3,895 answers about fish & aquatics
A healthy aquarium is a balanced one — water chemistry, filtration, stocking and feeding all work together, and most fish problems start with the water. This page gathers the fish and aquatics library of KinsLe Answers in one place, organized by topic for freshwater and saltwater keepers alike. Every answer is original, written by KinsLe, and tied to a real KinsLe feature.
297 answers in Young Pets — page 11 of 13
Find good homes for surplus young fish by going through routes where the receiving tank can be judged: a local aquatics shop that will sell them on responsibly, an aquarium club or society exchange, or fellow keepers you can ask about tank size, existing stock, and water. Offer youngsters when they are robust and…
Feed fry amounts so small they look almost cautious — only what the batch clears within about two minutes — delivered several times a day right where the fry gather, and remove whatever settles within the hour. Use a pipette or the tip of a spoon for powdered and liquid foods so portions stay controlled, and back the…
Keep the young tetras that form one healthy, confident school of a size your tank can genuinely support, choosing fish that feed boldly, swim evenly, and show clean fins and full colour, and rehome the surplus while they are young and easy to place. Do not keep a few of several kinds if that leaves every group too…
Start by protecting the surprise fry where they are: fit a sponge over the filter intake, add floating plants or a breeding trap if you have one, and feed the tank a little finely crushed food near the fry's hiding places. Do not strip the tank apart chasing them, and do not overfeed the whole community trying to…
Care for baby swordtails with dense plant cover or a spacious rearing tank, a secure lid, and generous but measured feeding, because these are among the largest livebearer fry and they grow — and produce waste — fast. Newborn swordtails can take crushed flake and small live foods almost immediately, and they need…
Raise baby platies and mollies with thick plant cover or a roomy rearing tank, frequent tiny feeds that include some vegetable matter, and clean, well-mineralised water. Both are livebearers whose fry are born larger than guppy fry and can manage crushed flake early, but molly youngsters especially need space to grow…
Care for baby guppies by giving them dense floating cover or a separate rearing space away from hungry adults, feeding tiny amounts of fine food several times a day, and keeping the water clean with small, frequent changes. Guppy fry are born free-swimming and eat within hours, but they are also bite-sized, so…
Give every spawning its own code the moment the eggs or fry appear — the parents' names plus a short batch letter — and use that same code on the tank label, the log page and every tub the fry move into. Note the parents, the hatch day, the first foods offered and any losses while they are fresh in your mind, because…
Juvenile plecos grow steadily on food that reaches the bottom after dark, not on whatever algae the tank happens to grow: put a sinking wafer or a piece of blanched courgette in during the evening, when the pleco feeds and tankmates are settling, and lift out what is left next morning. Youngsters need more than…
A settling hierarchy looks dramatic but stays fair: chases are short, the loser slips away and reappears to feed with its colour intact, and no single fish is the target every time. Bullying is the pattern where one youngster is hunted on sight, hides all day, stops eating and starts showing clamped, torn fins or a…
Juvenile fish should spend their first weeks with you in a simple separate quarantine tank — bare-bottomed, with a sponge filter and a heater — before they meet your community, because shop-stressed youngsters are the most likely carriers of the problems that sweep established tanks. Two to four quiet weeks of daily…
Small newcomers face two shocks at once — different water and residents big enough to eat them — so acclimatise in stages: float the bag to match temperatures, then drip your tank water in slowly until the water matches too, with the tank lights off, and release the youngsters beside dense cover rather than in open…
Through their first summer, koi fry grow best on the opposite of an adult pond schedule: several small meals spread across the warm hours, each sized to disappear within a few minutes, instead of one or two large feeds. Start the tiniest fry on fine fry foods and newly hatched brine shrimp, then step up to crushed and…
Shops and keepers take young snails once they are sturdy enough to travel and graze confidently — for mystery snails that usually means around pea-to-marble size with a hard, smooth shell, which takes weeks of generous feeding rather than days. Grow them on calcium-rich food and leafy greens in clean, uncrowded water,…
Albino fry need the same food and water as their siblings, but two things genuinely differ: without pigment, their eyes and skin are bothered by bright light, so give them shade, floating cover and no spotlighting; and their poorer eyesight makes them slower to find food, so they lose out at crowded feedings. Feed…
With young angelfish, the honest answer is that you usually cannot tell yet: males and females grow up looking alike, and the head-shape and fin-length clues sold as shortcuts fail as often as they work. The reliable sign arrives near maturity — often somewhere in the second half of their first year — when a pair…
Small tanks cool fast because a few litres of water hold very little stored heat, so when the room drops overnight the water follows within hours. Stop the swing at its sources: move the tank away from windows and outside walls, fit a lid to cut evaporative cooling, add foam insulation behind and beneath it, and run a…
A good daily check is a slow look, not a test kit: at the first feed, watch whether the whole batch rises and hunts food with rounded bellies afterwards, or whether some hang back, listless or clamped. Between feeds, compare sizes as the days pass — leaders growing, runts staying pinched — and count and remove any…
Use a length of airline tubing as a mini-siphon rather than a gravel vacuum: its narrow bore moves waste-lifting water slowly enough that newborn fry can swim clear instead of being pulled in. Work in short passes just above the floor, pinch the tube to pause whenever fry drift near the intake, and drain into a pale…
Keep very young betta fry shallow — a few inches of water — so every trip to the surface for air costs them little energy while the labyrinth organ is still forming. That organ develops across roughly the first month or so of life, and during that window the air above the water matters too: a lid that holds warm,…
The clearest sign is size: a fry is ready when it is plainly too big for the largest mouth in the main tank, with room to spare rather than a near thing. Swimming should match — fry that hold their own against the filter flow, range the whole net and strike at food confidently are ready; fry that still hug the mesh…
For the first couple of days baby corydoras live off their yolk sacs and need nothing but clean, shallow, gently filtered water. Once they start nosing along the bottom, offer foods that sink and stay small — microworms, powdered fry food and newly hatched brine shrimp — several times a day, because cory fry feed down…
Keep two hatcheries running a day apart so one batch is always at its most nutritious, just-hatched stage while the next is still in the water. Each day, switch off the air on the mature cone, let the shrimp settle toward the light, and draw them off from below, leaving the unhatched eggs and shells behind; rinse the…
Start with foods small enough for the fry's mouths — infusoria or powdered fry food at first, then newly hatched brine shrimp and microworms — and add finely crushed flake alongside once the fry are snapping at larger particles, usually in the second or third week for many common species. Raise the flake share over…
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