Fry savers and breeder "traps"

Whoah! Did you get that leveler with yours?

ya we did. its level. it just lets just enough water out that the last little bit doesnt reach the top. idk maybe ill play with that again tonight. yours isnt as loud as ours is. and im pretty sure its the same one.

I tried the mini air pump and it does make a difference in the noise. I took it off the main pump and now I can hardly hear it.

Ya its not the air pump that makes the noise. I'm off tomorrow so I'm guna play with it. I'll let you know what I figure out.

rcbows, if you use a valve you can adjust your flow and still run it on your main pump. If you have a main air pump set up theres no reason to run a dorky one! I still have airlines running all over my house from when I had a massive air pump for my mess lol

Yeh! sounds about right FERN, but I have a valve and (actually (2) one on the 6' manifold from the pump and (1) on the tubing that came with the BRDR BOX) it doesn't matter it still made noise until I put the small mini pump on it. I did get it to quiet down that way but the flow of water was not so great. I am installing a loop manifold around the fish room, as soon as my manifold valves come in. They should be in on tuesday. I will then be able to adjust the air pressure. Right now I have (2) small manifolds sending air to (38) tanks run only by 3/16" tubing. It difficult to maintain any kind of air pressure on my system.

I had 1" pvc running in almost a full circle around the ceiling in my fish room. I managed to make fittings work to go from the 1" to a brass air line barb, took about 3 fittings from home depot. All my air barbs were on drop downs from my main line, nothing was ever glues that way I could add and subtract parts where needed. It was pretty sweet.

If you need a better air pump let me know, I have commercial grade diaphragm pumps, 2 are running my lfs

So I had my first succesful batch of fry out of my trap. I never got to it be quitter. We also only got about a dozen fry. I don't know if they knew to swim under the grate. Or if the mother fish was able to suck them through the grate and eat them.

Cool, swords?

Variatus...however we put another fish in the box after putting the fry in the growout tank. She got out of the box and ate all our new fry

Oh no :,( that super sucks, sorry.

Ya we were pretty upset at the fish. Not like she understands lol. It's not like a puppy where I can rub her nose in it! We forgot to put the little screen on it so. But this fish better give us some seriously nice offspring. She has enough protein!

You guys have to go see Jeffs tanks, maybe we can put together a fish room tour? Jeff loads one side of his tank with those fake grass mats and the fry get in there to hide from the adults.

I condition my fish to be used to having small fish in the tank. I throw least killies in there with adults and after a few weeks the don't even look twice at the small fish.

I would love to go see how other people have their set ups. And I have heard of people using that grass before. I have used fake plants and made like a balled up mess with them. That worked pretty well.

Oh and side note...we found a few of the fry. We found 3 survivors.

Yeah a fish room tour sounds awesome!!

Not my place till after I move, I have boxes everywhere

Fern wrote:Not my place till after I move, I have boxes everywhere

You know fish people can't see clutter. We only see the tanks, lol. My house looks like Boardroom on delivery day, crap everywhere

Lil late on the go but have a few of these breeder box / holding traps, just love them for several reasons whoever thought of them is a hero LOL

Fishroom and clutter LOL my house is literally my fish and bird room we just co-habitate with them

I still haven't tried mine yet, but I wonder if your technique works Joe, with the least Killifish. I have some molly's ready to drop this week so I will try it then. I have also been using piles of red lava rock, which works well with some of my tanks. They have many holes in them for biological media growth and the fry hide in the cracks between rocks for cover. I have saved many a fry with this method.

Well I tried the breeder box, put one of my best Gold Dust Panda Mollies in it and she looked good for (2) days, but then on the third day, I came into the fist room and she was DEAD! I was so upset I was waiting for her to give birth, she was hugh. She had at least one other successful spawn in the past.

This is the problem I have had with these breeder boxes before, the FM just dies from stress. I opened her up and she had (18) fry fully formed, beautiful little fry, its too bad. No success on the first try, and I'm not sure if I want to try again. I don't want to lose anymore of my good breeders. It takes so long to get them up to size let alone wait for them to give birth. I think I'll stick to my cave and lava rock cave scenario, it has worked the best for me. I'm sure I have lost some but not the female breeder.

With my black Mollies I use black Gravel and the mothers can't see the fry they just hide in the black background and I save all the fry born. I think cause they are always facing up and the gravel is Black, they just sink to the bottom and the other adults can't see them. I've watched them and as soon as the fry are noticed, go down into the gravel the adults just swim away cause they can't find them. They are harder to see and catch when you want to remove them, but I've caught as many as 30 from one spawn, this way. I have at least a dozen adult FM that are hit, and that are going to spawn this full moon.

Ya I haven't had any further success with my breeder box. But we are going to moving in January so after that happens I plan to set up a few small tanks devoted to breeding fish in.

Anyone had anymore success with their breeder traps??? I have a holding female in mine now. and she seems to be getting smaller instead of getting closer to dropping.

I thought the same thing with mine at first! I'm starting to think that it's due to refraction distorting the "image" of the fish. That and I was having a hard time telling when the female was about to drop. As you know my recent success all used my breeder box. The first female stayed in there 2 weeks, the second 1 week tops, and the third only one night.

Good Luck!

I still hav not used the outside the tank one. The hang inside ones I use all the time. I know on my livebearers they will poop like crazy once they get in the trap and the female will look half as big the next day. If I see she is still not close to a drop I just set her free in the tank for another week and try again.

Ya I do need to clean it. She has pooped like crazy in that thing. She yas been in there now for about a week. I guess I will just leave her there for now. I did see an in tank net that looked nice. My only issue was there was no place for the fry to hide once she drops.