I'm on day 24 of a supposedly fishless cycle :sigh: and today I realised my tank had had a massive pH crash :more sighing: . Whilst doing a biiig water change what do I see? Five fry They must have been stowaways ( as eggs??) on a plant - either bought from the lfs or purloined from my other tank.
Thing is there really aren't any likely candidates from my tank - the only remote possibilities would be the Celebes rainbows, and I didn't think they would produce eggs that would actually hatch (And certainly not in an environment where the ammonia was raised to 4 on a daily basis, and the nitrites were commonly 5 ). And if they are from the lfs, then I really have no clue what they are . About ten days ago I did see something wiggling about in the water, but just put it down to either very poor eyesight and a vivid imagination or some kind of insect larvae accompanying the plants ( after all they seemed to have a plentiful supply of snails ) . But no, these are very definitely fry - with rather pretty iridescent eyes.
More puzzling to me than their parentage though is how on earth they have survived me adding 6mls a day of 9.5% ammonia to their water, with the hideous levels of ammonia and nitrite that that entails. Oh, and I don't suppose the off-the-scale nitrates were much of a laugh either. Then they survived a sudden pH crash ( to below 6.6 from 7.2) and then an even more sudden rise back up again. And obviously, being unaware of their presence I didn't feed them either.
Poor things- I don't have a suitable fry tank ( and wouldn't be able to get one on a sunday night either) and if I put them into my community tank or in with my betta I think they would be snacks by morning ( they are very titchy still - rather less than 1cm including tail) . Still, I guess they've survived this long Maybe I could get some sort of contraption to go inside the 20g community......
Thing is there really aren't any likely candidates from my tank - the only remote possibilities would be the Celebes rainbows, and I didn't think they would produce eggs that would actually hatch (And certainly not in an environment where the ammonia was raised to 4 on a daily basis, and the nitrites were commonly 5 ). And if they are from the lfs, then I really have no clue what they are . About ten days ago I did see something wiggling about in the water, but just put it down to either very poor eyesight and a vivid imagination or some kind of insect larvae accompanying the plants ( after all they seemed to have a plentiful supply of snails ) . But no, these are very definitely fry - with rather pretty iridescent eyes.
More puzzling to me than their parentage though is how on earth they have survived me adding 6mls a day of 9.5% ammonia to their water, with the hideous levels of ammonia and nitrite that that entails. Oh, and I don't suppose the off-the-scale nitrates were much of a laugh either. Then they survived a sudden pH crash ( to below 6.6 from 7.2) and then an even more sudden rise back up again. And obviously, being unaware of their presence I didn't feed them either.
Poor things- I don't have a suitable fry tank ( and wouldn't be able to get one on a sunday night either) and if I put them into my community tank or in with my betta I think they would be snacks by morning ( they are very titchy still - rather less than 1cm including tail) . Still, I guess they've survived this long Maybe I could get some sort of contraption to go inside the 20g community......