Baby Fish

We've had a little fish tank for the past three years, and two of its long-living inhabitants are Zebra Danio fish.

Last weekend, we noticed that the female had a veeery large belly. So Mara and I watched some YouTube videos on how they breed. It turns out they make fish eggs, not giving birth to live fish. This is called "spawning".

According to the information we found, the parents are likely to eat the fish eggs if they see them. So, to avoid infanticide, we needed to place a net right below the parents that would allow the eggs to drop down quickly to safety. Here's our setup:

We placed the lady and gentlefish in the tank with about two inches of water over the net. They started their little dance:

Then we waited.
About three days later, when we were about to declare that the fish parents were dancing just for fun, and that we would have to try again, our friends came over and spotted little dots in the water.

At first, they were very still. Babies just born stick to the bottom and gather their strength for the first day of their life.

Then, few by few, they started to swim at the top. Here's a tiny sample:

The next challenge is to find something for them to eat.

We read online that makeshift fry food can be out of:
- mashed fish food flakes with warm water
- mashed boiled egg yolk with warm water
- algae water out of lettuce left in warm water to rot
Thus, we worked hard at making all three choices!

Gaius prepared the the fish flake mash:

Mara peeled the boiled egg very efficiently, then obtained the yolk by simply eating all the white around it:

Good thing we had boiled three eggs, or else the fish fry might not have had any left after these little kids had their fill:

Here is Mara pipetting the newly made food for the little fishies:

The actual tub has hundreds of these little guys, which was unexpected. According to some fish forums the usual survival rate is about 10%, so we'll see how it goes.