For my birthday this month I wanted a fun little project, so in January I bid and won some mixed-colour ricefish eggs from Japan (about £26 for the eggs, and £24 for postage). I thought I'd raise them in my 23L shrimp tank which I started last October.
This was the advert:
The advert promised 30+ eggs, and when they arrived, there were over 80! In the UK adult ricefish usually cost between £5 - £12 depending on the colours in shops, I've bought most of mine for £8/each, so if I get 7 adult ricefish I've broken even with the usual costs, and any extra makes it cheaper to buy the eggs and raise here. It's also really hard to find the pretty colourful and sparkly ones here (I've only found them at Wildwoods Enfield), but you can get eggs of many colours quite readily on ebay.
The eggs arrived in methylene blue and were all stained, but looking closely I thought I saw black dot eyes on all of them (you can alllmost see it in the closeup, I've upped the brightness to try and show it better). I couldn't see any white/cloudy eggs. Apologies for basic pictures but my fancy camera is falling apart and I can't be bothered to fiddle about with it. Also just in general I have become extremely lazy when it comes to tank stuff other than keeping them healthy and stable, as I managed to buy a flat in October that needs massive renovation so most of my life is that for now.
The past 3 weeks I have had a nasty throat-attacking coughing virus, so I hadn't planned for what to do with them at all - I'd expected them to arrive 2 weeks later than they had too. So I just worked with what I had - I floated the bottle the eggs came in my 23L shrimp tank for an hour, then acclimated them in a bowl over 2 hours. While that went on, I boiled up some roiboos tea, let it cool and added it to the shrimp tank, as well as some dried indian horse chestnut leaves to help the eggs avoid fungus. Other people go for a more sterile setup, but I've always prefered it a bit eau naturale.
I then balanced my largest black net on top of the tank in front of the filter, plopped in all the eggs, plus 2 smaller cherry shrimps to eat any eggs that died to avoid any fungus spreading and said a prayer. Overnight in my tank, the dark blue colour faded and I saw that most of the eggs looked fertile, with tiny glowing golden eyes - you can sorta see the goldenness in the eggs in the photo below.
Only 2 days later (!) they began to hatch which was EXTREMELY EXCITING (first fry in the middle of the photo below). 5 on the first day, another 3 on the second, and then around 30 on the third day, which is today. We still have quite a few eggs to go, though I think it is less than the 80 I started with - it's very hard to count such tiny eggs in a net. Every baby which emerges now gets caught with a spoon and moved into a bigger net box I hastily ordered a few days ago, where they'll stay until they're big enough to brave the whole tank.
The next part is the most slapdash, as I only have Hikari First Bites for food for them for the first week. They won't be big enough for cultured BBS for a week, so we will see how many get to that stage. I have added some big blobs of riccardia from another tank which hopefully contains some microlife, and have started to add water from my pond bowl outside in case that has some creatures in too, but it is very early in the year for microlife yet. If I did it again, I would get a culture of vinegar eels going first and then order the eggs. I'm wondering if squeezing a bit of a filter out into there would hold some microlife for them to enjoy perhaps? Might do that tomorrow.
There are lots of ricefish fry in this photo, not that you can massively tell!
Anyway, we'll see how this goes! Hopefully I get quite a few to adulthood, and get a good colour mix too. I'm already planning to order more in May, if this first batch doesn't work out I'm sure it would be easier to raise the fry in spring with an extra food culture.
This was the advert:
The advert promised 30+ eggs, and when they arrived, there were over 80! In the UK adult ricefish usually cost between £5 - £12 depending on the colours in shops, I've bought most of mine for £8/each, so if I get 7 adult ricefish I've broken even with the usual costs, and any extra makes it cheaper to buy the eggs and raise here. It's also really hard to find the pretty colourful and sparkly ones here (I've only found them at Wildwoods Enfield), but you can get eggs of many colours quite readily on ebay.
The eggs arrived in methylene blue and were all stained, but looking closely I thought I saw black dot eyes on all of them (you can alllmost see it in the closeup, I've upped the brightness to try and show it better). I couldn't see any white/cloudy eggs. Apologies for basic pictures but my fancy camera is falling apart and I can't be bothered to fiddle about with it. Also just in general I have become extremely lazy when it comes to tank stuff other than keeping them healthy and stable, as I managed to buy a flat in October that needs massive renovation so most of my life is that for now.
The past 3 weeks I have had a nasty throat-attacking coughing virus, so I hadn't planned for what to do with them at all - I'd expected them to arrive 2 weeks later than they had too. So I just worked with what I had - I floated the bottle the eggs came in my 23L shrimp tank for an hour, then acclimated them in a bowl over 2 hours. While that went on, I boiled up some roiboos tea, let it cool and added it to the shrimp tank, as well as some dried indian horse chestnut leaves to help the eggs avoid fungus. Other people go for a more sterile setup, but I've always prefered it a bit eau naturale.
I then balanced my largest black net on top of the tank in front of the filter, plopped in all the eggs, plus 2 smaller cherry shrimps to eat any eggs that died to avoid any fungus spreading and said a prayer. Overnight in my tank, the dark blue colour faded and I saw that most of the eggs looked fertile, with tiny glowing golden eyes - you can sorta see the goldenness in the eggs in the photo below.
Only 2 days later (!) they began to hatch which was EXTREMELY EXCITING (first fry in the middle of the photo below). 5 on the first day, another 3 on the second, and then around 30 on the third day, which is today. We still have quite a few eggs to go, though I think it is less than the 80 I started with - it's very hard to count such tiny eggs in a net. Every baby which emerges now gets caught with a spoon and moved into a bigger net box I hastily ordered a few days ago, where they'll stay until they're big enough to brave the whole tank.
The next part is the most slapdash, as I only have Hikari First Bites for food for them for the first week. They won't be big enough for cultured BBS for a week, so we will see how many get to that stage. I have added some big blobs of riccardia from another tank which hopefully contains some microlife, and have started to add water from my pond bowl outside in case that has some creatures in too, but it is very early in the year for microlife yet. If I did it again, I would get a culture of vinegar eels going first and then order the eggs. I'm wondering if squeezing a bit of a filter out into there would hold some microlife for them to enjoy perhaps? Might do that tomorrow.
There are lots of ricefish fry in this photo, not that you can massively tell!
Anyway, we'll see how this goes! Hopefully I get quite a few to adulthood, and get a good colour mix too. I'm already planning to order more in May, if this first batch doesn't work out I'm sure it would be easier to raise the fry in spring with an extra food culture.
