Red empress and Lombardoi breeding advise

[proformer]

Hi guys!

About a month ago I had one of my 3 female red empress holding. I let her hold for about 10 days and then gently transferred her in a smaller tank together with about 10 (2-3cm) el. yellow fry. It took about 2 days and all the eggs in her mouth disappeared. I am now wondering if this could be due to stress or just simply because she is inexperienced or they weren’t fertile?

I know it is hard to say but now my Lombardoi has a big mouth full and I would like her to keep them. She is an experienced mum.

Questions: How long should I leave her in the main tank before separating her? She is holding since about 10 days now. Any advise when a good time to strip her would be? And also how many fry I can expect? She is about 11-12 cm

My plan is to wait until she is holding the actual fry and then catching her, stripping her and putting her back in the main tank in a floating “holding tank” to give her some time to recover and fatten up.

Q2: can I put her fry in the same(25 liter) tank than 10 electric yellows? They are about 2-3 cm now. Again, I thought about putting them is a floating nursery tank until they are completely free swimming. Unfortunately I only have 2 tanks at the moment(215l and 25l) so I can’t offer them their own home..

Cheers, dom

[johns]

Hi Dom

Your fish probably stressed as i have had the same happen, you can strip the fry after they are heads n tails and put them in a floating ice cream container that has mesh sides inserted and 1 airstone as i do this regularly now and never have lost a fry yet.

Alos keep in mind that if the fry fit into the larger ones mouth they are dinner you can look at adding lot of rock and hiding places and then the new fry should be ok.

John

[JPM1976]

You don't need to seperate.I strip the females at about 17-18 days and put the fry in a fry saver in the same tank.