Looking good Chris, was that the spawnings from the weekend?
It will be good to see them colour up at each stage.

The spawning was on Sunday 30 March at 9 am. The temperature was knocked up to 70 degrees and will be kept around that figure for around a month to put as much size on the fry as quickly as possible. This makes it easier when sorting out the fry.

excellent chris ,looking forward to seeing the fry develope.

well done dont they look cute lol
iv just had a new fry of convicts biggest fry iv had!!!

Just a quick update......

The fry became free swimming on Thursday the 3rd April and had a feed of newly hatched brine shrimp, they are now on 3 meals a day of brine shrimp and measure approximately 10 mm. I should have some updated photos at the weekend, hopefully they should be around 18-20 mm long by then, Temperature is a constant 78 degrees and the trickle system has just been turned on to keep the water in as good a condition as possible with so much feeding going on, it is a pain to keep the bottom of the tank clean, you cannot syphon it as you suck up too many fry at this stage, it just has to be scraped and then netted off the top of the water with a fine mesh net placed in a jug to settle and any little blighters that have been caught can be easily caught and placed back into the tank.

Two of the spawnings hatched and the one from the three year old female were totally infertile, I have put this down to her holding the eggs too long, She is fattening up again so I should have another spawning hopefully by Wednesday/Thursday from her.

well done chris
the pics look mad !!!!!

The Lionheads have spawned today, the Blue Male is going to be a daddy! I hand spawned them and hopefully by Tuesday I should have fry from them, fingers crossed. It was not a major spawning as I used a small female who also carries a lot of blue colouration, it is my intention to make sure that my strain carries the blue background of a true Calico fish.

The young Shubunkins are looking good and growing well they have now been hatched for 11 days and are around 14mm long, eating three meals a day of baby brine shrimp. With my failing eye sight I have had to use a magnifying glass to look at their tails, but they look good so far!!!! I spent the morning with my mate Tony Roberts and was surprised to see my young even though three days younger than his were bigger! This is because I have cranked the water temperature up to 80 degrees and manage to hold this temp pretty much constantly day and night even though we have had several hard frosts over the course of the last week. I will post some pictures of the fry once they start to colour and develop.

The spawning from the Lionheads hatched last Tuesday, I was on a course in Stoke for 3 days and was dreading coming back to see what had happened!!! My wife (God bless her) had fed all the youngsters as per my instructions 4 meals a day siphoned off the bottom of the raising tanks and even cleaned out 2 tanks for the lionhead fry to go into, water heated to 80 and ready to go!!! One thing that she did not do was to feed the Adults!!!!!

I am just in the middle of installing 6 x 4' x 2'6'' tanks to thin out the spawnings. I will post pictures of the Shubs that are now 17 days old and need sorting fast!! the Lionheads are 4 days old and still look like slithers glass at the moment, hopefully they will colour up like their father and I will have a tank full of potential winners on my hands.

Next job is to spawn the Veiltails (nacreous) and the Moors (Broadtail), I have them on heat at the moment, and am feeding loads of Bloodworm and chopped earthworms, If they spawn this week I am in the ***t! as I do not have any available tank space until I sort out the pinks and scaled Shubs from the spawnings.

sounds like its all go.
Is there anything you do to try and stop them spawning? like separate males and females.

On a Tea Break!!!

Generally the fish spawn throughout the summer months anyway, all I do is warm them up for an earlier spawning feed heavily, keeping the males from the females, put them together late afternoon and hopefully next morning spawning has started. Any spawnings that take place in the summer months are just left for the adults to feast on.

The only reason I have early spawnings is so I can show the young fish at the 3 main shows of the year, i.e. Northern, Bristol and London shows and also at Hayling Island in October.