discovered i had babies

[KENthereefnoob]

hi all, i am new to this forum and have a lot of questions. about 7 weeks ago, my wife and i noticed that we had about 20-30 fry of some sort living peacefully in the overflow built into the corner of our 90 gallon tank. we have three pairs of fish, one pair of percula clowns, a pair of green chromis, and a pair of purple looking chromis. we also have a sailfin tang. we also noticed that there are about a dozen of the fry living in and around a little cave in our live rock. i put a nylon stocking over the intake tube inside the overflow that leads to the sump so that the fry will not be sucked into the sump.

i have been waiting for the fry to get big and strong enough so that i can take them out of the overflow and into a small 10 gallon set up i want to put in my garage. my question is, how long should it be before these guys get big enough to safely remove from the overflow? they look bigger, but are still just the size of large brine shrimp. im not sure how or what they are feeding on but they seem to be thriving in the overflow, swimming happily every time i look at them. how big should they be before i attempt to remove them out of the overflow and into a larger separate tank? thanks in advance everyone. any answers, info, opinions or thoughts will be really appreciated. please let me know any questions you might have that i can answer that might help better answer my questions. thanks again.

 

[lifeoffaith]

If they haven't grown much, they could be shrimp. If they're fry they would be growing and they wouldn't be surviving unless you are feeding them.

 

[KENthereefnoob]

they definitely look like fish now. they have the eyes, mouth, fat belly and tail of a fish. just no fancy colors yet, and they arent growing very fast. at almost two months, should they be showing colors at this point? i probably correct myself in saying that we dont feed them. we werent feeding them until we discovered them, and now we will mash up flake food into powder and drop it into the overflow. we suspected that food being caught in the overflow when we fed all of the fish in the tank was how they were surviving. ill try to take some pics of them today for identification.

 

[ichthyogeek]

My money's on the percula clown pair. From what I've read of non-clown damsel spawnings, the fry are incredibly hard to raise, but at the same time, also take quite a bit of time to grow out.

 

[hotelbravo]

Any chance we can get pictures

 

[KENthereefnoob]

I am going to try and take some pics later tonught and post them on this thread. I dont know how good the pics will turn out but ill gice it my best shot. Thanks again everyone.

 

[KENthereefnoob]

these pics arent the best, i took them at night when the director on my LEDs were in its violet phase at the moment i snapped the pics. if you look closely to the right you can see 2 of the fry. there are at least 30 of them in my overflow darting around once i put the LED over them. they move so fast and with the low light, it was hard to make them appear in frame. these were the two best pics i got. i used my camera phone, while its a 41 megapixel, i think ill try with my DSLR tomorrow in the daylight.

 

[ThRoewer]

Your description sounds more like Mysis shrimp.
Do they look like this?

 

[KENthereefnoob]

they definitely arent shrimp. no antennae, they are definitely fish. they look like little tiny fish, tiny fish tails, and fish mouths. the pics i took sucked, i think if i shot a short video and uploaded it onto youtube and pasted the link you could get a better pic. im pretty new to reef keeping, but ive been keeping fish and have bred many freshwater fish before like angels, sword tails and mollies when i was a kid and these definitely are little fish. im gonna try again to get a better shot of them today and post again. thanks for all the help, hope to get new pics up this afternoon.

 

[Bongo Shrimp]

Yep, those look like and sound like mysids from the pics and description. There are many different species and some may hide their antennae while swimming. Also, the fry of the fish you have in your tank (green chromis, damsels, and clownfish) could never survive in an overflow or main tank. They would only survive and grow in a dedicated fry tank with specific first feeds.

 

[kizanne]

Awesome. You might have some copepods and such in your tank to feed fish. If you have a magnifying glass or microscope it is fairly easy to tell the two apart. Either way Congrats on your babies living this long. My shrimp and crabs throw babies but my tank doesn't seem to support them.

 

[ThRoewer]

Take some better pictures of them in the tank (override the light program to get white light or use a LED flash lamp - purple or blue light doesn't work well with cameras).
You could also try to catch one to take a picture.

 

[KENthereefnoob]

Sorry I took a while to get back to this thread, I finally got a really good look at what was in my overflow with some white light and tried to shoot some video but it didn't come out right, but after some long examination, I noticed that there are definitely shrimp swimming around in my overflow but theres also a very distinct second creature living in there as well and I can't tell what they are. After mistaking some shrimp for fry, I don't want to even guess as to what the second little creatures are. I'll try to get some better pics somhpw and update this post if I find out what the second species is. Thanks again everyone for the info and steering me in the right direction.

 

[thedasher]

Sorry I took a while to get back to this thread, I finally got a really good look at what was in my overflow with some white light and tried to shoot some video but it didn't come out right, but after some long examination, I noticed that there are definitely shrimp swimming around in my overflow but theres also a very distinct second creature living in there as well and I can't tell what they are. After mistaking some shrimp for fry, I don't want to even guess as to what the second little creatures are. I'll try to get some better pics somhpw and update this post if I find out what the second species is. Thanks again everyone for the info and steering me in the right direction.

The other creature may be an amphipod

 

[shah1]

They look very close to amphipod or ghost shrimps.. jmo