Newbie question about kicking out eggs

They do tend to develop a favorite place and short of removing that place they will go back to it.
carol

Thanks kfenk and butterfly:)

At this stage it looks like he likes the same spot but this could change. I did put extra caves in for him to pick from next time but he's gone back to original spot. It doesn't matter, I have made sure I can have a good view point from any spot he does pick with in the tank.

I'm just blown away by how much these babies grow in one week!!! I can't stop going and looking at them:)
Both of them have 2 tiny lines of orange left on either side of a middle line down their tummies, so I gather it's still a bit of egg still to be absorbed maybe. I have been feeding the shrimp and adult BN like normal with zucchini/cucumber and algae wafers and the babies are yet to go for any of it that I can see anyway.

Right now they are happy sucking on the sides of the glass and just going up and down the one piece all the time.

I have had a few round rocks in a bucket of water sitting in the sun since they were born (I read somewhere to make these algae rocks for them to eat from) but of course, it had to rain here in Brisbane for 3 days out of the last 6 but as soon as I think they are ready, I will put them in and see what they all think. I know the shrimp will love them:)

I use my shrimp as plant cleaners all the time, I also keep turtles and have many tanks and of course many live plants and when I do my water changes on the turtle tanks, I swap the plants out for the ones in the shrimp tank and they clean the plants from the turtle tanks for me and it's a good system I have going:)
So if they love the algae build up on the plants, they wil love the algae build up on the rocks that's for sure....I just hope the babies get a chance to get some!!

Thanks again for your help, this worl d of BN breeding is so cool, I love it! I just wish I had more babies on my first lot but oh well:)

Great to see you at least got a couple of fry from the first batch! Aren't they just little cuties

The rock/plant algae growing thing is a great idea and they love it. I had a medium amethyst rock I left in the fry saver and it ended up growing a thick carpet of algae after about a month or so. I popped it onto the bottom where the main pathway is the BNs travel. Didn't take them long to find it. They cleaned it in less than 10 minutes. It was their gourmet dinner/desert.
Did the same with a piece of driftwood I had soaking in water for the past month to get the tannins out. Popped that in and within minutes, some strange magnetic voice had called them all over to the delicious piece of wood. They loved it.

What shrimp and turtles do you have?

Hopefully your next batch of fry will be more successful. Upload a pic when you can. We all love to go 'awwwwww' at the little guys.

Yes they are the cutest little things and geez! they move so fast too. I watched one of them wiggle across the glass just before and he was SO quick.

I have Cherry shrimp in with these babies and mum and dad BN. I'm not sure how we are going to do it yet so we don't have too much loss of life (if any) but they will all be going from the 3ft tank to our 5ft tank shortly as we are taking the turtles from the 5ft and putting them into another tank. So that will be fun (NOT!) trying to transfer I reckon at least 1000 shrimp over :|

At the moment I have 6 turtles, I have 5 Eastern Long Necks and one Brisbane River turtle (short neck), he has a 6ft tank of his own as he is about 25cm long now but the other 5 are in the 5ft tank together as the biggest one of these guys is only about 10cm and the smallest is about 6cm. I only ever planned on having the one short neck but 2 of the ELN's needed rescuing and then so did the other 3 and before I knew it, I had 5 ELN's I'm not complaining cause turtles are my love, then I found Cherry shrimp and now BN.
I am mod of the best Australian turtle forum there is and have the pleasure of being in the company of some of the most experienced turtle keepers in Australia, so yer, turtles are my first love I suppose and where my knowledge lays but I'm loving learning more about BN. We do our best to educate people correctly on how to best keep turtles, we rescue turtles and so on.

I also have a 4ft display tank that has 4 male African Cichlids, we did have 7 but a couple of months ago, 3 of them just dropped dead all at once, so goodness knows what happened but these last 4 survived ok. I also have 3 BN in this tank plus 2 in the ELN tank but there is only one female out of all of them and she is still too little to breed I think and the males are quite small too. The 2 that have bred in the shrimp tank are nearly double the size of the ones in the turtle tank.

Can anybody tell me exactly what green water is please??
Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I can tell, it's just water that's left out in sin to build up algae and then you put this in the tank and it helps with adding a bit of algae to the tank for the BN and shrimp to eat? Is this correct?

Yea basically you leave the wateroutside and let nature fill it with goodies. Greenwater is not only full of algae but also micro organisms. That's why it's great to feed to fry

Thanks kfenk:)

Well I have a bucket full of rain water that I can use exactly for this purpose, plus the rocks I have been doing, so looks like they will love me:)

Well it's more of a food for the fry of small fish like tetras and rasboras. Bn fry will eat anything the parents eat. Altho you could put some rocks in that rainwater outside to let algae grow on em. Will be a awesome treat for the adult and fry bn

I added the bucket of water last night and I will add the rocks this morning when daylight hits:)

I still definitely only have the 2 babies, I have not seen any more in the tank anywhere and if there was more, they surely would be out and about now too.

Oh well, 2 is better than none and now I get to watch these lil guys grow up. They seem to spend most of their time on the front panel of glass which is great cause I can see them easily and watch them, one is a tad smaller than the other but both seem to be doing fine.

Now I'm getting impatient for the next spawn, I can't wait to go through this again, it is just so great to watch this entire process. Mum and dad are definitely acting the same way they did for the 2 weeks before the last spawn, so all looks good for it to happen again

I would love to know what happened to the rest

I'm assuming there are only BN's in the tank and you took precautions with filter intakes.

jim.and wrote:

I would love to know waht happened to the rest

I'm assuming there are only BN's in the tank and you took precautions with filter intakes.

So would I?????

The only thing in the tank are BN and Cherry Shrimp and I only use sponge filters. I did use a small canister filter till about 2 months ago and had it attached to one of he large sponge filters but it started to suck the sponge filter in too much all of a sudden, so we took it off and just have them all back on air pumps again.
We did this cause of the tannins in the water from the driftwood cause I hate the colour they let off. The canister was working really well until we had to put a new purigen bag in and when we did this it just never worked the same again and we don't know why, we changed nothing apart from replacing the purigen bag (which is the same size as the old one, just cleaner:)

The other thing I don't understand is, when a shrimp dies or a snail (when I used to have some snails in the tank) they would be straight on them eating them up and you could easily tell by the huge pile of shrimp in the one place that something was dead.
So with the estimated of at least 30 BN fry that hatched (this is based on how many eggs I counted that were cracked open from the pile of eggs) if most of these dies (obviously they did as I only have 2 left) I never one saw the shrimp doing their eating something dead, thing and the amount of times I check on this tank, I would have seen it for sure as I can see every inch of the tank from every angle.
So yes, I just as baffled

I still hold a tiny bit of hope that they are all just hiding really well somewhere and will just appear soon but I doubt it cause I really do think that with the other 2 out and about, if the others were alive, they would be out too. I also haven't seen them out at feeding time either, where as the other 2 actually swam onto the bit of zucchini last night for he first time, so if there were more, I'm sure they would have too cause they are all the same age.

Oh well, hopefully next time I will get more. My kids are just loving watching this process all unfold too and how cute the fry are:)

Hi everyone:)

Just thought I would pop back to update and to ask another question (sorry for all the questions)

Up until 3 days ago, my 2 only surviving fry were powering along and since then I can only find one. There has not been a day go by yet that I have not been able to spot both of them at some stage but now I can only see one. So I don't know if he's just hiding really well or has died but the other one is still going strong.

Now to my question, going on the dates from when mum laid these eggs, this coming Sunday is 4 weeks.
She is well and truly gravid again but this time she is different and I'm getting worried there might be something wrong.
Last time, the night before I discovered the eggs, I thought she was going to explode cause she was so fat and she has been looking like this again for near on a week now but daily looking a bit fatter each day.
My concern is that now, cause she is just sooooooo fat, all her scales are sticking up on end and at first it was just around her fat belly area but now it's going right down to her tail and I am now wondering if this is normal or has she got something wrong?

The other difference this time that I can see is dad's behavior. Last time he had picked his cave well and truly a good week or more before she laid and he didn't really leave it but this time he has about 4 different spots that he chops and changes to all day every day and they are not playing the chasing games they played for days before she laid.
They are both still eating normal and swimming around normal, so that's a good thing surely but I am just a bit concerned about mum.

So am I worrying over nothing or should I be a bit worried about mum?

ok, if there is something sticking up from her skin then there is def something wrong as bristlenose do not have scales. they are scaless fish (hence the need to medicate at half dose).

I would check the links in the pleco hospital for bloat. if she is huge and its not in the same spot as last time it sounds like bloat.

check out those pics and there is a lot of info about dealing with it there too. However, if i even suspect bloat I get the deshelled peas in there ASAP!!

Thanks Doug:)

I have dealt with bloat in other breeds, especially the Molly's when I had them but with them they got like fat really quick, with the mum it has been at what seems a normal gravid pace it's just not stopping I suppose.
To me at first it was sort of like when us human mums have a 2nd/3rd baby, each time is different and each time we can get a bigger belly, so I was thinking it was the same for the BN cause she might be carrying heaps more eggs this time.
I didn't know they didn't have scales, so yes it sounds like something is wrong (bummer) cause to look at her you would think she has scales that are all standing on end and they are like this from where her body starts to where her tail fin starts.

I will go over and check out the other thread and find out what to do with this pea remedy you are talking about.
The problem with doing something like this is, the cherry shrimp. Can cherry's eat the peas too and if they can, they will get straight onto them too and maybe mum will not get what she needs but I have no other tank for her to go into at the moment:(

Ok, I will be back to update asap, thank you sooooooo much for your help, I really appreciate it.

I know it can be hard but pics are the best way to help others identify the problem. If it is bloat then as you have dealt with it before you should know what to do. Otherwise there is a sticky at the top of the hospital thread with all the info you need.

Just thought I would update this thread and let you know what's happening.

Kfenk- I have dealt with bloat before but only in Molly's and I honestly did not know that B/N could get it too, let alone how to deal with it, so that is why I was asking questions. I'm sorry for asking questions in my search for knowledge and obviously being a PITA to those more knowledgeable.
I promise to not ask any more questions about bloat.

Ok, I gave the peas like suggested but she did not eat any of them but the shrimp loved them:)

I basically just watched her and with in a few days after my last post here, I sort of came to the conclusion that if she had bloat, she would be dead by now, plus she was still eating ok and swimming ok.

So nearly 2 weeks later she is still really fat (if not fatter) and she seems more than ready to lay. It's been 6 weeks since she last layed eggs and she honestly looks like she's just fed up the poor thing.
The male is not being helpful, he has his cave and hangs out in there and I thought there was going to be results 2 days ago when he let her in and then they chased each other around a bit etc but every time she hangs around for too long near his cave he chases her away, so clearly he is just not ready yet.

I'm annoyed that they are taking so long cause I have to put them into the new 5ft tank and I was not sure if this was a good idea right before they are due to have eggs but I am left with no choice now, they (along with all the shrimp) are being moved into the new tank tomorrow.
Knowing my luck, they have been watching me set up the new tank and waiting for it to be ready and will lay tonight just to avoid me moving them for now!!!

Anyway, so it wasn't bloat thank god.
Thanks everyone for all your help.

You may be right about them watching you

Quite often a pair will spawn when moved to a new tank.