Day 6: HOW Many Fry!?
- anacoralswa
- Aug 19
- 2 min read
I've been running low on rotifers, so I'm starting to introduce some baby brine shrimp (BBS) as well, to make sure that they're eating OK. (I've also been offering some tiny, tiny, tiny TDO pellets, but no one seems particularly interested in those). The green-tinted water cleared up overnight (I'm betting the BBS have been eating phytoplankton), and the water was pretty clear this morning, and so I could finally see all of them at once and get a good count, and, drum roll please.... š„
Ten fry! I did not expect that; I was thinking we were more like seven or eight. A few of them are still really small, but I'm about 90% certain they're actual fry and not brine shrimp.
So: ten. Now I have to figure out where I'm going to get more rotifers.
Something people say online is that to tell when they've switched from eating rotifers to baby brine shrimp, you can tell by the color of their stomachs. But I don't know what kind of eyesight other fish keepers have, because with these guys moving around really quickly in tinted water, I clearly can't even tell how many of them there are, much less tell what color its stomach is. But, as they get bigger, it seems clear that most of them are still eating rotifers (which show up as silvery stomachs), as opposed to the pink stomachs you'd see if they were mostly eating baby brine shrimp. And silvery is reflective, so that helps. But since I'm mostly looking at them top-down, it's hard to see their stomachs.
Oh, and, I also learned today that in general, small groups of juvenile clownfish will tend to fight over food and resources, even in a big tank. That makes the Day 2 loss even sadder, because apparently with big groups they'll school together instead of fighting.
On the plus side, we do have a lot of tanks. So depending on how many I lose during metamorphosis I might end up with enough tanks to put one baby clownfish in each, which would be fun. A clownfish in every tank.
