# What do piranha eggs look like once they begin to hatch?



## magicprincess707

My piranhs laid eggs about two days ago, and as of last night all the eggs looked... well, like eggs. They are all a greyish color, and one of the parents were swimming around them none-stop for the last two days.

Now today when I woke up, I noticed that most of the eggs are gone. There are a few random eggs at the bottom of the tank that have little worm like looking tails moving around, and those eggs seem to be attempting to swim but look as though they are jump jumping around on the bottom of the tank. Where the rest of the eggs are, there are greyish colored worm looking things coming out from the gravel of the tank. Are these baby piranha tails, or something more serious I should look into? The worm like things coming out of the ground look just like the tails of the eggs that are moving around, except they are about twice as long and I can't see if they have an egg connected to them.

I'm super new to breeding. I spent hours reading articles and forums about this, but with very little help. I posted a question on here the other day about how long it would take for the eggs to hatch, and had no idea that after two days this would happen (everyone told me it would take several days). I don't even have another smallt ank set up yet, and I plan to buy one today. I had guppied in the past they had babies, but their babies actually looked like "baby fish" and not eggs with worm like tails.

Also, how are you supposed to move the eggs/fry into a smaller tank? Fish them out for with a net?

Any help is greatly appreciated.


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## CLUSTER ONE

they should be orange and unfertile are white


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## StryfeMP

Clear eggs are unfertilized eggs. The eggs should look orange like sean stated, sometimes the colors are a little different, but clear eggs are definately unfertilized. From your statement it seems that they've hatched already and are already digging/hiding in the gravel. In order to get them out, the safest way to do it is to syphon them out with your aquarium vacuum. Guppies are live bearers, meaning they give birth to fish that are already swimming. Piranha's on the other hand are egglayers.

I would purchase a 10 gallon tank, a heater, and a sponge filter. Unfortunately, I believe it takes 4 or so weeks for the nitrifying bacteria to colonize the sponge filter. You could purchase a product called BIO-Spira and use that to help seed the new sponge filter. I'm thinking in your situation, a lot of water changes every day with parent tank water will help tremendously in keeping your water parameters in check while the sponge gets seeded. Purchase some baby brine shrimp eggs at your lfs, or order some at brineshrimpdirect.com and get a great deal. Set up a baby brine shrimp hatchery and start hatching baby brine in order to get the motions of hatching them right, you're going to need the bbs to feed your little monsters once they rid of their eggsack and start searching for food. Feed them 3-5 times a day and do water changes at least 3 times a day, 10-20% each time. It's vital that you feed and feed and feed them while keeping the tank and water as clean as possible. The way to tell if they've eaten is that they little stomachs will turn orange, once they've filled with bbs. It's kind of a sight to see a whole bunch of small fry with bulging orange stomachs. heh. Well, that's really all I've got for you right now.

Good luck and have fun.


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