Feeding and the art of rearing fry

Most would definitely suggest to feed your fry smaller meals but in much frequent intervals. While this is true and will ensure your fry getting large in no time, it is sometimes the luxuries that everyone can't afford.

What we found, however, is that we can feed our fry in larger meals provided we "condition" them for it. Initially, on the 2nd day after hatching, we introduced bbs straight away to the fry. This feeding only contains small proportion of bbs. On a spawn of 300-500 fry, we gave about quarter-feeding of bbs (1 feeding is a 3L orange-juice container filled with bbs eggs on its surface). 1 full feeding could be spread for 1 day (feeding 4x, each a quarter). For the first 3 days or so, you'll notice that lots of bbs getting wasted as the fry still learning to adjust their eating habbit.

No worries, you can suck the gunks with airline tubing and spoon back in those fry that was sucked out to the tank.

On subsequent feedings, however, you need to give the fry a full half-feeding on each time. This means, you'd need 2 containers running bbs concurrently (each container needs 24hr hatching time, hence runnning them side by side with 12hr or 24hr apart will ensure that you've got sufficient bbs). Surprisingly, there shouldn't be much bbs gunk left over after each feeding (though you still need to suck out the egg-shell). The number of feeding per day is therefore reduced to only 3x. This will go on for yet another couple of days.

Then, you will need to reduce the number of feedings per day to only 2x. You still need to supply half-feeding container each time. The only difference is that instead of filling the container's surface to be full with bbs eggs, you need to increase the amount of eggs with additional 50%.

For those who don't know how much is a half-feeding bbs, it will be about 200ml to 300ml sucked bbs full of orange colour. Yes, don't be surprise, that's the amount of bbs you'd need to properly feed couple of hundreds hungry fry.

Each bbs container will only last for 12hr anyway, hence you need to feed 1x in the morning and 1x in the arvo. Sometimes, if you're really persistent, you can get 3rd feeding at night, but usually the water will start to look foul. No harm to the fry, but just ain't clean.

bbs is good for the fry cause they are just the "right" size. Most fry till the age of 1 month is quite happy with bbs. bbs lasts for a good 1 or 2 hours in the water too. This is good cause fry with full tummy can empty their tummy and have a good snack once they started getting hungry on the not-yet-dead bbs. Make sure that you put other live food such as black worms in the tank though...This will encourage the older fry to start "picking" on the worms when they are hungry. This avoids the problems canibalism in your tank -- for better or worst, they are fighters and they *eat* anything, including their much-smaller siblings!

Sometimes, you can get creative and feed your fry other variety of live food. Mozzie larvae is a good choice. Just make sure to feed them newly hatched larvae (about 1-4 days old). As long the fry can fit them in their mouth, they'll love you for it. We've feed our fry mozzie larvae when the fry is 4 or 5 days. Seem quite happy for it (though sometimes it is proven difficult to get sufficient larvae).

Unless you don't have much choice, we suggest you to avoid other foods for your fry. Cooked egg yolk is a last resort, cause it'll foul the tank irrespective how clean you try to change the water. organism that lives in green-algae water is also a no go....too much trouble to clean up the tank at later stage (green algae is pretty impossible to clean up without damaging your fry). We just never tried dried food, none of our fry seemed to be interested in dried food.

If you've got smaller spawn, the above food alternatives might work well. Sometimes you can put lots of plants in your tank (provided they look like "jungle" with lots of living visible organisms). This is also very good for your fry. Unfortunately, some plants just die off when you put them close to heater -- remember your fry requires constant 25-28C temperature, most plants simply die off when placed in this prolong temp. Note that you need to be able to see those living organisms. If you can't see them, then that means there won't be anything for your fry to eat.

Gravel has never worked for us on the rearing tank. Just too much of the bbs ended up sinking between the gravels, making the water a lot faster to get foul. Small filter wasn't necessary either, but then existence of filter never hurts the fry, hence it's just a "luxury" in our setup. Bubbles can help but also not necessary. If you have it, run it off like quarter-a-second apart between bubbles for the first 2 or 3 days, then increase it to about a tenth-second gap between bubbles (or faster). Don't be afraid that the bubble "disturbs" some fry, on the first 3 days, they'll learn how to swim between the bubbles...Other people may suggest you to run 1 bubble per second, that's just pretty useless. You need the bubble to move at least a quarter of water in your tank. if it's just a bubble per second, it won't achieve anything.

The "rougher" you treat your fry in the early days of their lives, the "stronger" your fry will turn out. We practically pour bbs water to the tank, put strong bubbles (sometimes), etc. The only requirement that we never broke was to keep tank temp stable. Fluctuation in temp will just cause too much problem, including whitespots and icks. Hence, if it's possible, do not temper with your thermostat!!

Happy rearing....