23 June 2020

minnow fry- 1 week

It's been a week since my first white cloud mountain minnow fry showed up in the 20H. Some of them are probably a few days younger; there's a visible size disparity. On the larger fry, I can now just make out a spade shape of caudal fin forming, and a brilliant sky-blue sparkle of color near the eye. The smaller ones are still moving dots with thread of tail, to my eye. Yesterday was the last feeding of egg yolk I did. Today I gave them first bites powder food, and the smaller fry couldn't eat it. Waited half and hour and then I did the first cull- removed some of the smallest ones whose bellies didn't plump up with food. There are way more than I estimated at first. Using a medicine cup and waiting for them to come near surface, I scooped out thirty tiny fry- counting by tens- and fed them to my dwarf guppies (that's how small these are!) and the tank of black skirt tetras and angelfish. Tried to count the remaining fry- there's still easily twenty-five or thirty in there.

I did try to get a few photos- this first one can make out five smudges and blobs that are baby fish, one in center between leaves across the cord is a bit sharper.
Fry in this photo is just above/right of center, where the fake plant stems meet base. Can kinda make out the bit of color and shape of tail- I can see this much better with my naked eye than my camera manages to capture.

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