Hi all.

I hope everyone and their fish are well. I'll try and get on a little more from now on, now homelife has settled down a bit and I'm well again. I thought I would write a quick diary on my latest two spawns, seeing as the fry from my other two are now grown up and living their lives in their respective adult tanks or have been sold.

1)The first pair of fish that spawned last Tuesday are my mustard gas dragon HMPK boy, Harley, and my iridescent gold doubletail HMPK girl, Goldilocks. They spawned quite quickly, with no fin damage to either fish. They’re growing really well and are 5 days old now, there's roughly 50 of them although it’s impossible to properly count at the moment, there could be more lol. Anyone care to give me a clue as to the colours I could expect from these fry? The parents are such lovely colours themselves, I’m sure the fry will be little stunners.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


2)The second couple that spawned are a pair of dragon doubletail halfmoons, Zio and Azzurra. I felt it safe to breed them as they’re both quite long bodied and fit and healthy with no obvious deformities. They took about four days to get going and finally started being responsive to each other last Thursday lunchtime after I introduced a second female to stir things up (I removed the new female once Azzurra started flaring at Zio). I had to go and do the school run so I left them to it once they started wrapping, and I went to check on them around 3:30pm Zio’s belly was huge, and he was eating eggs as they fell from Azzurra, even nipping at her egg tube (yuck!). So I let them wrap several times more and each time he ate the eggs, even snapping them out of the nest when Azzurra tried to save them from him. So after the last wrap I kept Zio away with the end of a net to give Azzurra a chance to collect the eggs and put them in the nest. Then I removed Zio and let Azzurra take over the nest duties as she seemed willing to care for the eggs. I couldn’t see very many in the nest. Azzurra was very tired and beaten up, and kept resting in the plants and wandering the tank, although she did sit under the nest and mouth the eggs from time to time. When the fry started hatching she seemed very tired and weak, and made little attempt to replace the falling wriggling eggs, eventually eating half of them (some were clearly unfertile though). I removed Azzurra, my little star who did a good job of keeping the eggs alive that long, then I collected the eggs and put what remained of the nest in a floating breeding trap and only three fry fully hatched. The eggs that were wriggling eventually stopped and died, which was quite sad. There were only about 10 altogether, including the ones that hatched. So I put the three surviving fry in a 9L tank with a tiny sponge filter, mini heater and live plants and water from the breeding tank. As of ten minutes ago, two of the fry are alive and seemingly well, they are now free swimming and eating banana worms and exploring their little home. I haven’t seen all three fry together at the same time, only two, so I’m not sure if a third is still alive. I suppose I’ll have to wait until they’re a bit bigger and easier to spot! I really really hope these poor little guys stay strong and keep going!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]


Hope you like the pics anyway, I'll try and take weekly or bi-weekly pics to update on the fry's progress, right now my camera is still broken and won’t focus on anything as small as fry right now.

Jess x

Beautiful pairs Jess liking the DT females.

Congrats on both pairs spawning

Dang,they are soo nice =DD

Wow. Lovely mg and royal blue couple.

They are gorgeous love the hmpk boy. Good luck with the fry

Thanks you guys. The fry are all doing well thank you. I even saw all three of the DTHM fry in their little 9L tank last night, which was great. I hope Sarah and Natalie that you both have luck with your spawns too :-)

07/02/11 UPDATE: All the HMPK x DT fry are doing brilliantly, haven't seen any bodies and I did a full clean up of their tank yesterday. I can easily count 50 fry, I think there are between 50 and 80. Some of this bunch of fry have turned out to be doubletails which I'm thrilled about :-)

All three of the DTHM x DTHM fry have survived and are growing nicely, they're now living in the main fry tank with the HMPK fry.

I will get pics when my camera can focus on them. It's broken and cannot focus on things as small as the fry, even though they're all getting pretty big!

Good to hear your spawns are fairing so well

congrates hun!

fingers crossed you will get mg, two tone body to fins with the lilac/blue body and yellow finnage, maybe also some solid lilac/royal blue fry from the first pair. Dragon scaling will vary between the whole spawn. They're gorgeous! Great choice!

Second two are a great match for dt's as well even if you only have a few fry hopefully they will be the strongest of the bunch, female looks very neat finned so should shorten and tidy the male fin size too. I will look forward to the grown up pics!!!

Congratulations hun!

I forgot about this lol...

Crossing mg’s works similar to the blues
Blue/yellow x blue/yellow = 50% blue/yellow, 25% turquoise/yellow, 24% steel/yellow
Steel/yellow x steel/yellow = 100% steel/yellow
Turquoise/yellow x turquoise/yellow = 100% turquoise/yellow
Turquoise/yellow x steel/yellow = 100% blue/yellow
Blue/yellow x steel/yellow = 50% blue/yellow, 50% steel/yellow
Blue/yellow x turquoise/yellow = 50% blue/yellow, 50% turquoise/yellow
Black/yellow x steel/yellow = 50% black/yellow, 50% steel/yellow
Black/yellow x black/yellow = 100% black/yellow

Because yellow is non-red based results will be different if you use any other combo that doesn’t carry the non-red gene resulting in red bicolors and multicolors in the first generation.

Thanks so much for the info, Kel. it's much appreciated :-) I'm very excited to see what colours these guys will end up with. I also thought the parents were a good match..and I made an extra-great choice now that it turns out Harley had some DT genes himself, so I'm doubley thrilled with this spawn now LOL.

I imagine the three surviving DTHM's will look very similar to their parents. Unfortunately the female of that spawn died a few days ago, she had really bad spawning injuries and never recovered :-( At least I have three of her babies to carry on the line.

Will the colour of the offspring also depend on the lighting lol?

If you've put Azz's three babes in with the others, how do you recognise them?

It's great to know you've such a successful spawn! Now to keep them alive...

Lol, knowing Harley his fry will all change colour in natural light :-P

Azz's babies are all very dark blue/grey, almost black, and their doubletails are bigger than Harley's fry. Although I'm sure once the HMPK fry start colouring up it might be more difficult to tell. I'll have to just assume they're all in there until 3 months time when their fins fil out more lol. I see them quite a fair bit so I'm confident they're all still with us *touch wood*.

Waiting for the fry to colour up has to be frustrating at times. Must seem like forever even
though it hasn't been that long (all relative of course)!