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Wanna see some killie babies?


Bettarazzi

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They're newly hatched so there's not actually that much to see. I'd collected the eggs over a few days then stored the eggs in peat so that they would hatch at the same time. They didn't all hatch. But I've got about 27 fry. They're large enough to take bbs but I've been fairly sparing with it. Don't want to foul their tank. They're also getting microworms every other day. They don't move around much and it's quite hard to find them in the 20 cm cube I put them in. So this is the only photo I have of them at the moment.

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Yeah, two eyes and a tail. :lol: Wonder which side of the family the tail comes from? :D But seriously... at some point in it's development your baby probably does look a bit like that. Or am I just showing my total ignorance of human embryo development? :D

Not far wrong there. we evem have gills at one point

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Thanks Stefan. Had a suspicion I was right. :)

Hey! you got them to hatch! How'd you do that??

There are several ways to hatch out killie eggs. I'm just talking about the non-annual killifish like the Aphyosemion australe that I have.

  1. Water incubation - you remove the eggs from the spawning mops and keep the eggs in water for 10-14 days. Last time I tried this method I used the plastic petri dish that you can see in the pics. Any small container will do eg takeaway food container. Because it's summer I didn't need to keep them warm and I didn't bother with aeration. Most people put some methylene blue or other anti-fungal in. I didn't have any on hand so I added a couple of drops of ketapang extract. You need to make sure that none of the eggs are touching each other. Check the eggs every day and remove any that go white or start to fungus. Fertilised eggs go a slight yellowish colour, dead/unfertilised eggs go white. I didn't do this when I tried this method and lost quite a few. Only 5 out of the 20 or so eggs hatched. That batch is being fostered with my Copper HM spawn where they are growing extremely slowly although there are a few betta fry that are smaller than the killies. They're a month old now and I would take pics if I could find them, get the camera focussed, and take the shot before I lose them again. :)
  2. Peat incubation - This is the method I used with the batch of fry in the pics. I collected eggs from the spawning mop daily for 4-5 days (can't remember now how long I did this) and added it to some damp peat which was kept in a bag. Once I decided I'd collected enough eggs I just put the bag aside for 2 weeks. Then I put the peat into a clear container that offered good visibility, added water to a couple of inches above the peat and waited I think a day for the peat to settle. And then spent the most painful, yet oddly enjoyable, two hours trying to catch the tiny fry with a turkey baster.
You can also try a long-term breeding setup where you keep the pair in a heavily planted tank. Some of the fry should hatch and if you feed the adults with bbs the fry should get some as well. You won't get as many fry but it's lower maintenance.
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