# Eggs!



## Piranha Dan

I got blindsided about a 2 weeks ago while cleaning my gravel. Sucked up a bunch of what looked like tadpoles and it didn't hit me till most of them went down the drain that holy sh*t those were baby p's.....








Looks like I'm getting a 2nd chance though. Came home this afternoon to find a nest in the gravel and a shitload of eggs. One of my Reds (I'm guessing it's the female) is almost black in color and won't leave the nest except to chase the other ones away.
Here's what I have to work with: I have a cycled 29 gallon that's currently holding my Cichlds, they're going back to the LFS (might be able to get a few bucks for them but if not no big deal). Tank is running an XP2 for filtration so I think that's covered, I"m going to get a sponge pre filter when I drop the chichleds off tomorrow to prevent the fry from being sucked into the filter. 
Questions:
1. Is this filter setup good?
2. As far as I can tell the eggs were laid today. How long till they hatch?
3. Do I wait for them to hatch or can I move the eggs?
4. How do I breed brine shrimp?
5. Should I exchange all the water in the 29 with water from the tank the eggs were laid in before I move them? The water is almost exactly the same in terms of Ammo (0) Nitrite (0) and Nitrate (approx 20-40ppm) and I'm kind of worried about having a mini cycle if I change all the water out.
Thanks in advance for any help/advice. I'm a total noob at this and have no clue what I'm doing.
<edit>
Got my little brother to come down and take a few pictures. 
View attachment 193185


----------



## bigshawn

ooo, congrats......


----------



## His Majesty

Congrats









good luck on raising them


----------



## THE BLACK PIRANHA

You are going to need alot more tanks, a single 29 will only do you good for a week or 2. You can wait for the eggs to hatch and then carfully siphon them in to a bucket and transfer them to the other tank or you can leave them with the parents wile you try to find more tanks and net them out when they are big enough. Remove 50 or 60% of the water in the 29 and replace it with water from the parents tank let it sit for a day and then do a 20% water change about 6 gallons. After you have the babies in the tank I would do a 15% water change every other day. For hatching bay brine you can buy little kits from you LFS and just follow the instructions. You eggs should hatch in just a few days but you will not have to feed them until they have used up there yoke sack. Good Luck and keep us posted. I hope this will help since every one so far just ignored your ?


----------



## Piranha Dan

Update: They hatched already. Looks like they've all retreated into the gravel except for a few of them. They're very tiny about the size of a pinhead. Going to dump my cichlids and pick up some brine shrimp now.....


----------



## bigshawn

THE BLACK PIRANHA said:


> You are going to need alot more tanks, a single 29 will only do you good for a week or 2. You can wait for the eggs to hatch and then carfully siphon them in to a bucket and transfer them to the other tank or you can leave them with the parents wile you try to find more tanks and net them out when they are big enough. Remove 50 or 60% of the water in the 29 and replace it with water from the parents tank let it sit for a day and then do a 20% water change about 6 gallons. After you have the babies in the tank I would do a 15% water change every other day. For hatching bay brine you can buy little kits from you LFS and just follow the instructions. You eggs should hatch in just a few days but you will not have to feed them until they have used up there yoke sack. Good Luck and keep us posted. I hope this will help since every one so far just ignored your ?


I didn't ignore his ? I congrats him I've never bred Piranhas so how could I answer his ????

anyway congrats again I hope everything goes well P Dan.........


----------



## Piranha Dan

Thanks to ALL who replied, even if it was just to say congratulations.








Transfer's done. Dropped the chichlids off at the LFS, bought a brine shrimp hatchery and some eggs. Replaced all the water in the 29 with water from the 120, sucked up all the babies and dumped them in. Holy sh*t is there ALOT of babies.







Can't see them but I know they're in there, guess they're hiding in the gravel like they did in the other tank. Going to follow the directions on the hatchery and hopefully come up with some food for these guys by the day after tomorrow or so.


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

If you can try and take some pictures

I told you they would again lol


----------



## Piranha Dan

Yea man you were right. Nothing really to take pics of now, unfortunatley the gravel in the 29 is real ligth colored so I can't really see anything in there. I'll be sure to snap a few pics when they start swimming.
So I have the bring shrimp hatchery set up, then I read in the instructrions that you have to keep the water at 80 degrees for them to hatch.....I'm thiking where the crap am I going to get a heater small enough to fit in this little 6" x 6" plastic box.....ended up putting the cover on it and sticking it in the 120. I'm thinking that since the salt water is heavier it'll stay pooled in the hatchery and keep the fresh water from the aquarium out right?
<edit>
I can actually see quite many of them, I was looking down in the gravel and I should have been looking in the leaves of the plants I have in there. Against the green I can clearly see the fry and the attached yolk sac. All the one's I can see appear to be moving so it looks like they survived the transfer.


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

great







you probly have 100+ reds lol


----------



## gtc

Congrats man and keep us posted please!


----------



## THE BLACK PIRANHA

Sounds good and they do sell nano heaters. I think Marineland makes a nano heater for tanks 5 gallons or less you should be able to pick one up from your LFS for around $15.


----------



## Piranha Dan

Update: Good news and bad. The Fry are growing fast, I swear they're nearly double the size they were when I moved them yesterday. I see a couple that have turned white (which I think means they're dead but the majority are still hanging out in the plants and gravel. 
Now for the bad news.....Damn Reds got into the hatchery last night and broke the little collection cup. Now I get to drive another 45 minutes to go buy another one.


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

their first 4 days they grow like weeds


----------



## Piranha Dan

Checked them this morning before going to work. Still steadily increasing in size while the yolk sacs do the opposite. No swimmers yet but I'm guessing either today or the day after. 
I officially gave up on trying to grow my own brine shrimp when my usual LFS said they can get some in for me. $10 vs fooling with this damn hatchery sh*t is worth it, at least in my opinion. They're big enough now that I can see them without squinting too hard so I'm going to have my little bro come up tonight and try to get some pics. I'll post them if they come out.


----------



## Piranha Dan

About a dozen of them are up and swimming around!








Perfect timing, I'm picking up a load of brine shrimp to feed them tomorrow.


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

Yea!


----------



## CLUSTER ONE

Piranha Dan said:


> About a dozen of them are up and swimming around!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Perfect timing, I'm picking up a load of brine shrimp to feed them tomorrow.


I hope its live brine shrimp your picking up. Frozen wont work. Just get a masonry jar, salt (you can buy a small bag of marine salt (i think they usually say 1/2 cup is specifically formulated to make x gallons at y salinity so if you follow this precisely you don't need a hydrometer, an air-stone and a air pump thats all you need to hatch then put the airstone in the salt water with the eggs and leave it on for a day and they should hatch in a day.


----------



## Piranha Dan

Yea they're live. I probably could've hatched my own after a little more experimentation but the issue I ran into was time. I didn't have any successfully hatching by monday (the brine shrimp) and I needed to feed these guys. 
How long do I have to feed them brine shrimp before they're big enough to eat other stuff?


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

couple weeks I would say then you can try small pellets.


----------



## Piranha Dan

Got the brine shrimp on my way home. Netted a bunch of them and dropped them in the tank. The fry didn't seem too interested though, they all just kind of disappeared after I dumped the shrimp in. Is this a bad sign?


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

if they still have their yolk sacs then they will be feeding if them. give it a couple days


----------



## Piranha Dan

Ok, looked closer at them and they do still appear to have a slight lump under their belly, so maybe that's why they're not eating yet. I'll hold off for a few days. Do I have to worry about cannabilization at this stage?


----------



## Piranha Dan

Update: Holy.....f*cking....sh*t.....








I don't know if it's because they're more active at night or if they all just suddenly decided to start swimming around at once, but my tank is swarming with fry. Gotta be at least 100 of them swimming around in there. I was starting to worry that the few dozen I saw during the day were the only one's that were going to make it, now I'm worried about what I'm going to do with all these little guys. Threw some brine shrimp in there, can't tell if they're eating them or not but I figured with that much activity I might as well.


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

pictures buddy?


----------



## Piranha Dan

Update: 
Not much changed since I last posted. The tank looks bare during the day but comes alive at night. Looks like I might have lost some, the cloud of swimmers seems to have thinned out a bit, but there's still alot of them alive and kicking. They don't seem to be growing much if at all though, which is kind of weird considering the first few days they almost seemed to double in size. 
Sorry for not posting pics but my little bro's getting slammed at work and can't come down.


----------



## Johnny_Zanni

can you tell if they have started eating?


----------



## Piranha Dan

It's hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure they are. I dump the brine shrimp in at night when they're all up and swimming around and by morning they're all gone. The foam prefilter on the intake tube isn't too clogged up so they're not going there, and when I do water changes the only thing that gets swirled up is baby P's, so they're not just rotting in the gravel either.


----------



## Pirambeba

Awsome dude!







Have fun raising them.


----------



## Piranha Dan

Bad news.....was watching them again for about 30 minutes last night......only saw about a dozen swimming around. Looks like I had some kind of massive die off.







Not sure what happened, temp is perfect and I didn't do any water changes since tuesday night (10% just to keep the nitrates down). Water parameters are fine, nitrates slightly high around 30-40ppm.


----------



## RuthlessCarnage

You're not supposed to do water changes when you have fry in the tank. Hope you have a spare tank set up with a sponge filter and heater set at the same temp filled with the water the parents are in. You're going to need this if you plan on keeping them after you move them when they absorb their yolk sacs and are free swimming.


----------



## Piranha Dan

They were already free swimming....keyword there being were.....watched the tank last night for nearly 45 minutes and didn't see a single one swimming around. WTF happened!?!


----------



## Piranha Dan

Update: Well, I haven't totally failed yet. Just noticed I still have 3 Fry swimming around. They look like they're swimming well too, darting all over the tank really fast. Going to just keep feeding and see if I can keep them alive. 
Stupid question....is it possible they all cannabalized each other? I find it hard to believe that that many fry could eat each other down to just 3 in the space of 2 days but I'm totally at a loss as to why so many of them died.


----------



## bigshawn

from what i understand they are very cannavalisitc at that age, are they still in the same tanl as the parents if so don't rule out they were ate by them or there tank mate.....jmo


----------



## CLUSTER ONE

Piranha Dan said:


> from what i understand they are very cannavalisitc at that age, are they still in the same tanl as the parents if so don't rule out they were ate by them or there tank mate.....jmo


 If there still in the parents tank the filter would of probably got them if it isnt covered. RBP fry is very small. they are insignificant compared to the parents so the parents wouldn't bother them until they hit at least a cm


----------



## bigshawn

^^^^^^got ya........


----------



## Piranha Dan

I'm feeling like a total idiot as I write this but I don't care. Not sure what happened the last few nights but they must have just decided not to come out to feed, because last night I looked in the tank to check on the last 3 survivors and say that several dozen were swimming around !!! Guess I'm back in buisness. Do these guys go through dormant periods or something? I swear since thursday night or so I saw NOTHING swimming and now they're all over the place again. Going to pick up more brine shrimp tomorrow.


----------



## bigshawn

sweet any pics???


----------



## mantis

There is alot of trial and error you have to work through. what works for some may not work for you. I would recommend loosing the gravel next time. Its easier to keep clean, and you can see better. suspend the sponge filter off the bottom. They can go under and hide, and they wont get wedged underneath and die. Make a mini syphon, use it carefully to clean the bottom of the tank. (uneaten food and dead fry)

you may want to get another small tank, for next time, either for the fry, or when they get alittle bigger. Spawning can often be triggered by a water change. Keep your P's happy, feeding normally, when your ready for more eggs, do a water change you might get lucky

good luck, keep us posted


----------



## Piranha Dan

Bad news again. Haven't seen any activity for 4 days now.







I'm going to wait a few more days before writing them off but I'm pretty sure I've failed utterly.
Ironically I did get some pics of them before the tank went quiet. Anybody try uploading pics since the forum update? I can't seem to get the files to attach. I kind of feel stupid putting up pics after I killed them but they're some really nice close up shots.


----------



## shiver905

id love to se pics.
I upload pics to photobucket then link it.


----------

