more fry

I can't count them- but there's definitely over two dozen. Easily thirty, probably forty or even fifty. Some are smaller than others, I don't know if that means they hatched later (the female probably laid eggs several days in a row) or are better at finding food. They couldn't quite eat the first bites powder- I saw them darting all over after it, but none of their bellies plumped up. So I've been giving them egg yolk.

I boiled an egg, set aside about a quarter teaspoon of the yolk, and made a delicious deviled egg with mustard, fresh lovage and dill from the garden. For a feeding, I cut a small bit of cloth from an old, clean cotton pillowcase. Put a tiny crumb of yolk on the cloth, fold it up around, and pinch the yolk through the cloth with my fingers in a medicine-cup of tank water. It turns the water cloudy, then I drip that into the tank with a straw, near where the fry are hanging out. Not really difficult, and the small lump of egg yolk should last me almost a week in the fridge- maybe by then the bigger fry can eat the first bites. Before I feed them they look so slender- dot of eye and thread of tail. After feeding I look again and can just make out different shape- little pot bellies full of food. I'm feeding them three times a day, and in the late afternoon do a small water change with the siphon hose in the mesh box. Take out about a gallon, replace with half gallon fresh conditioned tap, and a half gallon from the parents' tank. I also spot-clean some mulm off the bottom with a pipette- this stirs some stuff up into the water column and then the fry seem to be feeding again. I do see little specks skittering around- copepods maybe but can't really tell if the fry are eating them. Thought I'd see the fry picking stuff to eat off the subwassertang, the leaf litter or the sponge filter, but nope- they always seem to be in the upper half of the water column.

I'm only going to keep a fraction of these to live in my 33L- Aqadvisor tells me a dozen white clouds is max for that tank and my filtration. So when the fry are larger, I'm probably going to cull the smallest ones and just grow out ten or twelve. Even with daily cleanings I don't think I can raise forty-plus fry to adult size in ten gallons (with a 24" x 12" footprint). I have to grow them out that big or Laddie will eat them in the home tank. Ten maybe I can manage. When it gets to be fewer fry on cleaner food (first bites as soon as they can manage it, then I'll give then gold pearls, crushed flake and pulverized hikari bio-gold) I can probably do every-other-day or twice-a-week water changes.