OK Paul.
You seem to have a bit of a mixed bag there in terms of husbandry.
First of all I'll tell you why.
Firstly N. eggersi is a beautiful species but the fry are fairly hard to raise, they are very small and IMHO newly hatched BS and microworms are too large as first food
Ok thats that one out of the way now N. guentheri they are an excellent annual killifish for the beginner but unfortunately the vendor is selling a mixed bag if I've gathered the thing correctly. I may be wrong but Tan97/2 to me would signify it to be a standard red form. I will make enquiries as to the blue form. Anyway the vendor seems to have got his stock mixed up or he/she is sending you two seperate colour forms.
Sorry for the depressing reading.
Forgetting all that, you should have expected hatching dates on you bags, vials or whatever he has packaged them in. This this is the expected date you should place the peat in water.
Get hold of 4-6 plastic margarine tubs and place around 35-40 ml of water in two of them for now and float in an aquarium. on the hatching date place your peat containing the eggs in the tub of water (one for each species)
With N. guentheri it should be plain sailing and the fry will hatch almost immediately. If you can, using a spoon or a syringe with a piece of airline attached try to catch the small fry and transfer them to a similar container for feeding. N. guentheri will accept newly hatched brineshrimp and microworm from the outset, moving on to grindalworm and whiteworm and other larger foods as they grow (tip the size of the eye will give some indication of the size of food to feed) Nothos will only really take to live foods, they may pick at frozen and dry but mainly you will need to be able to collect or buy livefood.
The fry grow quickly being annuals so I'd expect guentheri to be sexually mature with proper feeding and husbandry in 6 weeks.
Feed the fry 3-4 times a day keep the tubs clean and remove uneaten food diligently also change the water daily in the fry tubs and as the fry grow increase the water level. Moving the fry on to larger ice cream tubs and then on to their own tanks. Males will squabble so you'll have to make provisions for this.
N. eggers fry you can do likewise for all of the above except for initial feeding. You will see there is a notable difference in the fry size from GUE. Therefore they will need infusoria as a first food. Crushed floating plant or liquifry 1 for egglayers will help the infusoria culture along. There will also be infusoria given off from the peat. You can leave the eggersi in the tub with the peat until you have then up a little in size, still maintain a high cleanliness regime after a couple of days offer microworm and newly hatched brineshrimp.
If you need any mor questions answered the just ask
Something you should know. Not all the fry will hatch when you wet the peat for the first time. The eggs of Nothobranchius and other annual and semi annual killifish go through developmental stages (diapauses) at different rates. Natures way of protecting the species against freek rainfalls in hot countries. Once youe satisified that there are no more fry in the peat tub after you have transfered them to clean feeding tubs the tip the peat into a net and squeeze until you have a ball of peat now place this on a newspaper or kitchen roll and let it dry to the consistancy of rolling tobacco, now rebag the peat and place in a warm spot (airing cupboard) for a couple of weeks then perform the hatching process above. You may well find you have more fry from the second wetting than the first.
I will probably forgotten a few things in this reply so if your unsure about something then as before, just ask
Regards
BigC
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i got the fish bug... so I want to try different types until i find a favourite...
