Baby Goldfish 2 Months Old - Changing Colours

The goldfish babies from the first batch of eggs are now about two months old.  As you can see, they are starting to change colours.

Both of them were this muddy brownish grey-green colour at first.

But now one of them seems to be losing the brown coloration and patches of a yellow orange are starting to show up.

You can see how they look different from each other now.  The brown coloured one actually is a bit darker now than it used to be.  I'm not sure if that colour will become even darker, or become lighter so that it becomes white.

You see how the dark colouration shows a lot of silver/white when the light hits it.

Meanwhile, there are about 3 babies still left from the second batch of eggs.  I guess they were the fastest swimming babies and are the best at hiding?  They have remained uneaten by the larger baby goldfish, and the larger babies seem to have lost interest in trying to eat them.

This is surprising as the second batch babies are certainly still small enough to fit into the mouth of the larger baby.  See how much bigger the older ones are?  I have since put a lot more greenery into the tank so that the babies have lots of places to hide.  I think that helps.  Also, the goldfish are fed food that is denser than before so they might be less hungry as well.

The babies are now big enough to be fed crushed flake food and guppy pellet food.  They have learned that we are the ones that bring them food, so they swim frantically in front of us when we are standing in front of the tank. 

 This makes it much easier to take pictures of these lovely little fish.  It is still a marvel to me that these fish were hatched from eggs produced by my adult goldfish.  I feel like I sprouted them from seeds and the seeds magically grew fish instead of plants.  It's pretty cool.

Have a great day!

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!

Goldfish Babies Day Six

The baby goldfish are now six days old. 

Almost all of them are swimming about and have good control of staying still and controlling movement in the water.

 As you can see from the photo, food is clearly moving from the stomach to the intestines and out.

 The swim bladder is still visible as a bubble on the fry.

 The baby goldfish have a more rounded body shape now as the body is starting to fill out.  You can also see fins now!  See the little tuft at the end of the tail?

 From a bottom up view, you can see those little fins on the sides.

 In terms of length, the baby fry are now easy to see compared to when they were first born.  I would estimate that they have doubled in length.

 You see that the spine arches a little bit over the stomach area.

 This fish looks okay, but I have noticed at least two babies that have very crooked spines.  They are bent about 45 degrees or more.  One of them is so crooked that he/she swims in a spiral.  The other one is on the gravel and just hops from one area to another instead of swimming.  I think these are the babies that would normally be culled, but I want to wait and see if they can survive.  The one that swims in a spiral looks well-fed, but the one on the floor looks skinny.

I feed the babies some of the green water and a drop of egg yolk swished about twice a day.  When I am home in the day time, I give them a feeding in the afternoon too.  Their bellies look full so I think they are eating enough. 

I hope you are having a great week so far!

Baby Goldfish Day Four

The baby goldfish are now four days old.  (I hope you'll excuse the lousy photos.  They are getting faster and harder to photograph.  I end up with a lot of blurry photos.)

The main change in development today is the addition of a white line that extends from the full white belly towards the back.  I think this is the food moving from the belly outwards to the anus.

I suppose this means that the babies are eating and pooping.  There are also more babies swimming about.

 I have been feeding them the green water (which is looking worse each day.  It is sort of grey-green now).  I also experimented with feeding them raw egg yolk today.  I gave them one drop and expected it to disperse in the water.  However, it dropped to the bottom fairly intact.  I had to use a long chopstick to stir and break up the yolk.

The babies did eat the yolk once it was broken up, but it made the water look kind of gross.  I let them eat for about 5-10 minutes and then I removed one cup of water and replaced it with one cup of water from my well-planted tank.  I don't know if this is good enough, but I figured they would have the benefit of some cleaner water plus some organisms and good bacteria from the well-planted tank. 

 Something else I noticed is that the babies all hatched within 1-2 days of each other, but they look very different in terms of development.  Some of them are swimming around with full bellies and the white waste tube.  Some of them are swimming around with just the air bubble in the midsection.  Some of them are small and skinny and they dart about the gravel.

 So it seems like the babies are not the same at all.  Somewhy, I expected them to be like clones or something. 

 I am guessing that some of them are healthier than the others. 

 Or that some of them have birth defects.  I know for sure that some of them died after hatching as I saw a few dead babies after day one.  I read that some are born without a swim bladder so they end up drowning.

As each day goes by, I find an occasional dead baby here and there.  It is very sad and I removed whichever ones I found today.

  Another sad tragedy is that some of the babies were small enough to fit through my filter mesh.  I found a whole bunch of dead babies in the filter area today.  I have since densely packed the suction pipe with floss so that no babies can possibly make it through.  I rescued any live babies I found in the filter area.  Hopefully they will be fine.

This has not been a perfect process, but it has been a good learning experience so far.  I am glad that there are still many babies for me to continue to watch in development.  I hope I will have the chance to see some of them grow up.

Have a great day!

Baby Goldfish Day Three

The baby goldfish are three days old now.  

You can pretty clearly see what I meant yesterday about the little air bubble in their midsection that helps them float.  Notice also that their eyes don't look as big now compared to their body since the body is gaining some girth.

  See the little air bubble in the middle?

 More of the babies are swimming about now and you can see that many of them are now horizontal instead of vertical.

 Sometimes they are not used to the air bubble and they will slowly float to the top like a bubble instead of swimming.

 Many of them still dart about with their heads upright.

 See how small they still are compared to a measly bubble on the surface of the water?

 I expect that there will be even more swimmers by this evening.  

 I have not noticed any babies in the other two aquariums with the guppies or goldfish parents.  I have a feeling they have all been eaten, but I will likely find out soon once all of the babies are mobile and swimming faster, more purposefully around.

I fed the babies some of the green infusoria water today.  I don't know if it actually makes a difference since all the organisms are so microscopic that it just looks like cloudy green water.  Also, the baby goldfish tank has lots of gravel and plants that should be creating the same kind of aquatic life as my infusoria jar.

Have a happy day!

Baby Goldfish Day Two

The baby goldfishes are two days old now. 

About 8 of them are now darting about the tank.

 

They seem to have sucked up some air from the surface and now have a tiny air bubble in their midsection.  I think it is the swim bladder.

These mobile babies tend to dart to the surface and sort of bob up and down as though they are picking at something on the surface.

You can see two babies swimming about in this picture.  

Most of the time, they do not swim horizontal.  They are still often vertical with their heads facing the surface of the water.

You can see one baby attached to the side of the glass.  They seem to rest in this way.  You can see how the air bubble kind of makes the body want to be horizontal now.  

This baby is quite vertical.  I feel like their body shapes are changing.  They are less like a stick with a yolk sac in the middle.

Some of them hang off of the plants.

The rest of the babies are all spread out on the floor. 

 They are a bit more alert than yesterday and dart about along the ground.

 Some of them look a bit awkward.  Some attempt to swim, but don't get very far before sinking slowly back down to the bottom head first.  Some of them attempt to swim near the current from the filter and they get tossed about before making a sad sink back to the bottom. 

 I think these bottom dwellers will be swimmers tomorrow.  For today they are still working on it.  Some of the eggs that did not hatch at first hatched the day after.  So some of these babies are only 1 day old.

This is Pa Chow Cho (Shy Grass).  I looked up at the big tank and he was glued to the glass like this.  Odd fellow...

Have a happy day!