Re: Artificial Hatching of Ram Eggs

["Helen Burns" <helen.burns@bigwig.net>]

I totally agree with Gary.  My fish house has no natural daylight, installed
on the ceiling I have an 8 watt light which is on when the tanks lights go
off via a time switch.  In addition to this when I have a spawning, in
particular if there are other species housed in the same tank, I place a
small wattage light on the cover glass.  By doing this it has saved many a
spawning and even free swimming fry from predation.
One example I had just the other week was when my pair of Heros severus had
3 day old fry and in this tank there are also housed some misc Corydoras
species and one female Steatocranus casuarus.  I had an unexpected spawning
in another tank and during the day I had to move the Severums extra light to
place on top of this other tank.  The following day all but a few of the
severum fry were gone.  It wasn't the parents who had a feast during the
night it was the other tankmates.
We have to give our cichlids all the help we can when they spawn and by
adding an extra light during darkness gives the pair the best possible
chance to defend their spawn/fry.  By the way I don't just have one extra
light for this purpose but in the above instance the others were in use in
other tanks.  I thought being that the Severums were large fish the fry
would be okay, I was wrong.
Helen
> I'm a night light user. I find with wild pairs and with fish in tanks
> with snails, it radically increases survival rates through the wriggler
> stage, and seems to help even with freeswimming fish. When the room
> lights snap off with the timer, the females haven't always taken the
> brood to safety.
> I don't know if the moon gets through in the wild, but to a degree, in a
> tank, we group hazards together more tightly than in the wild, so the
> extra bit of help seems useful.
> -Gary



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