# Itty bitty teeny tiny mystery fry



## chris oe (Feb 27, 2009)

I only have a few kinds of fish in my 55 - brochis splendens, porkchop rasboras, and some kind of ancistrus/bristlenose - the LFS said temminiki. Lately I've been feeding all kinds of fresh veggies, parcooked to try to correct some bloat with the bristlenoses - and working pretty hard on the water quality so it has been a pretty happy tank, understocked, overplanted and eating pretty fancy. 

Just the last three days I've been seeing at least one (maybe more) little fish, maybe a half centimeter long and less thick than a hair and completely transparent - the only way I saw it at all was because I noticed one of the bubbles was swimming sideways in a jerking fashion and then I noticed the bubble had a tail. 

I thought no way this thing is going to survive, I'd never catch it (did I mention overplanted?) and it looks too fragile to net anyway. Probably it would go through anything less fine than a brine shrimp net and then get lost in the seam at the bottom. Somebody's going to eat it. It will never find enough food. But it is still going after three days (or else some of them are). 

So the first question is: Brochis fry would hang close to the bottom or sides, they wouldn't be up in the middle of the water column, right? And ancistrus fry would be hanging out in a cave or hollow being guarded by dad, so this must be a rasbora? Is that reasoning sound?

Second question: is there anything I can do to up this little toughie's chances of survival? I'm mighty impressed, what with the current I've got going in there, and all the big fish.


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## mec102778 (Feb 17, 2011)

you know, I was cleaning my 30G the other day and after moving all of the fish to a holding tank and scrubbing and cleaning for hours I had it filled with water. All the sudden I noticed, this little wiggly thing that didn't see to swim with an sort of actual direction. It got sucked in and spit out by my filter, took several circles around the tank. I think eventually it died, not exactly sure but seriously I don't know what fry if anything could have survived my cleaning.


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

If the tank is planted pretty good, the fry may survive. For food it will eat all the little critters that are in the plants. If it was a bn fry it wouldn't be clear and if it was big enough to leave the cave it would be on the glass and not swimming around. Brochis splendens which is the emerald cory, fry would stay near the substrate and also wouldn't be clear. So most likely it was a rasbora unless there was an egg in a new plant that you may have put in there.


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