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.