# What do you feed your calvus fry successfully?



## rogersb (May 21, 2007)

I have had my calvus breed several times and the only time I had any survive was when I was using crushed NLS pellets, but even then I only had one survive. A month or so ago I pulled out 80+ from a shell and tried feeding them frozen cyclopeze but it seemed too large for them and I lost all of them. The parents have spawned again and this time I would like to have a few survive. I am keeping them in the main tank in their own fry trap, so no worries there. I have been told that I can hardboil an egg and crush it up and mix it with tank water then syringe it into their fry trap. Anyone tried this? Who has had success breeding and rasing fry and can shed some light on the subject? One other idea I had was to crush up brine shrimp flakes into a powder. All my other flakes are omega one and they do not crush up so well.


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## matrixxmaxximus (Jul 8, 2008)

for my fry, I just use Wardley Essentialsâ„¢ Small FryÂ® Liquid Baby Fish Food and then Hikari First Bites when they get a little bigger


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## rogersb (May 21, 2007)

Thanks, I'll have to give that a try


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

The best food for them is Live Baby Brine shrimp.


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## MalawiLover (Sep 12, 2006)

While I was actively breeding tAlto comps I used live Baby brine shrimp as the staple until they were large enough to take NLS grow. Then they only got the brine shrimp twice a week or so.


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## Hawks (Feb 7, 2008)

Decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs, they work great. You can get them on ebay. I was going to go the microworm way, and ordered some from ebay but, that was WAY too discusting. The Microworms ended up in the trash pretty quick.

I've got some gold heads that breed every 7 weeks. I'm on my fourth spawn from them now. I've learned a bunch from past mistakes I have made with them.

Calvus/Comp fry seem to be very lazy and won't go looking for food. You really need to try to let the food fall down to them (right by them) for them to find it. I moved my first batch to a 10 gallon tank, this wasn't too successful. Out of about 70 fry, I only have 6 left. I believe they were not smart enough to look for the food. My first spawn I used crushed flake.

The last spawn has worked the best. Out of about 70-80 fry, I believe I have only lost about 20. The fry are about 5-6 weeks old now. I kept the fry in the same tank using one of those Lee's fish breeder nets (the blue ones). I put the lid from one of the Lee's 4 way plastic breeders at the bottom of the net so the fry would not get picked at from the bottom from the other fish. I have been feeding them Decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs two times a day and crushed flake 1-2 times per day.

Calvus/Comp fry do not take well to water chem changes. I have found that it is best to keep the fry in the same tank. When you do a water change in the tank, make it a small one.

My pair have spawned for the 4th time, here's a pic of the mom with eggs. Also some picks of rior fry.


























Good luck!


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## BioG (Oct 12, 2008)

Hikari first bites right off, supplementing (more like alternating) with frozen cyclops. True Calvus fry do well on BBS but it's so messy and a total pain IMO.

Using the dinky Hikari powder and cyclops, with frequent slow water changes and "overfiltration", I get my fry to 2 inches easily within the first year. I do switch to NLS grow at about 6 months though still offering cyclops here and there.

Unfortunately keeping these guys alive has A LOT more to do with water-quality, stability, tank size (namely foot print), water movement, nitrates, and filtration then it does what you feed them.

feed them very often (up to 5 times a day) but feed them very little. With cyclops "a little" means I usually quickly dip the frozen cube in the tank which leaves them enough for each fry to have 2 or so. With the powder I scoop as much as easily fits under my finger nail and flick it into the tank.


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