When will I start to see some color?

[abe]

I currently have around 22 endler fry, two batches are around 2 months old & 2 more are almost a month old. When will I be able to tell male from female? Or when will the male colors show?

Ive heard 4-5 weeks & then 17 days, but I have yet to see color on any of them. I do see a few gravid spots on the larger fry. What colors will I start to see first?

Also, is there anything I can feed them to make them grow faster? Currently theyre being fed Hikari first bites, baby brine shrimp, and regular frozen brine shrimp (the smaller bits).

 

[WILDER]

Bloodworms frozen, mine love algae tablets.

 

[lee_an]

I currently have around 22 endler fry, two batches are around 2 months old & 2 more are almost a month old. When will I be able to tell male from female? Or when will the male colors show?

Ive heard 4-5 weeks & then 17 days, but I have yet to see color on any of them. I do see a few gravid spots on the larger fry. What colors will I start to see first?

Also, is there anything I can feed them to make them grow faster? Currently theyre being fed Hikari first bites, baby brine shrimp, and regular frozen brine shrimp (the smaller bits).

Gravid spot means female.
gonopodium would develope before the colours for males.

Best food for them is BBS and other live foods

 

[abe]

Thanks I hope I have some boys in there somewhere!

Are decapsulated (sp?) brine shrimp alright? This hatching thing is a pain... I can hatch the shrimp just fine, but I'm finding it pretty difficult to get them out of there w/out a mass of eggs. Any tips for that?

Yesterday I got a bunch of them out by using airline tubing as a syphon, but today that isn't working so well. Its like theyre going through my brine shrimp net or something.

 

[Colin_BC]

I've found brine shrimp nets to be a useless marketing gimmick. Majority of the BBS go right through. Paper coffee filters work extremely well, though. I get 100% caught with these. I stick them in the chopped top of a 2L bottle to use as a funnel and catch the runoff in the lower portion of the chopped 2L to add back to the BBS container. No BBS make it past the filter. I also use airline tubing to syphon. I fill the tube with water from the tap and then plug an end with my finger. I then stick the non plugged end into the BBS bottle whereever the most are gathering (BBS bottle is elevated above the fitler and funnel by 6" or more). I then take my finger away from the plugged end and gravity does the rest of the syphon for me. HTH

EDIT: Don't forget to rinse the BBS in the coffee filter with freshwater to remove excess salt before feeding to the fish.

Colin

 

[Ava_Banana]

I found mine colouring at about 6-8 weeks but the gravid spot is visible on the females before the male has their colour.

Nice balance too......3 males and 6 females from our first batch of fry.

Just waiting for the second batch to colour up.........another 15.

(Oh and another batch now in the fry tank......about 30).



Our "main" female appears to be producing at around 3 weeks gestation each time.