Guess its time to introduce my current spawning tanks or rather experiments.
Royal Blue Full Mask HMPK Spawn
Original Spawning Tank 1
This is the original spawning tank where I spawned the Royal Blue HMPK pair. This tank was setup with 1 water hyacinth which acted as the bubble nest site, and 4 potted aquatic plants (will try to get the names of the plants). Original spawn size was estimated at 500 fries. A sudden mass death of fries was experienced when the fries were at week 2. Reason still unknown at the moment. I suspected that the mass death started after I stirred the detritus in the tank during cleaning time. 50% of the fries died and this was the trigger for me to start with my experiment tanks. Currently this tank is left with only 1 cory and 1 oto. The last batch of fries was removed to the various experiment tanks.
Experiment Tank 1
A plastic tank with Java Moss (
Taxiphyllum Barbieri) and exposed to some sunlight from nearby window. Currently have an estimate of 40 fries inside. This is the most successful experiment tank so far. It is able to provide food on its own to the fries for about 2 days. Used to dose about 4 to 5 drops of Liquifry No. 1 on the Java Moss area every alternate days. Infusoria was observed to grow inside as well as occassional mosquito larvae (currently never seen any of them. I think its because the fries are large enough to feast on any mosquito larvae that they can find). Can't wait to see them develop into fine adult bettas!
Experiment Tank 2
A plastic container bought from IKEA at SGD2. This is the most surprising experiment of all. This container was initially used to contain dirts, dead fishes (1 cory, 1 oto, and fries that mass died during their 2nd week), dead daphnia, dead plants, spoiled eggs from my white platinum etc. Even fries that are almost dead were dumped inside. Surprise, surprise! Those fries that were almost dead came back alive! And the best part of it is that they grew bigger and stronger. Seeing such surprising results, I dumped a few more weak fries from my other experiment tanks and once again, those fries grew stronger and bigger. My best guess is that I'm truly lucky that the bacteria colony in this experiment tank are the good guy and served as food to the fries. Would have lost those fries, if those bacteria are bad guys i.e. disease-causing-bacteria. Current estimated amount of fries inside this experiment tank is about 20. I hope that this batch of fries will be more resistant to disease when they grow up.
Oh no! Spotted 1 fry with white spot during my macro photography. I suspect this fry was originally from Experiment Tank 4.
Experiment Tank 3
This is the controlled experiment tank that houses the most number of fries inside. This is an old IKEA container that I bought since my Uni days (8 years ago???). This setup is water with Ketapang (
Terminalia Catappa) leaves inside. Currently housing about 100 fries. Fed with daphnia and recently started with some Tubifex worms. Growth seems slightly slow but its consistent.
Experiment Tank 4
This is an Ocean Free glass tank of size 5"(w) x 6"(h) x 8"(l) with water level at about 6". This setup is purely aged water with some addition of salt. An initial 50 fries was kept inside. Growth is VERY slow in this tank because everytime I'm facing shortage of daphnia there will be no food at all for the fries inside this tank. Every now and then there will be a few casualty. It seems that the fries in this experiment tank is extremely vulnerable to disease as well. As of now, this tank has been decommissioned and the fries were transfered to Experiment Tank 1, 2, and 3.
White Platinum HMPK Spawn
Original Spawn Tank 2
The pair was spawn in the SGD2 IKEA container as part of my experiment as well. Due to my mistake in leaving the "chimney" inside the small container when I release the female, hundreds of eggs went bad because those eggs slipped into the chimney and thus was failed to be retrieved by the male. (these are the eggs that were dumped into Experiment Tank 2). The spawn size was around 200 fries. When the fries were free swimming, I separated the spawn into 2 roughly equal amount; 1 batch remain in this spawn tank and another batch into Experiment Tank 5. Currently there is only 3 fries left in this spawn tank. Mass death reason was unknown.
Experiment Tank 5
This is also one of the SGD2.00 IKEA container. This tank is left at my doorstep and its full of algae, duckweeds, rotting water hyacinth. Didn't do any feeding except dosing of 3 - 4 drops of Liquifry No. 1. Currently feeding with daphnia. Fries looks fine as of now but its very hard to peek into the tank to get the rough number of fries. My best estimate is about 50 fries. Fries size seems to differ greatly with the smallest being around 3mm and the biggest around 6mm.
Current Results from the Above Experiments
From the above experiment tanks and their progress, I will consider future spawning using Original Spawn Tank 1 setup and transfer the fries Experiment Tank 1 setup either during free swimming stage or week 1. Eventually, fries will be raised under Experiment Tank 3 setup till jarring stage.
