight.

Like shooting fish in a barrel

Chelsey · #15 11-30-2009, 10:19 PM

4 more babies just hatched, bringing the total up to 37

Chelsey · #16 12-01-2009, 10:44 AM

This learning curve thing sucks. I put a shade cloth over the new babies since the light is too bright for them but ok for the older fry. Well, somehow the shade cloth came off and the new little babies that just hatched freaked out and died. Fry are very photosensitive for the first 5 days or so and it's important that they aren't exposed to very bright light. If they are they do "headstands" and tend to bunch up and die, which is what happened to me

I did collect another 10 or so fry that hatched overnight and there are still some viable eggs so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these guys do better. I'm a little discouraged now

Chelsey · #17 12-02-2009, 11:16 PM

The entire batch of fry is dead...I have some learning to do still. Marlin and Pearl are "scheduled" to lay tomorrow, we'll see if they do.

Chelsey · #18 12-05-2009, 10:05 AM

An ENORMOUS nest was laid last night...dare I say 750 eggs?! I am leaving this nest with them because I already have somewhere around 200 eggs in an incubator and I want to see if they take good care of this clutch with heavy feeding.

Chelsey · #19 12-06-2009, 02:32 PM

Here's a pic of the nest, minus ~75 eggs or so that have gotten eaten because something wasn't right with them (my assumption).

Chelsey · #20 12-06-2009, 08:37 PM

I did some rearranging with pairs, decided to pull Marlin out and put Casper in with Pearl so that I could hopefully get some snowflake babies sooner. If you put a new male in while there are still eggs the spawning routine won't be disrupted (in theory). Since there's a high probability that the new male will eat the existing eggs when he's introduced I pulled nearly all of the nest, except for maybe 100-150 eggs or so. Well, I decided to take a pic for counting purposes before I put them in the incubator. Here's what I came up with!!!!!!!