Breeding Project: Cherry Barb

They are growing very well as of late. They are beginning to develop a stockier body, growing girth and slowly resembling miniatures of the adults. One more step closer to their developmentation is the coloration. Almost all of them are now well on their well to looking like juveniles - being in a beautiful brass-orange coloration with as irridescence of orange. Day by day, their body morphology changes slightly to resemble more of the adult body shape.

Now, in certain lighting, the brass-orange coloration is very strong, along with the stripe that is noticeable reagardless of angle. One thing that I have noticed consistantly since they have become fry is that they have quite the large mouths for the small size they come in. At most, they seem to be able to open their mouths as wide as their eyes are, which is actually pretty large if you ever get a chance to see the body proportions. My guess is, the eye developmentation for such a size possibly speculates that this species is a strictly diurnal fish. Of course, majority of fish species are diurnal, but this only furthers that theory.

I think it is at this stage in time, that the term 'juvenile' can be appropriately coined upon them. Although they still do look like fry, I'm not quite sure at what age range and stage is a good enough indicator to demonstrate that it is right to call them by their third stage. Of course, after assuming that they take on adult morphologies officially places them in the juvenile category, it is only a guess. The young (on majority), are also officially one month old this day. This is a good track, as by the second month they should resemble very much like the adults by then! Hopefully they'll be too big to be consumed at that time and will be able to be place amongst the adults.

Breeding Project: Cherry Barb

Although I haven't updated this as much as I would like to, I have been noticing the development of the fry through a steady daily progress. Within the last couple days, they have been rapidly developing in a physical aspect. Compared to before, they have the full brown stripe that runs across their eye and through the body to the tail. Also, they are beginning to develop their coloration slowly becoming less and less transparent as the days pass by, as well as taking up the same body morphology as the parents do. It is only a matter of time before they're all fully grown up it seems!

After doing a bit of research, some people have said that the fry don't begin resembling the parents or even becoming large enough to be noticeable like a parent until at least 2 months of age. They are almost 1 month of age at this point, depending on when you want to recognize their date of conceivement. Either when they became an egg, or actually hatched. In either case, in about 5 days, they will definitely have bypassed the 1 month milestole already. I wonder how long it will take before they begin to mature and develop the sexual dimorphic coloration. As far as I know, they all develop into the brassy, orange color found in females as juveniles.

At this point, I've consistantly counted 14 fry. This is not a bad turnout considering the strenuous and unprepared everything that I had to work with. All the while, I am beginning to condition the pair once again, for I feel that it was not to the best of my abilities for this first spawning. Originally, I was just giving room for the female to recouperate considering she started becoming lethargic after being chased all the time by the male. Hopefully I will be able to save more eggs with the second time around. I am also debating on getting some Cherry Shrimp since they have been known to be great algae combaters as well as egg cleaners - supposedly eating fungused eggs and leaving the healthy ones alive, making a great egg curator in my opinion.

Breeding Project: Cherry Barb

So its been a while since I last updated this. Since the last update, the Cherry Barbs has spawned an additional time and I've come to the conclusion that they may very well spawn regularly with egg predation being the key factor as to why eggs and fry are rarely noticed in the community environment.

Of course, I am not actively trying to save these horny spawns, because it would take too much effort attempting to collect what little eggs come of these happenings. The fry at the moment are doing very well, with the ones successfully hatching growing strongly and steadily. No fry death have been noticed, and with the presence of nematode-like organisms, I suspect that what I'm feeding the fry is not the only thing contributing to their amazing well-being.

So today, while trying to study for my midterm for the next day, I decided to set some things up for the tanks. First, the female has been hassled to a lot of exhaustion, which is visible and taking its toll on her condition. With this, I've decided to split them up - not because I'm trying to condition them and try another planned spawn, even though that is undoubtedly going to happen in the process. I've also set up an air stone with tubing directed to the baby tank as well as the desk tank holding the female. In the fry tank, I've also installed a heater so that the fry will have a constant temperature as well as warmer water as to quicken their metabolism. Hopefully they'll grow and mature at a much faster rate now!