Best way to grow out fry

[daveupl8]

I'm seeking advise on feeding pleco fry so that they grow out quickly. I don't think that I'm feeding aggressively enough or perhaps I'm not feeding them the right things. I'm trying to grow out L333's, L046's, and L134's and it seems like it's taking forever. I'm afraid to feed too much meaty foods like brine shrimp and blood worms. I do give those about once a week for each.
Can someone give some suggestions? Thanks

[Bas Pels]

Waterchanges does help growing out fry, but the species you mentioned are slow growing fishes.

[Jools]

Yup, water changes helps when you feed a lot and you want to keep the water fairly constant and clean. What growth rate do you have? That would help folks comment on if it is normal or not.

Jools

[MarcW]

I have found that crowding/competition slows down growth rates too, if you have the space, try to separate out the fish by size, it'll help the smaller ones get to the food before it's all gone, and in my experience has helped to at least even out growth rates, and I believe, also improve them.

When raising some S. barbatus recently, I split them across three tanks once I noticed some fry from the same spawn were significantly bigger, after a month or two of splitting them by size, the small ones had caught up, and when I moved them on to a shop they were all roughly the same size.

[TwoTankAmin]

I do not agree with your thinking about too much meaty food. However, I also believe that, when young, the fry need more veggies type food in their diet. I also believe in leaving fry in breeding tanks initially as I know they grow faster this way. Of course one must pay attention to the over crowding aspect as that will inpact growth rates after one hits a certain stocking level. I also believe, without scientific evidence, that the babies need to eat some poop from older fish to obtain some needed gut bacteria. So when I have to use grow out tanks for the kids I move some of the adult poop to a new grow tank. The other trick I use in this respect is always to allow some of the offspring to remain in grow tanks to produce that poop.

For the food side of things I have two ways I insure youngsters get their veggies. The first is that it makes life easier if I can feed one food which will provide both adults and youngsters with what they need. That resulted in these methods. Firstly, I feed mostly frozen foods and Repashy gel mix. the former only helps minimally because the frozen food that would help, brine shrimp gut loaded with spirulina, is too large for fry to eat. However, when I mix Repashy I use about 20% of Soilent Green mixed in with the meaty foods. Because the Repashy is a soft food, fry can eat it.

Next, for those times when I need to feed very fast, I will use a mix of commercial sinking mini sticks. This includes veggies ones. Again, when these get soft in the water, fry can easily eat them. The one thing I rare get in my Hypan. tanks is algae. I do not light these tanks except when I need to work in the tank and I need to see things.

When feeding frozen where there are new fry I use a mix of frozen cyclops, BBS, rotifers and some daphnia for the somewhat larger kids. I use a different mix for the larger offspring and the adults. What I consider important in this is that I put in the fry food first and then the bigger sized food. I have found that, if I do not feed both, that the bigger fish will eat the fry food. Conversely, I do not want fry trying to eat things they can choke on, so their mix goes in first.

As always, the above is what has worked well for me. I can also confirm that, when growing out babies in numbers, the least aggressive fish will stay small. But as I am able to sell or move the largest babies, the small ones begin to catch up on growth0

Just because this is how I do things does not mean it is either the best nor the only way. There are always variables involved and a lot of the success we have is because we have found what methods work best for us.

[daveupl8]

I'm sorry, I think I used the term "fry" too loosely. The fry I'm talking about are ones that I've bought to raise up for future breeding, all of which came in to me at about an inch long.
On the L046, growth rates have varied. They all hang out together and it appears that the small ones are getting the necessary opportunities to eat. No one is hogging the food. Sometimes food is left over. It's just that I received them at about 1" each and some are now 3 times bigger than others. I have seven. Two of them aren't much bigger than when I got them.
On the L333"s they all are roughly the same size. I have 6. It just seems like they are growing slowly. I received them on 11-13-20 and they have added 1/2" uniformly for the most part, in roughly 6 months.
The L134's were received on 5-10-20 and are about half grown at 2" each. They have gained an inch in almost a year.
Perhaps these growth rates are normal, I don't know.

[Captainandy]

I'm far from being an expert. I keep 15 L046 and 15 L173 in a 29 gal tank. Brisk current with a vortech pump, O2, temp of 84, pH 6.5 and feed discus granules, live and freeze dried black worms and 80% water changes every other day (I'm a discus guy)
Purchased 6 months ago at 1-1.25 inches. The 46's have doubled in size and the 173's are now at three inches.
The vigorous current makes them so happy that they are actually out and about during the day time.
Basically, i treat them the same way I treat my discus. I think the extra work is worth it. I am rapidly becoming a catfish lover