by DanRad on Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:31 pm
Congratulations on the eggs! To take your questions in order:
If the eggs are fertile, it's usually around 5 days till they hatch and you have what we call "wrigglers". At that stage they stay pretty stationary, and the parents may or may not pile a little bit of gravel around them. After another 5 days or so, they become free swimming, and you'll see a cloud of them, usually watched over by one or both parents.
Sometimes it takes the pair a few tries to get it right -- they may eat the eggs or the fry, but they'll usually get the hang of it. It is of course possible that you have 2 females, in which case the eggs won't be fertile, and will eventually be eaten or fungus. The preference I have devleoped is to keep the fry with the parents where possible -- they seem to thrive better. Of course, being eaten sort of shuts off their growth, so let your fish be your teachers. Even when I remove the fry to another tank I usually leave some with the parents. Sometimes when you remove them all one parent will "blame" the other, and then ave a problem.
I generally feed some kind of fry food for the first week, then shift to crushed flakes, which I put in a little water to carry it down to the level where the fry are.
At some point you will need another tank for the fry to "grow out" in. The parents patience, especially in a small tank, isn't infinite, so stay tuned in to what's going on in the tank.
Good luck, and keep us posted on how it goes!