Tank Journal Archive

[MagicJ]

Whilst it has been a bit of a frustrating evening, there is some good news.

I am struggling with my DIY egg tumbler and will definitely look for a better/different solution next time - there is a range of tumblers designed for freshwater mouthbrooders which I will be having a look at. I will explain in another post what the problems have been but some pictures first..

I found this little guy trapped in the top filter foam

He seems to be OK but time will tell - this is him in the tumbler (excuse the quality but it's not easy shooting through the side of a Coke bottle)

And the remaining eggs (approximately 16)

Cheers

 

[Sarg]

How's he doing?

If your a member of qldaf maybe have a look at these...

http://www.qldaf.com/forums/dry-goods-trader-13/egg-tumblers-20811/

Never used one myself but lots of people raved about them. It was some time ago but I'd guess he still makes them.

 

[MagicJ]

Thanks for the link @Sarg.

I have purchased a few items today to make up an alternative tumbler - I 'think' I still have a few viable eggs remaining so hopefully I can savage something.

The problem I am experiencing is this:

• the eggs are stuck together so you need a fair amount of water movement to get the egg mass (20+ eggs) floating and tumbling
• but, if one egg seperates from the mass, or if an egg hatches, the water movement is too strong and sucks the single egg or fry up to the top sponge and they eventually die.
• I was using a stocking over the filter foam which was getting clogged up within 48 hours - this meant I had to move the eggs into a seperate container; pull apart the tumbler to wash out the filters etc and return the eggs to the tumbler. It was not easy to do this given given that the eggs needed to be put inside and then the 'plug' inserted in the bottom, whilst keeping everything in the water. Overall, I feel that I have been handling the eggs way too much.

To be honest, I am struggling to understand how this type of tumbler can keep both a single fry and the remaining egg mass in suspension at the same time. I don't believe it can so I don't understand how you save the fry :confused: Maybe I am doing something wrong ??

Anyway, if have seen some alternative methods which utilise a small water pump to pump water into a round bottom glass - I plan to set this up in a breeding net to keep the eggs safe.

I will, hopefully, be back with some pictures in an hour or two.

 

[MagicJ]

This journal is all about recording my breeding attempt - both good and bad.

Unfortunately, it has been mostly bad the last few days. I was at work until late on Thursday so I didn't have a chance to see what had been happening with the eggs - I do know that they weren't tumbling very well.

I ended up spending around about 3 hours last night setting up a new tumbler using a small water pump and a glass.

I planned on putting this inside a breeding net. What I didn't take into account was that the 'Doubled Wall Glass' that I used (which was selected because of the rounded bottom as seen in the photo) floated due to the air between the glass walls So, I decided to use some super glue to glue the glass to a small piece of ceramic time to hold it down. Unfortunately, I didn't have much glue left and was applying some downward pressure on the glass to see if I could get it to set when the glass shattered Fifteen minutes later when I had stopped the blood flowing from the gash in my finger I found a beer mug which looked like it might do the job.

After I spent another hour sorting out the eggs I went to bed hoping more than expecting that it might be satisfactory.

The remaining eggs were not looking good - this is a macro shot before I removed the bad eggs

The bad eggs are easy to identify - the remaining viable eggs actually look quite good, although there is lots 'rubbish' sticking to them and evidence of what looks like fungus starting to grow on one. I suspect that these are all symptoms of poor tumbling of the eggs.

This is after I managed to remove the bad eggs - 8 remaining although I would be very surprised if these don't also die in the short term.

Cheers