CPD and fry photos.

[Ice222]

Ever since I first stepped in HFF and saw Celestial Pearl Danios, I wanted them, but they were out of my budget. When I got my friends to fund me on the fish as a bday prez, I was thrilled with them and adored them since. I can tell every single fish in my school of 7 apart. To be honest, I didn't have any plans to seriously breed them, but thought the idea giving it a go once or twice would be fun. I still have trouble telling the gender of a few of them, but picking the most sexually dimorphic ones of the group to breed has apparently worked. I have eggs! And two have hatched into fry .

This is great as it would otherwise have been a bad week for me, my dwarf puffers weren't getting along, one had a spot of ich, tiny patches of cyno are appearing in my main tank, and one of the cpds (a runty fish that always had stunted colour and growth) also in the main tank has got velvet. All things are under treatment now, but the fry has really made the week brighter. At first I only found 1 egg, but it was neat all the same, they hadn't been in the breeding tank for long so I thought they'd need more time to settle in. I took pictures of the egg once per day, and found it had hatched by the morning of the 4th day. Maybe a little slow to hatch as the tank is only about about 23C. Here are the pics:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4 - Hatched!

I kept trying to look out for more eggs but during those 4 day I simply could not find any. I was still very happy about the 1st fry though. Then today I suddenly found 11 more eggs and 1 hatched fry in the tank. There must've been some around earlier that I had somehow missed, as they seemed to be varying stages of development. Here's a pic that nicely shows a few different egg stages all together. How many eggs can you count in the picture ?

I think this would also be a good opportunity to show off my CPD alpha. It's not just the colours, as I know he'd be even more vibrant if I had black like in their old tank rather than my current grey gravel, but I just love the little 'u' pattern on his side.

The two tanks - Left side is the breeding tank, the whole bottom is filled with xmas moss now rather than just the corner, right side is my main tank for the CPDs, it's now a little more grown in as well.

The Alpha being Transfered to the breeding tank, you can see a nice rotund female behind him.

Closeup of his other side

[Joshlikesfish]

That is so cool

[Ice222]

That is so cool

Thanks Josh! I certainly think it's cool :lol:. I'm so glad my phone has a nice enough focus range for me to get decent photos of the eggs and fry. Sure is something I'd like to look back on and remember. Lol the actual fish are so much harder to get good photos of actually, they're so darn quick and never sit still for long. took me about 1h to get those pics of the alpha fish.

[SamH]

Congrats on that! That's awesome

[MarkLB]

Congrats. I have CPD fry too and they are sooo small.

[Joe]

This brings back memories. They were the first fish I bred. I don't have them anymore though. I bred them at a temp of 25c, in a breeding trap with lots of java moss. I used a sponge filter.

[phoenix44]

Very cool! And I love your neat and clean breeding tanks!

[A-town...]

Very awesome! One of my fave fish!

[Ice222]

Very cool! And I love your neat and clean breeding tanks!

Yea, I don't see any reason why breeding tanks have to be ugly. I like to look at the tank and fry, even if they're less than 3mm and still just stick to the glass atm . Wish I had bought more substrate before starting the tank on the right though, there's barely enough gravel, and I can't even put any jbl balls/root tabs under the plants.

Bought them a new breeding trap today, once they're big enough to not be able to escape from the trap, they're going in there. It's a nice roomy one too! Will be a big upgrade from the plastic cup I have them in atm. Been manually doing water changes with a syringe as often as possible, so I'm hoping that will keep the water quality good enough for the fry .

[land_lubber]

Congrats, they are very nice fish.

[ngaffin97]

I have never seen these before, they look really nice, where do you get them from and how much $ per fish?

[land_lubber]

HFF Albany and $21each.

[Ice222]

HFF Albany and $21each.

They're Celestial Pearl Danios/Galaxy Rasboras, HFF Roskill have them on special atm, $14 or so each . Lol I bought mine at $21.40 each. I want to buy a few, since they're such a good price atm, but I only really want more females, and the ones they have seem a lil too young to sex atm. Btw, they tend to look a lot paler in colour in the stores, possible stress from being shipped. Feed them well and they'll almost look like a different fish.

[Ice222]

Update:

This morning I found that 1 egg had turned white and mouldy, so chucked the dud out. As for the good news, I finally saw the fish in the act of spawning today, got two fresh new eggs from the spawn too . Next time I gotta have my camera ready and try catch a pic of it, I wonder if they'll think I'm a pervert D:.

Also I went out to the pet expo today, wasn't as good as some past years imo, further away for me, entry was kinda expensive and less stalls too. Did visit the AFA stall though. I got back later today and found that one of the other eggs have now hatched, while 1 more looks on the verge of hatching.

So egg/fry count for today:

3.5 fry (I think 1 more will hatch within a few hours)

11.5 eggs

[Ice222]

Another update:

From the eggs in the cup, I now have 7 Hatched fry, and 2 of those are now Freely swimming . Now there are 8 eggs remaining, 5 of which are on the verge of hatching. I also found two bonus fry swimming in the tank today. I've moved the cup into the breeding trap, so that they'd get a little more room and better water circulation/filtration. They're still small enough to swim out despite the holes being smaller than most breeding traps, but the two free-swimmers that hatched in the cup seem happy to stay there. I also tried to gather the two loose fry, and place them in the trap, but they are incredibly quick! Even had trouble catching them with my makeshift siphon ( just a piece of air hose really). When I finally did catch them and place them in the trap, they swam right back out :roll:. The cup-hatched fry stayed though. How's that for pre-natal (or hsould it be pre-hatch?) developement huh :lol: ?

That's the current tank layout, with the plasitic cup horizontally in the tank, allowing fry to swim out into the trap. The trap I'm using is a Marina 'multibreeder', which I choose because it has a plastic piece with only 1 diameter holes, which is a lot finer than most of the grates of other breeding traps. Please excuse the algae on the glass, trying not to disturb the tank too much, so I haven't really cleaned the glass lately. Still doing water changes of course, it's just the glass I'm leaving alone.

Edit: It's now 3 swimming fry in the tank and 1 in the trap . I worry about them as the adults are pretty keen to have a go at them. Happened during the water change just now, as the trouble with breeding traps that aren't the floating sort is that water level in them goes down as you drain the tank, so one of them must've swam out of one of the small holes with the current. Fry seem to be incredibly smart though, one of the 3 fry in the tank keeps swimming up to the trap looking like it's trying to get in, while the one inside would swim up close to the other fry when it does. None of the other 2 fry in the tank seem interested in the trap at all. Maybe I'm humanising them too much, but that's how it looks to me!

[Sophia]

I like the 2 tanks together with the one light and they are great little fish.

[Ice222]

Hmm yesterday morning I still counted 3 free swimming fry in the tank, 1 in the breeder. 6 glass sucking fry, and 4 eggs. Then at night, only 1 fry out in the tank remained, and there were no free swimmers in the breeder . found 6 glass sucking fry still, and only 2 eggs, which meant two more must've hatched? Seems odd to me that so many are swimming out of the trap, the holes in this particular one is pretty minute, and the free swimming fry I observed in the tank seem to like to swim quite high in the tank, so I don't know why they all seem to be swimming out of the bottom of the trap and getting eaten.

Oh well for a first go, it doesn't seem too bad, today's head count is 6 glass sucking fry in the breeder, 1 fry in the main tank still doing well. So I've pretty much lost half the fry. Hopefully they're just hiding in the masses of moss to give me a surprise another day. Turning the cup vertical again so that I can keep the remaining fry in. See if they'd fare any better that way.

[Ice222]

Parents have been moved back into their original tank and apparently I found some of the lost fry! 11 in today's headcount, I could live with that .

[reptilez]

Parents have been moved back into their original tank and apparently I found some of the lost fry! 11 in today's headcount, I could live with that .

you are doing really well

11 that is heaps!!!!!!!

congrats

[Ice222]

you are doing really well

11 that is heaps!!!!!!!

congrats

Thanks . Thought I'd lost a few, but seems like most of them were hiding. Most likely getting a bigger display tank soon, so it would be neat to have a nice school of CPDs once I have everything ready.

[Ice222]

The fry are looking good, but now I seem to count 10 instead of 11, so I'm not sure what the real numbers are. The largest one is probbably about, 8mm and the others aren't too far behind. Just looking at the fry today though, I noticed something odd. Some fry look like they're very slightly purple tinged, while others look the standard clear colour, the same as how they started out. Looking at the size of the fry, I'd say that there are purple vs. clear fry of every size, so I'm guessing it's not a matter of age?

Now that they're all free swimming, they're too difficult to get a pic of, otherwise I'd try get some up for comparison.

EDIT: Gave it a go and manged to get some photos, not great photos, but they do show the colour difference. 1st two are cropped images of a clear fry next to a purple fry. Next 2 are slightly clearer pics of the different coloured fry taken separately:

Comparison Pics-

Seperate Pics-

Although the difference is really very minute, I still think it's interesting, I never thought such young fry would have any colour difference at all.

[Ice222]

Fry are all still healthy and doing well, I've stepped up the feeding, as well as the water changes to make sure that they are well fed, without compromising the water quality. Every time I count I count more and more fry, first 11, then 13, then 15, 17, and today's count is 18 ! It's been more than 2 weeks since the parents have been removed from the tank, so surely it can't be new eggs hatching. I'm pretty amazed with the numbers though. They are awesome, coming home to feed them is the highlight of my day.

[phoenix44]

That is very cool!

[Luke*]

i have one fry in my tank at the mo lol.. go the java moss!

[Ice222]

i have one fry in my tank at the mo lol.. go the java moss!

I find that the fry are actually surprisingly quick, and good at hiding too. Even when the parents were still in my tank, I saw them chasing fry, but not even coming close to catching them. I took the parents out when it seemed that fry were disappearing but it turns out they must've just been hiding, as more and more fry kept turning up after I'd removed the parents.