Baby Goldfish For Dinner

The goldfish eggs hatched about 2 days after we discovered them.  My brother and I had done a pretty good job of rescuing the eggs from the goldfish tank and moving them to the baby goldfish tank; the water was soon densely populated with new born goldfish clinging to the glass walls and other places.

 I was sooo happy about having another batch of goldfish to attempt to raise.

 Unfortunately, a new problem was revealed: the newborn babies were small enough for the bigger two goldfish babies to eat.

At first, it wasn't obvious that the bigger babies were eating the newborn babies.  They did chase them, but the babies would dart away and it seemed like a harmless game.

But then the bigger goldfish started to have black coloured waste, and they seemed to be chewing on something a lot.  What are they chewing on all the time?

All the old egg sacs disappeared, there were no dead babies on the floor, and yet the numbers of babies seemed to be less.

And then it happened.  I dropped in some raw egg yolk for the babies to eat and I watched in horror as the bigger goldfish baby chased a newborn baby and ate it whole.  Then it started to chew for a long time.  Even as it was chewing, it would chase other nearby babies.  

Uh oh.

One of the bigger goldfish hunts at the top, the other bigger goldfish hunts at the bottom.

Maybe thanks to all this extra meaty food, these two bigger goldfish have almost doubled in size since I put the babies in. 

 I'm not sure what to do.  I have run out of spare aquariums and space.  My family thinks maybe I should just let Nature take its course.  That maybe two goldfish left is enough (if all the babies get eaten except these two big guys).  Erg!

 Meanwhile, this new batch of babies is much faster and sharper than the last batch.  They started eating the day after they hatched even though they supposedly eat the yolk sac and don't require food yet.  I am reluctant to let the bigger two goldfish babies eat them all as this new batch seems healthier and better developed than the last batch.

 Also, I estimate that all the babies will be eaten in about 3 more days.  These two bigger goldfish seem to be picking off the babies rapidly.

 I considered moving the bigger baby goldfish over to the guppy tank since they are too big for the guppy mother to eat now.  However, these big goldfish babies might be big enough to eat my baby guppies.  I can't risk losing those too.

 Nature is so cruel.

Have a great weekend.

Goldfish Babies One Month Old And More Eggs

The gold fish babies are now 1 month old

 

They look a lot more like fish, but they still have no goldfish colour aside from the greenish brown coloration and pale belly.

 Sadly, only 4 babies remain.  There are two big, fat ones and two skinny, small ones.  I refer to them as clones since the pairs look eerily similar to each other.  Perhaps the Matrix felt sorry for me when all the babies started to die and they create two copies of the last two fish for me to stare at every day.

 It seems that the toxicity of the water was building up rapidly as the drops of raw egg yolk began to decompose in the water.  I suddenly noticed at least 8 baby fish dead one day and I immediately changed the water.

I thought maybe I could save a couple goldfish babies from the toxic water by moving them to the guppy tank, but it was a bad idea.

I discovered that the baby goldfish don't swim very well since the baby tank has no real current.  So they kind of half swim, half float in the guppy tank.  Also, they are very pale coloured compared to the guppy babies so they stand out.  Within minutes, a fat momma guppy spotted the goldfish baby and chased it.  The baby's swimming skills were sadly lacking and she swallowed him down in three gulps.  It was horrifying.

 By that time, only five babies were still remaining.  My brother tested the chemical balance of the water and found that the ammonia level was still too high, so he has since changed an even larger proportion of the water.  Now four babies remain. 

 Meanwhile, the parent goldfish tank also benefited from double water changes.  I also planted new artificial plants since they had demolished the original live plants.

This prompted some mating behaviour and we were shocked to discover a new batch of eggs on Sunday morning.

 I knew they could lay eggs twice a year, but I didn't expect it so soon.

 There were eggs everywhere!  Not as many probably as the first time, but still a plentiful amount.

I moved any plants with eggs into the goldfish baby tank, and my brother vacuumed any visible eggs up and transferred them as well.

 You can see that the baby goldfish is wondering what all the small round balls are.

I pushed the contrast of the image so that you can see the eyeballs of the babies and their curved bodies.  The white egg is an unfertilized egg.

There are quite a few unfertilized eggs noticeable as they start to turn whiter.

Even so, there are so many eggs that there will definitely be lots of babies.

This egg is stuck to a plant, but the floor of the baby tank is actually covered with lots of loose eggs that we vacuumed off the plastic plants, gravel, and filter from the parent tank.

Meanwhile, Frog the Goldfish doesn't care.  These are not his kids.  He is just taking a nap by the new plants while he waits for his next meal.

Have a great day!

Goldfish Babies Day 24

It has been approximately 24 days since the goldfish babies hatched from their eggs.

As you can see, they have changed a lot.  Their bodies are starting to round out more, and you can almost see all of their internal organs enlarging in size since they are still quite see-through.  The picture seems to show the upper body as orange, but it is just the work of a shadow.  

They are mainly a whitish peach/pale grey colour with a bit of pinkish red where the internal organs are.

There are very large discrepancies in the fry sizes despite being born within a day of each other.  Some of the babies look fat and meaty.  Some of the babies look anorexic.

 Here are some photos for you to enjoy.

 They look funny when reflected on the surface of the water.

 

 

 The babies with bent/crooked spines have all died off naturally.  This particular baby shown is starting to form a deep dip in the spine.  He is currently lying upside down on the gravel so I think the anomaly is having an effect on his health. 

 

 

 

Have a great weekend!

Goldfish Babies Day Nine

The baby goldfish are now 9 days old.  As you can see, some of them have plumped up quite a bit with round little white bellies.

Some personalities or individual characteristics have also started to become visible. 

For instance, the largest and strongest fish tend to stay at the top section of the water.  They get first pick of the egg yolk that I feed them, eating big gulps of it at a time.  As the yolk starts to settle downwards, they follow it down, but tend to still stay towards the top section.

 A few of the babies lurk among the plants.  They tend to be less visible and they tend to pick at the plants or pick egg yolk off the plants to eat.

 On the ground level, you will find the smallest fish.  When one of the bigger fish swim down to the bottom to pick up food, you might notice that the ground-dwellers are almost half the size and much skinnier. 

The ground level is also where you will find some fish with birth defects.  For instance, this particular fish shown above has a spine that is curved in a spiral fashion.  As a result, this fish will actually spin as it swims upwards in a jerky manner.  This fish is not very strong and tends to swim in short spurts and not very far.  Most of the time, it lies on the gravel.  It is one of my favourite fish to look for and watch.  I hope it survives.

There is one fish with a back that is bent less and it is able to swim to the top in a much wider spiral to get food.  It is still much skinnier than the others, but it is clearly much stronger than this one since it can swim all the way to the top.

 Even at the top, there are a few fish that seem unusual.  There is one fish at the top that is very long, but very thin.  It tends to just float at the top of the water, not really eating.  I am not sure if it is sick, if it doesn't store food in the intestines much, or if it eats very little at a time.

It is fun to watch these little fish growing up.  I am still giving them both the green water and the drop of egg yolk 2-3 times per day.  They don't react much to the green water, but I can visibly watch them eat the egg yolk.  I use a wooden chopstick to just poke at a raw egg yolk that I have stored in the refrigerator.  Then I stir the chopstick gently in the water and the egg yolk comes off in tiny slivers.  I can watch the fry chase the slivers of egg and sort of suck it up as they eat at it.  It's pretty neat.

Have a great day!