FRY CARE:

          OK now you have fry, now what do you do.  Well first of all congratulations.  I don't really get all that worked up about taking care of fry.  Some people say you have to feed brine shrimp, or get special foods and so on.  I feed my fry both from spawners and mouth brooders crushed flake food. I don't have time to mess around with all that other stuff.  I have raised Cichlids for years now and I say "if it ant broke don't fix it". One thing I do add to a tank with fry, is a product from Sera called "fishtamin" this seems to help in fry growth.  I also add this product to my other tanks, it keeps my fish healthy and happy.  With most fry you can have different ages of fry (from the same species) together in the same tank.  I have run into problems with the Haplochromis, the older will eat the smaller ones so you must keep them separate.  I have never had a problem with any of the Lake Malawi Cichlids doing this or any from Lake Tanganyika.  All of the fry from my spawning fish stay in with the parent fish.  The parent fish will let the older fry stay until the third or fourth spawn.  At this time you should move the older fry into another tank.  When I do this I take all fry even the very small ones then I don't have to disturb the parent fish very often.
            If you are at a point that you are planning on moving the fry there are a couple of things I do.  First, the tank the fry are going to I let the algae grow on the back wall of the tank.  This is a really good food source for the little guys.  Also I do a water change of about 50 to 75% and put water from the tank the fry are coming from into the tank they are going to.  By doing this I have removed the chance of pH or Temp shock to the fry.  I try to keep the temp on my fry tanks about 82 to 84 for some strange reason the seem to grow a little faster.  Most of the fry that I have are from cave spawners or egg layers.  These fry take anywhere from 4 to 6 months to reach a 1.5" size which is large enough to take to a store and sell them or trade for supplies.  The fry from Mouth brooding Cichlids grow much faster and in about 3 months they are ready to go. Most of the fry grow fast to about 3/4" long then they slow down.
              I feed my fry (or at least try to) 3 to 4 times a day this is another way to fatten them up.
Make sure like with the adults you don't over feed them.  Another good think is to make sure your water stay's clean.  I do weekly water changes on all my tanks, you just have to be very careful if you are doing a gravel vac not to suck up any fry.

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Thank you Susannah for all your help


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