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| Re: Need help |
Subject: Re: Need help
by scottdavis on 2011/3/19 12:47:16
If you wish to keep trying annual killies, Nothobranchius guentheri, N. kortausae and according to one informant, N. eggersi (and they don't come much more beautiful than those!) Nematolebias whitei is a good South American starter.
This is a semi statement/ semi question for others. Are Zip-lock bags appropriate for keeping incubating fish eggs?
Zip-lock bags are prohibited at virtually all fish auctions because they too often open and spill the water and fish at the most inopportune times. But they are useful in storing dry foods.
Weren't they developed to keep food items fresh in one's kitchen or refrigerator? Would incubating eggs in them suffocate the eggs?
Fish bags, especially those with a thickness of 1, 1.5 or 2 MIL, seem to breathe a little. Fish have been accidentally left in them for a long time (single-bagged, 2-3 months even) or while lost in the mail and have survived. Indeed long incubating eggs have had their peat lightly sprinkled with a few drops of water in certain cases to keep some humidity in there.
Perhaps 65-70% of the killies are either plant spawners or, like the Fundulopanchax gardneri, switch spawners able to leave eggs in the soil for short dry periods or hang their eggs on plants. These killies can be separately conditioned and spawning in the "classic" 2.5-gallon covered tank with a sponge filter (do look under the sponge filter) and a big floating mop. Some people include a bottom mop (w/o a float). Killie eggs harden up enough to be picked after a few hours. While killies spawn at many times, odds are that they spawn most in the morning. (Light can be a spawning trigger.)
That means when we come home from school or work, we can make sure all killies are out of the mop, squeeze the mop surprisingly strongly and pick eggs. (Newly laid eggs refract light much as does water - so wet eggs are pretty hard to find.) Those eggs can be placed in a flat bottomed container of clean water and left in the dark or in a shaded area. Lee Harper suggests putting the newly hatched eggs in chlorinated tap water for a time (1 hour?) to kill off external potential parasites holding onto the eggs. Then they are put in their regular incubation water.
Infertile eggs will turn white and need to be removed immediately before they develop fungus (one of nature's clean up tools) and have the fungus reach to and kill good eggs. That danger of fungus is most likely in the first five days of water incubation. More and more people are doing a 100% water change on the incubation water at about day 7 or 8. At about two weeks (temperature pending) the eggs will begin to hatch.
There are several ways of forcing the slow eggs into hatching. If a couple have hatched in their tray, they others may be put into a clean pill vial, about 2/3s full of water. Some breath into the bottle a couple of times to increase the CO2 in there. The pill bottle is sealed and left in a shirt pocket while puttering around the fish room.
Alternatively gardneri eggs can be picked from a mop and put in a petrie dish with very wet (drippy wet) peat. Again, leave them out of bright light. They are immersed in water after 2-3 weeks and should all hatch.Raising a batch of same-sized fry is advantageous.
If one's schedule is really busy, it isn't too hard to leave a pair of killies in as large a well planted tank as is available (a 10 or 20 or 20-long even). As with one's old first tank of guppies, a certain number of fry will hatch out and survive their larger siblings to grow quite quickly. One can snatch a pair or two of the youngsters every now and again to take to a killie meeting, aquarium club or auction.
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