Ok, now they've done it.........

[FreeFloat]

My kribensis have gone and had babies.


NOW WHAT!?!?!

What do I need to do?

So far the babies are just following Mom around - hiding in the cave when she does, and coming out a wee ways when she does.

25 gal tank with rocks & driftwood, and one or two plants although not doing so well due to no CO2 generator in it. 3 kribs, 4 minnow, 2 tetras. I only noticed the baby kribs this evening and so far none of the adult kribs seem to be picking on the dither fish (yet?).

Advice please..........

 

[bigfoot150]

Well tetra and minnows are pretty quick swimming fish so the kribs will have a hard time getting them. Your third krib may be at risk though since the mom and pop get real territorial towards their own kind after having kids.

As far as the fry are concerned, you can feed them small ground up flakes or even squirt baby brine shrimp in their direction with a turkey baster. If your tank has been setup long enough you might be able to get away with not feeding them at all as they will feed on any algae and left over fish food present in the substrate.

Congrats by the way. Be ready for a 2nd batch too!

 

[FreeFloat]

Yeah, it was on the list of Things To Do Tonight, to clean out and vacuum the krib tank. I'm sort of glad I hadn't done so yet. So some of the rocks are a bit green and fuzzy and I'm quite confident the babies will find lots of snacks to munch on in teh substrate, if they're not too picky.

So leaving the babies in with the parents is OK? (hoping, since I have to work tomorrow and no time to pick up a tank separator or to start cycling a new tank)

 

[bigfoot150]

Yeah they will be fine. Sometimes the poppa fish can snack on them but he won't eat them all at once. If you start losing fry you might want to seperate him. My poppa fish did this took me forever to figure out it was him.

 

[FreeFloat]

Thanks, that was what I needed.

I'll look at segregating the other male krib and perhaps the tetras as well (for their own safety)

 

[FroggyFox]

Congrats how about some pics?? fry are hard to take pictures of...so maybe not till they get a little bigger...

 

[FreeFloat]

Well, if I had a digital camera, sure. Maybe I can borrow someone's.

My biggest problem right now, is that I've just been offered that job in Toronto, and they want me to start in two weeks. Now I need to find a fish-sitter..............

 

[FreeFloat]

Well, not sure what has happened, but tonight when I came home I couldn't see any fry at all. Either they're very well hidden, or the adult kribs may have eaten the lot of them. The Mom fish yesterday didn't seem to want to venture too far out of the cave, and when she did she had a flock of fry following her; tonight, she seemed to have no problem going some distance away, and not a fry to be seen following.

Another question - some people have smaller tanks (say 1, 2 or 5 gals) that they move mom and baby fish into, to separate them. Do these tanks have to go through the same cycle as larger permanent tanks do, or is it safe to just put main tank water into them?

 

[FroggyFox]

Anytime you set up a new tank...you have to make sure the filter is cycled. You probably have a good chance of making sure its almost instantly cycled by moving water and some decorations and some filter media from your established tank, directly to the new tank you're setting up.

Sorry to hear about the fry...hopefully they'll do it again soon. are you thinking about setting up another smaller tank for them to live in until they're big enough to make it on their own?

 

[FreeFloat]

Actually, the fry must have been in hiding - the morning after I posted that they were gone, I saw them again and although there are too many to accurately count, they seem to all be there. They still follow either Mom or Dad krib around, but now I see a few venturing an inch away from time to time. Mom and Dad occasionally chase the other two kribs (for a while I thought I only had one other krib left too, but recently I can see I still have all four, total) or dither fish away, but once the other fish maintain a reasonable distance the Mom and Dad seem to ignore them. If they were mercilessly harassing the other fish in the tank then I'd be in more of a hurry to relocate the other fish, but they seem to be tolerated unless they get too close.

So it looks like I have a bout 2-1/2 dozen kribensis.............

I wish I had a digital camera; they're just so cute! Unlike other fry I've seen, these ones don't have disproportionately large eyes, and they have tiny spots as markings which makes them incredibly hard to see (which is the whole point, naturally)

 

[FreeFloat]

Just saw the neatest thing...

The Mom kribensis was off chasing a dither fish and upon coming back to the "flock" of babies, she swam up to a straggler and promptly 'ate' it. I thought the little baby got mistaken for a bit of algae. However, a minute later Mom hovered over the flock and opened her mouth and out popped the baby! A few minutes later, another baby (or might have been the same one) wandered away again - Mom went after it, put baby in her mouth, swam back over to the flock and deposited it there too!