My Tanks

What I have tried to improve the amount of eggs fertilized was to limit the water current in the tank which gave me a better hatch rate, before the next spawn I will switch my aqua clear off and run my bubbles on the sponge filter a bit slower after fertilization I will turn it up again


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I did that yesterday when my pair spawned and this morning I count very few white eggs, best so far. Half my batch turned white the first day with filters running when I was at work with most of the previous spawns.

I did some heavy reading regarding artificially raising discus and the "shoebox" technique looks like a winner. My bowl mission didn't work so well because of the temperature difference at night and probably water flow too. With the shoebox method, it's a plastic container that floats in a tank with the bottom cut out and covered with a fine mesh or netting. On the one side there's a water lift working with a airpump to bring in fresh water and circulate the water.

According to the guys that use it, when you feed all the dead and over feed falls through the mesh and settles on the bottom of he main tank where we can siphon it out without bothering the fry. It also doesn't fowl as fast as in a closed bowl so your water stays cleaner and you don't have to continually do waterchanges. The main tank is heated and filtered any way you like doing it. Appose to having only a few ml the fry now has the water volume of the main tank.

I think that's why my fry that stayed in the main tank and never went to the bowl did better. Steady temp and water volume was bigger.

Some guys even put the fry inside stainless steel coffee filters inside the shoebox. They say that when the fry is contained in such a small area they feed better but some say this isn't necessary. You will also have to mod the thing so that the water lift brings water directly into the coffee filters first. The one guy that's been raising discus since forever said that the coffee filters is overkill and the shoebox method is all that he's been using for a very long time but both work really well apparently.

They say that the nice thing about this method is that when your fish really starts to roll you just dump the larger fry into the main tank and put new babies in the box. The bbs that falls through the box gets eaten by the older fry so you waste almost nothing.

I can see a 250L with 3 of these boxes floating in it doing the job quite nicely. They guys say you get overwhelmed with fry very quickly once you have it running correctly and have a bigger success rate then just leaving them to their own devices. Worth a shot I say.

 

Here's a pic of the little one. He's starting to develop pigments and just under cm long now.



Just took a few pics of whats going on in the other tanks. Here's a bunch of girls. I need more males.



Close up on one of them.



And the eggs that was laid yesterday in my cube. Very few turned white this time and the rest are turning dark. I'm keeping the temp at just under 29C this time, I read that it helps with the fungus so lets see.

 

@Reedfish yes it's exactly the same principle as a stick on the side guppy box just with water flow added and it floats to make water changes easier.

 

@Adhil just one thing I forgot mentioning, I tilted the sponges forward so they don't touch the glass as one got stuck between it and the glass. I saw this when it happened so I didn't kill that one at least.

 

@Adhil all my eggs died off this time. I think I must start cutting with RO when I get eggs again. They where fertile, I could see development on them and then they shrunk and died off. Must be that my water is borderline on the hardness because of the success they had in the past. Going to bring the tds down a bit with the next spawn and see what happens.

Is the RO kits that's made for aquariums any good? I see they are much cheaper than the ones you buy from a water filtering store. For now I will buy the RO water as I won't need much at this stage and it's only for 3 days at a time and will only cut in 20L to 200L and see what the readings are. That should give a 10% in TDS reduction.

 

How many breeding pairs do you have?

 

My latest spawn hatched last night but didn't really check on them this morning. I also need to invest in an RO unit but need to save up for it as it's expensive


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At the moment only one confirmed pair, they are in a breeding cube. The other 4 are in a 250L. Two of them have paired up in there too but I think it's two females but I could be wrong.

 

@Adhil The units for domestic use are affordable at around R800 where the units for drinking water goes for around R3500. I made a post asking for advice on these, lets see what the responses are.

Edit: changed aquarium to domestic, I have aquarium in the head disease haha.

 

Ok where did you see it for R800


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http://reverse-osmosis.puritech.co.za/domestic-reverse-osmosis-system/

It went up a bit since I last checked to R999. Do you think it will work?

 

I will check around as well, I think it should though


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It will, JUST TAKE OUT THE TASTE filter.
The 5th stage filter that is

 

I see it has two of those, so you just run the water through one of them and the sediment filter?

 

I will put in a 1 micron in its place. So in order 5 micron, carbon and then 1 micron.
The 5 micron can also be changed with a 10 micron.

 

Ok thanks @Wilhelm

 

I think this is happening now because of our low dam levels, do you guys think that's a possibility? My eggs never just died like this after I could see development.

 

Did you get your water tested?


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