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Splash tetra - Copella arnoldi

I had several spawns over the weekend 🙂 My latest contraption was to spread a piece of cling film (plastic wrap) on the glass wall at the site where they usually lay their eggs, in order to safely remove the eggs afterwards and place them in a hatchery box. I also added a little tube with airline/airstone that blows the water near the eggs so that they are kept moist. Hopefully I will get some fry in the next couple of days...

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Do you keep lights on at all? I know that tetra eggs are photosensitive, maybe the same applies to the splash tetras (to a degree at least, considering how they breed in nature)?
 
Hi, yes I didn't change anything regarding lighting, the lights are on for about 10h everyday (with a 1h dawn/dusk simulation). The eggs stayed in the main tank but were transferred into a small floating clear plastic box with mesh-covered holes and a bit of water circulation by a tube with airline/airstone (see photo). There were 2 batches of eggs collected (~24h apart), they started hatching a couple of days ago and now some are in the horizontal (free-swimming?) stage and others in the "hanging" stage. Last night I added some moss and today I started a continuous supply of Paramecium, we will see how it goes... Fingers crossed! 🙂

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Hi, I haven't updated this because I mysteriously lost the first batch of fry. They disappeared within a period of 8-9 hours (while I was at work). When I returned home I only found 1 fry (there were 15+ before). I am 99% sure that one of the adults jumped in the fry box and ate them while I was away (I have seen them jump in these before). I was careless enough to leave it without a lid 🙁 I now have another batch of eggs hatching today, so hopefully the second time will go better...
 
Hi all,
I've just had a different species of Copella spawn. It is <"Copella callolepis (Zarske)">. I only got them a couple of week a go from Acres Aquatics nr. Warminster.



They spawned a dead Beech leaf, just below the surface. Apologies for the quality of the video, most of the interesting bits are in the last 20 seconds. They are only pale and contrasty during the spawning, immediately afterwards they reverted to darker with an obvious lateral stripe.

As you can probably see from the reflection it was a quick grab of an IPAD, and the tank is quite gloomy and tannin stained.

cheers Darrel
 
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How much space above the water line do these need? I've always been fascinated by them and see they are often kept in tanks with a large airspace but is it detrimental to them if you only had a few inches.
 
Hi all,
mort said:
How much space above the water line do these need?....but is it detrimental to them if you only had a few inches.
Click to expand...
It is only really Copella arnoldi that needs much space, even then they often they lay their eggs on the glass, just a few cm above the water line.

The main issue I had with them was losing them through gaps in the tank lid (as soon as they started spawning), they can leap at least 15 cm.

cheers Darrel
 
I managed to get a couple of photos from the fry, now roughly 10 days old (they are from 3 separate spawns a couple days apart), still feeding on Paramecium (and an occasional dash of powdered food). I will try offering some BBS tomorrow and I'll see what happens...

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And one more...

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Happy new year everyone! At the moment I have a few fry growing from a different spawn. I lost the previous batch and I think the problem was that I didn't have some sort of "intermediate" type of food after Paramecium and before Artemia, as they were doing fine until about 12-15 days post hatch. I tried feeding Artemia a few times by that point but they wouldn't take it - it was still too large for them. I now have banana worms as this intermediate food and hopefully this will do the trick. Here are some pics from some fry that have stopped taking Paramecium and have been eating banana worms for about a week now (~3 weeks old). At this point the urostyle is becoming visible, as reported in many literature sources.

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The riparium is doing good, not perfect but good. I had some random spikes of ammonia (followed by spikes of nitrates) which I assume are due to bad circulation and rotting plant parts. I am thinking of adding a second filter to cope with this (improve circulation and filter media volume). I am currently doing 30% water changes weekly. The few larger fry from the previous batch are growing nicely along with some of the newer batch. It is interesting that even after a month post hatch, the "big" fry are still eating Paramecium when I add them in the breeding box for the smaller fry (although their main food is banana worms)! These are very very slow growers (tank temperature is at 25C which also plays a role I guess)...
 
One other possible explanation would be the DIY fertiliser capsules I used when I set up the tank (using osmocote-type fertiliser). I planted these deep in the substrate (fine sand) but after adding some new plants, part of the fertiliser might have surfaced. The API test measures both Ammonia and Ammonium so perhaps most of what I saw was the latter (which is less harmful), but they both convert to Nitrate eventually (and that also spiked later on). Now things seem to have stabilised, but I will be adding the second filter just in case (I had it laying around in my aquarium stuff anyway)...

Sarpijk Thanks for the offer, I already have Pistia and Limnobium in the tank 🙂 I will be posting some new photos in the weekend.
 
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