Red Cherry Shrimp (RCS)

The fry moving experiment was a success and I now have 24 frys in the bigger tank with only about 9 frys left in the planted tank. I got 10 new RCS from a friend over at the MAC forum and they look to be happily "cleaning up" the planted tank. These little critters are a hardworking bunch and got straight to work the minute they were released into the tank. Hopefully, this cleanup crew will help to restore the planted tank back to its original condition.

I also began seeing the molly frys shoaling together to ward off the bigger fishes in the big tank. It looks like this bunch is going to make it unless some freak disease strikes ... :)

Homeys

I finally took the leap of faith yesterday and dropped in 12 of the molly frys into the main tank ... yes, with the "big fishes"!!! I figured that since they've outgrown the mouth size of all the fishes (except the pleco a.k.a. sucker fish), it should be safe to drop them in there. And to much of my pleasure, they are still happily swimming in clusters (and that is why I am calling this post homeys ... :) ... get it??) this morning. I hope to drop more into the main tank later this evening if all goes well to make room in the planted tank so that it is not so crowded.



BTW, the last of my RCS died yesterday and so I need to get more soon so that the planted tank do not turn into an algae jungle. I figured the reason the RCS's died was because of over-crowding in the planted tank.

Color Setting In

Amazingly, some of the molly frys are starting to show their colors ... yes, the bright orange from the molly "parents". However, some of them have some blackish coloration which is likely due to cross breeding with other molly colors while they were still in the tank at the LFS. It will be interesting to see what color each of them grow up to be ... and how I will be able to manage the numbers in which they come by.

There is a strange fry though in the lot which remains relatively small for quite sometime now despite feed like the rest. That fry is either stunted in growth of a hybrid of some other kind ... endler+molly maybe? Only time will tell ...

More Algae Problems

After about a week, 3 of the red cherry shrimps died ... each dying a day or two apart of each other. The remaining 3 looks to be in good shape and one of them look like a female so hopefully, they can multiply and fill up the tank with an army of cleaners. I had to get Algol (looks like small silver worms) to attempt to cleanup the brown algae on the aquarium glass lately since the shrimps does not seem to be doing any cleaning on those spots.

As for the molly frys, they are still growing and growing but amazingly, at a very different rate. I can see very small frys and much larger frys ... I wonder if any of the smaller frys are endler frys (hopeful thinking) ... although it looks like the female endler is finally gravid. I hope she is able to give a healthy litter of frys that will make it to adulthood and colonizing the planted tank with ENDLERS!!!!

Growing Pains

The molly frys are still thriving in the planted tank so much so that the "bigger" molly frys is starting to bully their smaller brothers/sisters. I occasionally see a few of these bigger frys hogging the worm feeder in the tank. Good thing that the tiger endlers are still bigger than them and still get their share of the juicy worms.

I actually wanted to get a small pleco (a.k.a. sucker fish) for the planted tank to clean up the algae and also the left over food from the feedings but I read that the plecos tend to "destroy" the plants and sometimes up-rooting them. An alternate method was to use small shrimps for the house keeping instead and that was exactly what I did ... got 6 little red cherry shrimps from someone on the net (which turned out to be an ex-school mate of mine). The cherry shrimps are still hiding for the moment but hopefully, they will be up to the housekeeping job ... only time will tell.