We have eggs!!

[Fut004]

Hey everyone!
Just wanted to share the fun news that our black coppers spawned yesterday and we have a nest with quite a few eggs in it. It took them over an hour to figure out the whole "wrapping" thing, but they got it eventually so it will be interesting to see if any of the eggs actually got fertilized :p. Our female is quite ripped apart at the moment, but is swimming comfortably in her temporary home of a jar with a wee dose of aquarium salt and Melafix.

We'll keep you posted,
Brittney & Ian

[Ian Turkstra]

Excellent!  I have just put my copper pair from Kim back together today for a second round.  Only a few babies survived the last bout of me being away the weekend they were left with dad.

Fingers crossed for ya!

[Fut004]

Thanks Ian

Ours are crossed for you too!

[crazy4bettas]

Awesome!  I'm so glad for you.  Can't wait to see how they turn out   Keep us posted!

[baycitybettas]

CONGRATS!  I'm glad you had a successful laying!  Don't worry about the female, they seem to heal almost magically in a few days.  As long as she has lots of clean, warm water she should heal quick.  Melafix works wonders after a spawn.  Be sure to keep the light on for daddy and let him do his job over the next few days.  Fins crossed for you!

[hyperfin]

GRATS!!!!!! Thats gerat to hear!!!

[Fut004]

Well it seems that things are going pretty much as planned. Daddy doesn't seem to be doing a very good job, as there are quite a few eggs with little wee tails sticking out at the bottom of the tank...but there are some in the nest too. Very cute  He keeps trying to scoop them up and put them back into the nest, and his nest has changed locations a few times-- but he'll spit them from too far away and they fall right back down! Maybe he'll learn for next time.

This afternoon marks 48 hrs since the spawning, so I'm sure we'll have to pull him out maybe later tonight or early tomorrow morning-- no one is swimming as of yet. The light has been on constantly and Daddy is looking a little worn out so I'm sure he'll be thankful when he is relieved of his duties.

Until next time....
Brittney

[baycitybettas]

Sounds like everything is going smoothly.  As soon as the babies are swimming horizontally, dad can come out.  This is  approzimately 48h after the hatch, not the actual spawning.  If you gently pull the string on the leaf and raise it a bit out of the water, you will be able to see if any babies are under there.  If there are no/few babies remove dad --babies are out in the tank looking for food and don't need dad anymore.  Add a small amount of microworms and enjoy the babies!

[baycitybettas]

Can we get a baby update??? 

[Fut004]

Of course!! hehe

Babies are swimming around freely, we took the nest out and have been feeding them vinegar eels. They're moving so much and are so tiny so very hard to count but I can definitely see at least 30. They have doubled in size since they were hatched already-- definitely a good first experience.
Mommy is healing very well, she is about halfway there with growing out her tail and fins.

We'll post pictures as soon as the camera can see them

Thanks again for the help everyone! More updates to follow for sure...

[bettasandbeads]

Sounds great. 20-30 is a nice sized spawn for a first time. Don't want to turn you off with 100 water changes at a time.
Keep us posted.
Catherine

[hyperfin]

Nicely done!!!! Nows the hard part as i"m finding myself in the same position

[baycitybettas]

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE *Pleeeeeeease!* 

I'm currently living vicarously though you... Got a nasty dry spell goin on here   

[Fut004]

Well we're not sure exactly what's going on... if it's the food, or environment... but they were slowly dying 2 or 3 per day

We were down to 3 late last week so I (VERY carefully) used a nice scoop and moved them to a 2.5 gallon tank with a heater and moss ball.

I can now only see 1, but it is extremely strong and very active.

We're trying to figure out where we went wrong, our water quality was good, we used ammo-lock and did extremely careful 25-50% water changes every 3 or 4 days and had basically no water movement while we did it and no injured fry as a result of the water removal.

We definitely didn't overfeed, since we were super paranoid about doing that, but maybe we underfed?? We are getting rather mixed information in regards to feeding. We've heard anywhere from once to up to 10 times daily!!! That's a huge range! When we did feed we gave vinegar eels and microworms (not both in the same day). We usually fed them in the evenings. I also gave them some Atisons fry starter here and there, as I liked that I could see it on the top and know when they ate it.

We had cling wrap on the top of the tank to keep the humidity in, and left the light on in the room close to the tank so they didn't have complete darkness at night, but still a difference between night and day for them.

The tank was maintained at 80 degrees the whole time.

Any ideas?? Like I said, the one that we can see seems extremely strong. It is 2 weeks old as of Tuesday and has doubled in size from week 1, so it is growing at a steady rate. The parents were both virgin fish, and I was told that that could have possibly played a role, so I'm not sure. It was also mine and Ian's first so I think that played the biggest role

On a good note, we cleaned the spawning tank really well and put another male in Saturday evening and his sibling female in the chimney Sunday evening and released them Monday and they spawned yesterday . There's not as many eggs as our coppers, but he seems to be a very attentive daddy! If you guys can see any faults in our procedure from my description below, or have any questions that may have affected our results PLEASE let us know

You were definitley right Kim!! Spawning is for sure the easy part, we've got that down, now we need to focus on making those babies thrive

[crazy4bettas]

Sounds to me like you did everything right.  I often only get a chance to feed my fry once daily because of time constraints, but they do grow better/faster if you feed them more often through the day.

some possible reasons:

1. Some fry just don't make it.  They are weak and unthrifty in general
2. Perhaps, if it was a sibling pair, there is just too much inbreeding and the fry were unthrifty as a result
3. It's very possible that the one fry you see has cannibalized the others.  I have seen them do this at even such a young age.  The best way to tell is that sometimes on light-colored fry you can actually see the eyes of the cannibalized youngster in the gut (gross I know).  Why? Who knows - perhaps dominance, survival of the fittest, hunger....? 
4. Underfeeding - When I feed, I generally give way more than I think they need.  Now, there are a couple of drawbacks to this - it makes the tank dirty quicker, and it's also possible for the fry to over-eat if it's available.  Then you get dead fry from bloating and swim bladder disease.  I've found it to be particularly bad with BBS and fry foods - they don't seem to have problems with the VE or the mw.
5. A bacterial or fungal infection that you just haven't noticed.  Can happen easily.

If you haven't noticed any little fuzzy bodies laying around, I would be most suspicious of cannibalization unfortunately. 

But don't give up.  If this one fry does well and grows up strong you have succeeded.  The more you do the more you learn and develop whatever is going to work for you.