Baby cichlids and future planning...

Hey guys, as I'm sure a lot of you have read on my other thread I've recently become the proud vicarious father of 36 yellow lab fry. I've set the 29G tank up as a nursery rather than selling it as I'd previously intended and have the mother hanging out in the main portion with the fry in a 6 by 4 breeder net. The female has started eating again (finally) and the fry are also eating 'first bites', both of which I'm happy about. My question is simple, how best can I handle reintroducing the female back into the 60G, and when would be the best time to release the fry from their crib and let them have free reign of the 29G? My thoughts on this are as follows so please let me know if I'm on track or haven't considered something important...
1) When to move the female:
My opinion on moving her back isn't set in stone, to be honest I think I could move her back at any time, but given the fact that shes only really shown any interest in food within the past two days I want to keep her where she's at for at least another week to feed and get her strength back. She still has a tendency to hover next to the breeder net but has stopped trying to suck the fry back into her mouth, I take this as a testament to her parental instincts and have been really impressed with her ongoing interest in her young, really something incredible to witness! I think I'll keep her in this tank for a while longer while she continues to eat and gain some weight but I don't want to wait too long...
2)When to let the fry out of the net:
Obviously this depends on two things.... when I move the mom back to the larger tank, and when I think they're getting too big for the play-pen. Having them in the confined space of the breeder net has help keep the surface area closed enough that the baby food doesnt spread around too much which I think has helped them notice when there is food for them. I'd like to keep them in this net until they are big enough to eat 'baby' sized food but they may be too crowded by this point. Also, because I have it set up to where the filter on the tank is pumping cleaned water directly at the net there as been some buildup of algae (not too bad) on the 'front' of the net where the water flow is coming from. I'm thinking of getting another net to allow me to transfer the fry into a cleaner environment and wipe down the dirty one but I'm not sure this is entirely necessary. Any suggestions on this portion are greatly appreciated, thanks to anyone who responds with suggestions!

I personally don't keep the mother in a separate tank after she releases fry. However, since she is just now starting to eat and if you think she will have problems getting food in the main tank you could wait a week. I wouldn't go longer than that and like I said, I always just put the mother back in the main tank after she spits or I strip her. I have never lost a female by doing this. I'm sure that there are adequate places for her to hide if necessary so I'd just put her back.

The thing with the fry is that they need to be able to find food. I keep mine in a DIY breeder box that is about 4x6 for about a week after the egg sack is gone. Then I move them into a 10g tank until they get to be about an inch. The you can pretty much put them wherever. With your breeder net getting algae on it, you could change it out, but as long as fresh water is getting through there isn't a problem. In fact the fry may actually eat some of the algae.

Since you already have a 29g going for the growout, that will work, but make sure that you use food that sinks since the fry will spend most of the time at or near the bottom. Leaving the tank bare bottomed makes it a lot easier to keep clean. Since it is a large tank, you will probably be feeding way more than they will eat just so they will find enough of it. With a bare bottom it is easy to see the buildup of uneaten food and waste and therefore siphon it out. Also be mindful of the filter intake. I use a sponge filter to avoid fry being sucked in the intake, but I have also put foam or filter pad over the intake of a power filter to make it so they can't be sucked in.

id just give all the fry to win... just somethin to think about

d just give all the fry to win... just somethin to think about

LMAO, hey man if you're will to pick them up I'd definitely consider it, interested in some sort of trade?

well... i just managed to stuff over 100 pounds of texas holey rock into a 55 with some crushed coral substrate. its a virtually ideal african cichlid tank now... and ive wanted some more yellow labs for a long time.

what kinda stuff you intrested in trading for? what you after?

To be honest, not a whole lot, I think the tanks hit it's apex capacity without overstocking it. If you've got any albinos/haps/peacocks that'd be cool but to be honest I'm not sure... what've you got?
I can keep the fry as long as you want, let them get big enough to travel at least, just let me know how many you want, if you want all 36 we could do that too lol

i dont have any africans. infact i had gotten out of freshwater entirely, i had about 300 gallons of south american cichlid tanks and got into saltwater... i sold my 240 freshwater, and gave away all my south americans and basically shut down all my freshwater except a planted 55 i wasnt having any luck with, so i took it down, completely redid it with crushed coral sand and holey rock and now im looking for something to put in there. right now its got a pictus catfish, a synodontis catfish, and a pleco, and 3 black mollys.... thats the only freshwater i have right now...

No worries, like I said, I'm not sure I could support any more fish at the moment. I don't supposed you'd have any extra holey rock?

lol i had this rock for sale for the longest time but i put it in this 55 and really like it so im going to hang onto it now! it makes this 55 look FULL

Ya no doubt, honestly man if they're going to a good home I'm not really concerned, send me a PM with how many you want and what you think a reasonable offer would be and I think we can work something out.

im not askin for free. tell me how much you want. id much rather support an individual than petco lol. like have to grow them out just a lil bit else they become catfish food in my tank lol.

So I walked in tonight after a few hours of being in the room with the tank and five of the fry were on the bottom of the net, three were dead and two were REALLY close but still breathing.... I removed the ones that weren't breathing after making sure they were in fact goners but left the two which were still alive in to give them a fighting chance and promptly did a 30% water change. It had been a few weeks since I'd done one and I knew it was overdue but work has had me pretty stressed as of late (poor excuse I know, the water quality seemed ok though so I hadn't been to worried about it, but it won't happen again). I'd noticed the pH seemed to be really high a few days ago and was planning on doing a change soon but hadn't gotten around to it. The two that were still alive seem ok now but I guess my question is what could have caused this especially so suddenly? Was it in fact the pH or something else? I tested the water before changing and everything seemed fine KH and GH were high but that's normal with a coral substrate right? They're all over half an inch now and I haven't had any problems until tonight, anyone who has any suggestions please help, I dont want to lose anymore and if I've missed something serious I want to catch it before more bite the bullet...

Follow-ups I would add:
After performing the water change, I Decided to wipe down the hood. At this I had previously noticed sme algae build on the canopy, at this poimt I found the alge had bubbles, some were really big....
My question is can green algae produce a gas in these bubbles in such quantaties that if one of them burst, it would release enough gas as to potentially be deadly in a closed environment which isn't ventilated properly?

id bet the bubbles are just oxygen byproduct from the plant respiration. harmless.

4 more dead this morning when I woke up...

do a 50% waterchange just to be on the safe side.

do you have a master test kit? what are your parameters?

No kit, all i've got are the 5-in-1 strips and then another for ammonia... I changed 7 gallons out last night but can do another change tonight...

Ok, just got home, looks like everyone's ok but I'll keep an eye on em for the next few days to be sure. My guess is the breeder net was choking the oxygen? Could having them isolated in the net have affected the ammonia levels or something? I took them out of the net this morning before i went to work and seeing this was the only difference between last night and today I'd say the net was somehow involved. Do you guys agree?

Hey guys, thought I'd post a few pics I took last night, the fry have really taken to the added space and all seem to be doing very well! I just wish I'd moved them out of the net sooner, I'm convinced they'd all still be alive if I had...

sweet!

With everything that's gone on with work the past few weeks I haven't really had a chance to sit back and thing about what's been going on in the nursery tank. Seeing as I'm trying to kill some time before I head home for the day this is as good a time as any, I'll try and take some pics after I get home and post them later...
The first of the month I'm on my weekly engineering conference call and look over at the main tank (in the same room I use as an office) and I can instantly tell the Lab is holding again, upon closer inspection, yup definitely preggers, this is both exciting and a bit combersome since I only have the one pair if this is the kind of turn around I can expect I may quickly run out of room for babies!!
All the fry from the first batch have been successfully eating progressively larger food (started with Hikari First-bites until they were just under 1/2", moved to Hikari micro briefly but didnt like how I had to dunk the pellets to get them to sink, now they're on Dianichi Krill Cichlid food and seem to be growing fast!). They're all about an inch in lenght not including the tail. They also have some new tank mates, 6 pygmy cories which are awesome new additions, and given the fact they'll only ever get to be a little larger than an inch they're a perfect solution for cleaning the tank up! In addition to the cories, I found a tiny snowball pleco that I'm excited to have grow and eventually become a member in the community tank. I got the cories and plecos at the TCA swap meet (also picked up a green spotted pleco that's about 4.5" and in the community tank) I am very glad I went and intend to make more events like this as I had a lot of fun despite only spending a short amount of time there...
I can't tell you how much joy and interest I have for these tanks, in the short few months I've had fish again I've learned more than any other time I had tank growing up and a lot of it has come from being on this forum, plus fish don't take commercial breaks haha!!

These are long overdue but here are some updates on the Fry tank







Given the larger fry are all over an inch now, I think I'll plan on offloading them when they grow another half inch to inch depending on how long I can keep them without crowding the tank. Also, the female Acei has been holding for 10 days now, she's thrown me for a loop a couple times simply from confusing her with one of the other females who's about the same size.
I'd compare this drama to a season of 24, a show which I now cannot stand due to the mechanics by which each season progresses, bare with me as I present a dramatic interpretation of the past week in the style of 24:
Mr. President: "She's holding babies!!!..."
Jack: "She swallowed the babies..."
Mr. President: "She didn't swallow the babies but they're going to blow up a jelly farm if we don't give in to their demands!"
Tony: "She swallowed the babies because the terrorists had her husband hostage!"
Jack: "She didn't swallowed the babies but the terrorist got away!"
Tony: "Mr. President, she almost swallowed the babies but Jack bower shot her before she could do it!"
(Jack Bower didn't actually shoot her, he just set up a hologram to make the terrorists think he shot her!)
Terrorists:0 Jack Bower:+Whatever season this is....

Buddy, you need to read some Terry Pratchett novels, this will prove to you that there are more of us around than you realise (arghh ok realiZe) (that stops spell checker, I wish it spoke "English").
One day either I will bring the Starbucks to your house, or you to mine, and we can discuss, for hours (whilst the ladies roll their eyes at how we can be so involved in what happens in the small glass arena) just what is causing the President to chase the wife of the Vice President, in front of the Secretary of State, and what makes the JIC shimmy sideways like that every time that sexy Yellow Defense Secretary glides past.
Oh, and I have a nice bullying Blue Acei ready for the BBQ!

LOL that's too much drama for me

Ya, the big Acei Females is definitely not holding anymore, however the smallest of all the Acei is holding apparently, and has been for some time now seeing as I spotted eyeballs this weekend... I released the second Generation of Lab Fry from the Breeder net last night, I wasn't too worried about aggression from the larger fry but to play it safe i let a couple guinea pigs out initially to see how the larger fish would react. No warning signs after twenty minutes so I let the rest of them out. The Breeder net is now awaiting the first batch of Acei (fingers crossed lol) I'll most likely keep an eye on the holding Acei for the next few days to try and better gauge how far along she is in the holding process, depending on this I may be stripping her by the weeks end... We shall see

Here's a pic of the two gen's of labs cohabiting, sorry for the dirty glass.