Fast Growing Kids

[guppler]

My newest cories just hatched on August 2. Now they are all more than half an inch long if you count from tip of whiskers to tip of tail and some might evn be 2 cm. They have mature colors already. I can still see a faint eyestipe on most, but there are very few with brown speckles. (these are bronze cories) I was wondering for a while if I would get some albinos in the mix this time, but out of 24 nice healthy looking critters, none have pink eyes, and some are light colored, but not like Pinki. Maybe BC is the mom again. I thought I'd seen a smaller fish on the wall where I found the eggs just before the eggs appeared. I also don'r see any bent fins or missing eyes or anything this time, maybe because it is a small brood. Bc has produced closer to 100 eggs in the past. Maybe she's getting old?
When my mom comes up to look in the hatching tank she askes if those are really the newest ones, because they look too big. Most of my guppies aren't much bigger, and It's harder to keep track of their age, but I don't think I've moved boygups out of girltanks since before these guys were born, and I have boys in the main tank almost the size of these guys, (probably months older). Mom thinks they look almost big enough to sell. I might have to move them if I find more corey eggs soon.
I think the warm tank in my non air conditioned upstairs room makes them grow fast. Mom thinks they like what I'm feeding them. I was putting in liquid fry food until it ran out, but i've also been putting in algae wafers almost every day since I let the mystery snails join them, and they get some bottom feeder pellets and ocasionaly some flakes or something. They love the algae and almost as soon as I drop a wafer it's covered with little wiggly guys trying to eat all at the same time, and then a big snail comes to try to take it away from them, and it keeps having to hide it's face because the baby coreies keep tickling it.

 

[geo7x]

wow congrats on your fry! do you have any pics? what size tanks do you have in your breeding setup?

 

[guppler]

sorry, no pics. It's hard enough for me to get pics of the bigger and slower critters. actually we did take some on the digital camera while the snail was laying eggs, and there might be some cory fry in the shots if they happened to be zooming by at the right time, but I'd be amazed if you can see them well, and it might be a while before they get on the computer from the camera. Then again, I think we did finish off the memory card that night , so it might depend more on how busy I am and if dad is playing games or something when I want to try it.
Oh, I am using a 10 (us) gallon tank ( with 2 sponge filters and never filled all the way up) to hatch corey eggs that I rescue from my 30 gallon comunity whenever I find eggs on the walls and stuff. I grow out most of them in my 2 10 gallon female guppy tanks.

 

[guppler]

wow I've already sold some of the aug 2 babies. thae guy said thay were small, but I said they were easier to catch than the big ones and I tried to keep most of the little ones. I had to make room in my fry tank because BC plastered the walls again. Now I have about 60 tiny guys almost a week old. Most of the last batch are noow in my 1 remaining guppy tank, the other having been taken over by feeder goldfish who needed it badly. I also have some in my comunity of all sizes. I tried hatching some eggs with the last batcch of fry still in the tank, but there was toomuch size difference and the 24 older ones probably ate about 50 new borns. Someone also but eggs on the wall of the guppy tank. They would be the first ones I know didn't come from my original paair, who live in the comunity, but there weren't many and I wasn't sure they would hatch and at the time they had as good a chance where thaey were as anywhere else, so I left tehm. Haven't seen them popping out of the guppy gravel, and I don't know if I sold the parents or not, but my 2 oldest fry, including 1 that could be from the very first batch went back to the comunity because they have enough bent flippers taht I can Id them easily.

 

[Inchworm]

Hi guppler

I'm glad your cory fry are doing well.

When you keep them in warmer water than usual you speed up their metabolisms, so they eat more and grow faster. It's not a good idea over a long period of time, but many people do it with fry.

Do you think the biggest ones were females? This is frequently the case.

 

[guppler]

Hi inchworm!
I must have missed your post for a while. I probably forgot to click notify me of replies.
I have long suspected that warmer temps would speed metabolism and growth. i really noticed the difference when I spread out my mystery snails to all different tanks. I can't do a lot about it being warmer upstairs than downstairs, and that might be bad for my goldfish, but I think it's OK for the fry.
You know how I said I had about 60 fry? well, I recounted at least once a day, and as they got bigger, I decided there were at least 80. When I finally moved that batch to the guppy tank on wednesday, I counted 99 fry. It's hard to be sure how acurate that is because they are still pretty small and wiggly and some times I had 3 or 4 in my turkey baster and some jumped swam back into the tank or jumped into the critterkeeper before I could be sure if that squiggle in the water really had 2 tails or 1. I put everything I could catch from the guppy tank that looked like it might be capable of eating a month old cory fry into my comunity, but there were still about half a dozen of the canibal generation in there. I just figure the little ones are now faster than newborns, and they have a lot more hiding placec with the gravel and overgrown plants. There are guppies (possibly born the day I transferred their mom out because there was one in the bag with her that I didn't think I put there.) smaller than the month old spotted cories, and the biggest gup in there is a handicapped girl that is still pretty small, followed by a boy that is starting to develop endler colors, but hasn't yet developed a propper gonopodium. The eggs I just hatched upstairs didn't look as prommising by the time I picked them out of the comunity after midnight. They looked a little too opaque and maybe slightly discolored, and I was sure there wouldn't be a large healthy hatch, but I have newborns again. I think I finally counted uip to 17 this afternoon, which probably means there are at least 20, because they are hard to see at this age. I wonder if there's any chance of albinos this time. It was a relatively small clutch, but I think they are probably BC's because I had seen her going up and down the wall right where I found some of the eggs. So far the 99 all look healthy, and i haven't detected any problems with the new ones, even though I moved them when they were old enough that I could start to see Eyes in soome of the clearer eggs.
There was probably one that I lost that would have been #100. I took out an old sponge filter cartidge and put it in the critter keeper with the waste water so it wouldn't drip on the way to the trash. I always use a critter keeper or other small clear container when cleaning the fry tank in case I catch fry accidentally to give myself another chance to rescue them before I throw out the babies with the bath water. Well this was I think the second time I've seen a fish inside the filter cartridge. It looked too big to get out on its own, and I thought I'd break it open with a screwdriver or something in the morning, but I forgot to do that right away, and when I looked again, I couldn't find the fryguy, I even forgot to sift the wastewater before throwing it out in case there was a space it could have gotten out through. It's only 1 tiny fish out of 100, but I felt bad enough that I used the file from my pocketknife to thouroughly crack open 3 old filter cartidges I found drying in a critterkeeper on the front porch with plenty of pesty snails, but no sign of fish.

 

[guppler]

Oh, I forgot 1 thing. Yes, i do think the larger fry are females, because that seems to be the case with most fish i've raised, cories especially. In fact, BC is about twice the size of Pinki. She is brobably slightly older too, but even some of their kids are now as big as pinki. I decided Flipper was a girl pretty early because she was my biggest cory fry, but I sold the 2 that were probably the same age, and there were 2 spawnings in the comunity before I had a succesful hatch in the fry tank (in fact some of those hatched as I picked them from the walls and dropped them into a small plastic box, which I carried out into my sunny front yard to show visiting kids on the way up to the fry tank.) I don't even femember if Kneela was from that first big brood or the one after, but I thought she was a boy until she got bigger than Flipper. It's harder to tell with shorty because of his spinal problem. It might just as easily make even a girl smaller than she would be without the birt defect enough to be even smaller than younger boys, and I've lost track of how old shorty is and have know idea which if any of the others are the same age. I'm disapointed that I didn't at least keep the one eyed on going long enough to get a better look at its anatomy. I guess it had other problems that were less visible, but more life-threatening. Most of the obviously handicapped fishies didn't survive long, and i haven't seen any obvious birth defects with more recent cories.
Hmm.. when I catch fishies to sell, I usually try to get the biggest ones first, asuming they are older. I wonder if I end up selling more girls and fewer boys. I usually do notice a range of sizes by the time I add new fry to older fry.