# OMG! Apisto Fry!



## malajulinka (Mar 29, 2008)

I have *finally* found my jerk of an apistogramma cacatuoides a female plucky enough to stand up to him. He's killed three already, even with, at one point, 3 in the tank. I told him that if he did this one in, he was doomed to a life of loneliness.

Well, she was looking a little yellow maybe a week or two ago, and spending a lot of time in her cave, and I hoped it wasn't just him bullying her to death again.

But today - WIGGLERS! Now, I have no intention of removing these fry from the tank, and don't have the space or means to set up a grow-out tank. If any survive to like a centimetre, I'll give them away. The tank is heavily planted with lots of hiding spots, and houses a school of Endlers and four otos in addition to mom and dad.

Should I bother to do anything at this point, since I'm not that committed? If I don't buy them food, will they find enough to eat just in the crud at the bottom of the dirt-tank? What kind of food should I buy them if I do? Should I set up a 10-gallon grow-out? I mean, I guess I *could*...(anyone got a spare 10-gallon up for grabs? ) So many questions!

ETA: A video! Look closely and you can see the babbies swimmin' around, and please to be ignoring the horrific amounts of hair algae in my tank.


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## Scotmando (Jul 10, 2011)

Congrats! They're free swimmers now! 
Some to most should survive with all the plants & algae you have in your tank. You can crush a bit of the food you feed with normally to help them along. 
Liked the video. 
I've got 2pr in a 29g I'm hoping will do the same.


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## Mykuhl (Apr 8, 2013)

What you should do really depends if you want the fry to survive or not. If you leave them in the tank with endlers and don't specifically feed them anything then most to all will likely end up dieing. 

My experience with raising several broods of apistos tells me that most fry are resistant to eating dry food, and take a pretty long time for them to start accepting it. It helps if they regularly see the parents eat the dry food, and even more if they see other fry eating it. I have had a whole brood of fry minus one die of starvation rather than eat dry food. They would ignore it or grab it and just spit it out...they only ate the live food. With another brood quite a few died off as well do to the lack of live food. They eventually started eating dry food and the deaths stopped.

Bottom line is: most to all will not survive in a community tank without appropriate live food, and most to all will survive in a fry dedicated tank with appropriate live food fed 2+ times a day.

Appropriate live food is: baby brine shrimp and then moina/Daphnia and or grindal worms when they get larger.


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## malajulinka (Mar 29, 2008)

Will they eat frozen BBS? It was all they had at the Big Al's I stopped by today, and I'm hardly in the area of one, ever.

I'm currently engaged in an epic battle with my better judgement as to whether I should set up a tank for the next brood... the only thing I've managed to breed so far is endlers and assassin snails...


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## malajulinka (Mar 29, 2008)

Oh. Mygod. I just watched mom patrolling her "nursery", sucking up any babies that strayed too far and spitting them back out in the little divet under the driftwood she's keeping them in. She also went totally medieval on an Otocinclus who got a little too close for comfort. Gotta watch out for those ferocious fry-eating otos!

This is just too adorable and too fascinating for words!


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## Mykuhl (Apr 8, 2013)

malajulinka said:


> Will they eat frozen BBS? It was all they had at the Big Al's I stopped by today, and I'm hardly in the area of one, ever.


They may or may not eat the frozen bbs. I personally have not tried to feed them frozen so I don't know.I have always fed live since they are easy to hatch. I have noticed they tend to ignore food that does not move. Since they do eagerly eat live bbs, I know they like they taste, so you could try the frozen. The major downside to frozen bbs is that it is easy to foul the water with it if they don't eat it up quickly. With live, they stay alive in the water for several hours so they will get eaten up before they can die.


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## MDR (Feb 20, 2012)

malajulinka said:


> Oh. Mygod. I just watched mom patrolling her "nursery", sucking up any babies that strayed too far and spitting them back out in the little divet under the driftwood she's keeping them in. She also went totally medieval on an Otocinclus who got a little too close for comfort. Gotta watch out for those ferocious fry-eating otos!
> 
> This is just too adorable and too fascinating for words!


Those little apsito's have quite the attitude when breeding. I remember when I had my pair that she was attacking my hand when I was siphoning gravel nearby (but not close enough to grab fry) the cave she spawned in.


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