I started a thread about feeding Farlowella fry in December, which you can read
here.
I ended up using a two-litres plastic container that I left floating in another aquarium. Here I added an air stone and about 10 centimetres of water (four inches). I did this twice, one time with unhatched eggs and one time with newly hatched fry. The first time I added some snails to the container that cleaned the eggs until they hatched. You can read about it in the link over. The second time I removed the fry from the father right after they hatched.
Anyway, when I had the fry and an air stone in the container I fed the fry twice every day. I used finely crunched Wardly shrimp sticks. The food polluted the water badly, so I had to change water a few hours after every feeding. I just poured the old water into the tank where the plastic container floated, and added new water from the same tank. Easy job, took me only two minutes. I changed water in the main tank once a week. This way I managed to have nearly 100 percent survival rate on the fry. This was until I moved to a new house, and I couldnâ??t change water so often, so half of the youngsters died.
Today, the rest of the youngsters are in my 375-liter community tank together with their parents. They are now eating anything the parents will eat, and are problem free. They have grown to seven centimetres (about three inches).
I must say that it was a nice experience to breed these guys. After five spawns I finally managed to find a way to feed the fry. In all the other ways I tried the fry were sitting on the same spot on the glass until they starved to death. I think this experience have made me a better aquarist
My Farlowella-pair havenâ??t been breeding since January, so I wonder if they can be season breeders? Of course, as I wrote I have been moving to another house, so they have been a little bit neglected. Right now Iâ??m feeding my pair well, so maybe they will have another romance after the summer.
Hope this helps.
- Bernt -