catfish fry

I am still boggled, how small these cories are I received. I felt anxious to give them at least three feedings a day to help them grow, but right away that became a problem. Yesterday I put a few sinking wafers in the tank- hoping also to see my striped kuhlis come out of hiding (they love these wafers and hadn't had any in a while). I deliberately broke one up into small pieces first, so the shrimps would get their share. Yep, the amanos all showed up quickly, each grabbing a piece (or two!) and hurrying off with it. The juvenile cory was right there, too- in fact it spent all day at the front of the tank feeding. But my kuhlis never emerged from their rock hideout. Poked their whiskers out, that's all. The smaller cory fry approached, but long after the shrimps had finished off their portions and returned for seconds. They try to shoo the juvie cory away, and barge into the smaller fry making them skitter back into shelter among the rocks and leaf litter. Sigh. I got my acrylic stick out and started nudging shrimps away whenever they tried to drag off the remaining wafer pieces, but of course this startled away the cories also- the juvenile one doesn't go far and comes back quickly but the fry stay away a long time.

Later in the evening I tried again, dropped in one spirulina wafer. This is too big and heavy for a shrimp to carry away, but they sure tried. It was funny to see them- one would land on the wafer, and pedal its swimmerettes as fast as it could, and get nowhere. Then they settled to picking bits off, constantly chasing each other- and the cories- off. It was dimmer light so the kuhlis finally began to come out, but when trumpet snails began to swarm up out of the substrate, I realized it was far too much food. I plucked out the remainder of the spirulina wafer- scattering plenty of small bits that had softened- and fed it in pieces to my paradise fishes.

I did a 25% water change, and set up the mesh breeder box for the fry, with some leaf litter and subwassertang. It took some patience to gently catch those little fry- with a shrimp net. After things were settled I put in a tiny bit of gold pearls. It seems this food was too big? they would nose over it and leave it behind. This morning I cleaned out the fry box with a straw, did another water change on the tank, and then dipped a toothpick in a tiny bit of Hikari first bites in my palm, then into the fry box. It's an amount no bigger than a pinhead. I tried to sprinkled it over a leaf, so I can see how much the fry consume, and it won't fall as quickly out through the mesh. They found it quick enough, and ate most. I see their bellies round and golden now.

This pic isn't quite in focus, but you can see both fry on the leaf!