PLEASE tell me these are fry not some kind of insect larvae 🙏🙏🙏🙏

When beckfords get to about one cm, they can join the adults.

Surprisingly, when they are large enough, they will predate younger siblings, or so it appears. Adults aren't big fry hunters, but the little ones often eat the littler ones.
They'll eat live food no matter what you do. All small fish see things we can't, and bacteria etc are part of their diet. They adjust to processed foods though. I have gotten adult pencils from other species that had been in Colombia or Brazil the week before onto flake almost immediately. In nature, small fish pick through 'detritus' - all the debris in the habitat, and I think they see all the expensive prepared foods as that.

GaryE said:

When beckfords get to about one cm, they can join the adults.

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GaryE said:

In nature, small fish pick through 'detritus' - all the debris in the habitat, and I think they see all the expensive prepared foods as that.

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Brilliant, thanks for that knowledge! I think I'll feed the fry live and frozen foods only for the first little bit. I assume that would be the most nutritious and easy to digest. I have live californian blackworms, the moina, frozen bloodworms, and a "Tropical Quintet" of frozen foods (artemia, small bloodworms, large bloodworms, daphnia and mysis.)

Wow. Congrats on the babies. So exciting isn't it

The fry are doing so well! Right now I have about 15 I think

Love this thread, so great to watch them puttling around. Congrats.

Myrkk said:

Love this thread, so great to watch them puttling around. Congrats.

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Thank you! I'm delighted to have this experience with my fish, its so exciting and I love sharing it with you all

A few close up pictures I just took. I have a 30x magnification lens that clips onto my phone. It's great, but only works if the fry are so close they are practically touching the tank glass. I have to gently herd them with the feeding syringe to get a good look

(Above image with no magnification lens, but zoomed in. Below images are with the mag lens)
My phone isn't uploading the photos properly, so I'm posting this and then I'll edit the pictures in with my laptop






Edit: Pictures added

Egglayers are also very interesting how they develop from larvae (for they look like larvae in the beginning) to fish.

GaryE said:

When beckfords get to about one cm, they can join the adults.

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The fry are around 1cm now, but I think I'll keep them in the 5 gallon tank for the time being. They're actively hunting and eating the moina. While the fry wouldn't get eaten by the small peaceful fish in the main tank, they would get out-competed for food, I'd say

They should be able to eat newly hatched brineshrimp by now. It's more nutritious than Daphnia and Moina.

Are my fry spoiled?
I've not been able to successfully feed the fry anything other than tiny live foods. I've unfortunately depleted my Moina for now and I'm waiting for a delayed order of brine shrimp cysts to feed them BBS.

Had a bit of a disaster day today, felt like it at least. I knew my Moina was running out so I ordered live daphnia and worms to feed the fry. That arrived today but the daphnia were dead apart from one or two and the worms? I felt stupid. I thought I had ordered microworms, but this online shop only sells white worms which are now clearly not the same thing

Because the brine shrimp cysts definitely won't arrive until Tuesday or later in the week, I tried to find some alternative solutions to keep the fry fed and alive.

My brilliant local friend drove me an hour so we could get some BS eggs but we couldn't find any.

We found a temporary solution though, her idea! Today I have two packets of 'Aqua Dragons' eggs arriving and I'll get those hatching for the fry. Aqua Dragons are a version of Sea Monkeys, brine shrimp pets for children.
I'm not expecting a large yield from the Aqua Dragons though, so I'm a little nervous about not having livefoods for the fry until next week. I'm frustrated to be in this situation, but my live food options have fallen through.

Is there anything I can do to encourage these fry to eat anything other than live tiny foods?
I've got crushed bug bites, crushed freeze dried bloodworms, liquid fry food, two fry food powders/fine granules, egg yolks, frozen bloodworm, frozen mysis shrimp, frozen artemia, frozen daphnia and live Californian blackworms. My local friend also offered some prawns I could chop up.

Any ideas?

Powdered dry food.

Boiled egg yolk pushed through a handkerchief into a small container of dechlorinated water. Put a lid on the container and shake it up. Then use an eye dropper to suck some of the solution out and feed to the fry.
Don't add too much and make sure you have a filter on the tank. The boiled egg yolk can pollute the water.

Add a heap of live aquatic plants. There will be algae and other little things on them that the fry can eat.

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The dead Daphnia can be put into a container of dechlorinated water that has algae in and you might get some eggs hatching (assuming the females had eggs in them). The eggs are big black figure 8 shaped things in the Daphnia's body.

Hi all! I haven't given you any updates or new pictures in a while, so here you go!
This is the second day in a row that I've hatched brine shrimp for the fry to eat, they love them! It's such a relief to see their bellies so full.
The fry are in the same tank, but now confined to a small breeder box. I put them in there so I could monitor them more closely and force them to be closer to the food, so that it would be easier for them to find the non-moving dry foods. As of today I have 16 beckford pencilfish fry!

Here they are enjoying a BBS feast!

I can't believe it! They're starting to look like actual fish!

Seisage said:

I can't believe it! They're starting to look like actual fish!

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It's mad isn't it? I'm so happy to get to experience this part of fish keeping.
Those pictures are just with my phone camera, not with the magnifying lens or anything, they've gotten so much bigger!
I want to take pictures with that lens to see more details and features up close, but the breeder box seems to stop the fish being close enough for the lens to be focused.

My original adult females are fat with eggs at the moment, and the dominant males have their dark red breeding colours. I'll have to start my own fish business if they spawn again and keep at it