The Puffer Forum

Well my celebes halfbeaks that ive had for a while now, just had a 3rd batch of fry. And their biggest batch so far.
The first 2 batches were in pure fresh(didnt know they were brackish till i did some really indepth research on them). And approx 2-3hours ago had a batch of 8 healthy fry. Ive moved them into my 5gal growout/ghost shrimp breeder tank. Currently there are 13 halfbeak fry and a few small snails in the tank(havent gotten my ghost shrimp yet.)

Brackish of 1.015, temp of 76c
Amonia, nitrite, nitrates where they should be
PH around 7.8(hard to tell with my test kit of exact .0 number)

I thought Ghost Shrimp ate fish fry if they were still tiny... no?

Derp, ignore me. I missed the part saying there weren't any Ghost Shrimp! >_<

lol its ok. If i did have shrimp in there, they would get a workout tryin to get the halfbeaks. They are quite a fast fish, and only stay at the surface of the water. They never go below until they are bigger and older.

Congratulations on the halfbeak fry! Once you have the fry, it actually gets pretty easy. I've kept few fish with fry that are as easy to rear as halfbeaks. They will eat Daphnia from the start, as well as frozen lobster eggs, which I added in tiny amounts using a pipette. Halfbeaks readily learn to be "hand fed" using a pipette or forceps, and that's one of the nicest things about them.

The big problem with halfbeaks is simply getting a brood of youngsters at all. The females seem to be [a] easily spooked and prone to miscarriages; and show very sharp declines in fertility after the first 2-3 batches of fry. I'd love to know what's the deal behind this latter issue. Possibly more of an issue with Nomorhamphus spp. than Dermogenys.

Cheers, Neale

PS, you might find this interesting:
http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/aquaria/ ... eding.html

lol yeah it could be hard for shrimp to eat them but not impossible i onec sawa goast shrimp nibleing on a full grown endler

Fry are doing well..Held off getting the shrimp to breed for now. Im just getting a few this week from a local reputable breeder instead, until my HB's get a bit bigger.