10 days old Fry

This is just a quick post on my first ranchu fry spawn. I'm still not 100% sure who the parent fish are. Lol I think any spawn after this batch I'll definitely control the mating goldfish. For me since it was my first time I just wanted to try and get the highest firtilisation success rate.

Below are a few photos of my set up (yup back in the laundry again haha) and the fry swimming around.

I have started culling the runt fry. Pretty much the ones that haven't grown at all since hatching. Also there were fry that natural died and did not develop their swim bladder properly. Honestly I will be happy with even 10 decent fish. I know most of my ranchus are not even a year old and the ones from the LFS I doubt are much older than that.

Anyway - they are on BBS (baby brine shrimp) and crushed Hikari lion head pellets in between when I'm waiting for the BBS to hatch (yes I know I should be running two hatcheries for the BBR but I'm just lazy :p)

Tvr update photo

Here's a little photo of my little tvr ranchus.  Sometimes it's hard to see any progress when you see your fish everyday. Lol

So I was quite pleasantly surprise to see these fellas growing a bit. The photos are probably a week and a half apart. :)

Goldfish eggs

After 8 days of waiting and waiting, my second batch of eggs that I managed to save from the pond have finally hatched!
It was really interesting to see the development, especially when I had no idea that any would be firtilised at all!!

So what I learnt...

- once you see your goldfish chasing each other, provide some sort of spawning material that you can easily remove when they are done. I made those DIY spawning mops out of wool. Very inexpensive and works but hard to keep clean. Apparently those plastic cheer leader pom poms are a great and better alternative.

- remove eggs when you see them, as goldfish are silly and will eat their own eggs.

- use methylene blue to avoid fungus eggs.

- by about 3rd day should start seeing little dots and line growing inside.

- when they hatch they look like mosquito larvae more than fish :p they will move around a bit but then sink to the bottom

- water change 25% everyday but have to be very careful and gentle.

I will need to start setting up a baby brine shrimp hatchery soon. A lot of work ahead of me for the next month or so...

Photos below:
Showing some fungus eggs that are not firtilised.  Those are from my tank which only has 1 male and 1 female telescope. The male is still very young and small. I was surprised the female has laid eggs twice now!

Little sample of eggs and green hair algae

Little stick fry!

Sick fish :(

So about 2 weeks ago my goldfish all went mental and started spawning with each other. This was a lot earlier than anticipated as we are still in cooler winter season changing into spring. We had a really warm weekend and that set them all off.

One little girl did not cope so well. I found her bottom sitting and quite listless in the morning. The others were still chasing my big white female though.

Apparently with the changing seasons, some fish have weaker immune system. That and eating up eggs or getting egg bound does not help.

I tried a number of things, fasting with sea salt (0.1%) , fasting with Epsom salt - after about 1 week, she still did not eat or poop.
Getting really worried I put her on Prazi and salt in case of fluke and metronidazole anti biotics in case it was internal infection. It has been almost 1 week on the anti biotics and will be getting her second dose of prazi this weekend. She had been bottom sitting so long she started getting sores :(

After the 2nd day on metronidazole,  she started finally swimming around and expelling sand. And a lot of sand it was!! She also started swimming and finally eating. *phew*

I'll be completing a 7 day course of the metro and 3 courses of prazi. I can't wait till she's back to 100% and back in the pond with her friends :)