# Galaxy Rasbora fry!



## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

Well the good news is that I successfully bred my galaxy rasboras.  The bad part is I didn't discover the fry until I was tearing down the tank  I also found a bunch of baby tiger shrimp that I didn't know I had either! All in all I captured about a dozen baby rasboras, and seperated them from the adults & shrimp. Not sure how well I'll do at keeping them alive because these guys are tiny. I had just tested the water last week, and here is what I had:

Tank size: 5gal
Pressurized CO2 @ 1bps
Aquasoil Malaya & Powersand substrate
pH=6.5
Gh=6
Kh=5
Nitrate=0.5
Nitrite=0
Phosphate=0

If anyone is interested in more info. I'll try to help where I can. I'm hoping this wasn't a fluke, and they will continue spawning once they return to the tank. I also need to figure out how to block the intake of the filter without hindering the flow.


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Celestial pearl Danios....


LOL

regardless, cool man! It must be the malayan soil. I have mine in amazonian but haven't spotted any little ones yet.


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## toddnbecka (Sep 20, 2006)

A sponge over the filter intake works well, just needs to be cleaned weekly. I have microworms handy if you need some, they're smaller than bbs, great live food for tiny fry.


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

How tiny is tiny! 

If they're really small then they'll need infusoria. This can either be cultured in a separate jar/tank or can be encouraged in the fry container. I tend to do the latter as it's less hassle! My tanks with minute fry have lots of java moss in as this seems to grow small amounts of infusoria. I have just bought some Golden apple snails too as they make loads of infusoria from their waste. Going to keep them in a little tank and feed them lots of lettuce!
IME, don't be too religious with your tidying up the tank too. Mulm that collects in the tank is also an excellent 'natural' source of infusoria and has helped me raise lots of broods of Apistos, killis and cardinals. It won't effect the water quality at all unless you've got piles of uneaten food lying around!

Toddnbecka's dead right about microworms, once they are over the infusoria stage they'll take microworms before BBS. And microworms are way easier to culture IMO.

Well done and good luck with future breeding and maybe you can start supplying these lovely fish to help take the pressure off the wild population.


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## John P. (Nov 24, 2004)

Right on! Seems these guys are prolific. I hope this bodes well for their natural populations.


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## TNguyen (Mar 20, 2005)

eklikewhoa said:


> Celestial pearl Danios....
> 
> LOL
> 
> regardless, cool man! It must be the malayan soil. I have mine in amazonian but haven't spotted any little ones yet.


Is it true that they have been reclassified?

Thanh


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## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

toddnbecka said:


> A sponge over the filter intake works well, just needs to be cleaned weekly. I have microworms handy if you need some, they're smaller than bbs, great live food for tiny fry.


I thought about the sponge. I may cut it down a little to keep it from restricting the flow too much. Thanks for the offer, although these guys are too small for micro worms even. I would say about 1mm long!


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## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

ed seeley said:


> How tiny is tiny!
> 
> If they're really small then they'll need infusoria. This can either be cultured in a separate jar/tank or can be encouraged in the fry container. I tend to do the latter as it's less hassle! My tanks with minute fry have lots of java moss in as this seems to grow small amounts of infusoria. I have just bought some Golden apple snails too as they make loads of infusoria from their waste. Going to keep them in a little tank and feed them lots of lettuce!
> IME, don't be too religious with your tidying up the tank too. Mulm that collects in the tank is also an excellent 'natural' source of infusoria and has helped me raise lots of broods of Apistos, killis and cardinals. It won't effect the water quality at all unless you've got piles of uneaten food lying around!
> ...


That must be what they are feeding on. I'm not sure how old they are, but they are 1mm long right now. I just got lucky even spotting them. Had it not been for the baby tiger shrimp I spotted, I would've just emptied the tank. All I do is trim the tank, scrub the glass and suck the water out. I had a thick layer of HC in there which can build up a lot of mulm under it as well. That may have been where they were hiding.


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## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

TNguyen said:


> Is it true that they have been reclassified?
> 
> Thanh


I have looked, but haven't found anything that says they have for sure. Mostly just "they should be reclassified" etc.


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## John N. (Dec 11, 2005)

I believe they were assigned the new name: _Celestichthys margaritatus_ (Celestial Pearl Danios) according to this article.










Good luck with raising the fry to adult hood. They are endangered afterall! 

-John N.


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

Tyson Roberts, who formerly described the fish and gave them their scientific name, Celestichthys margaritatus, also gave them a 'new common name' of Celestial Pearl Danio, which is basically a translation of the scientific name into English.

Personally I think i'll stick with calling them Galaxy rasboras and use the correct scientific name. I don't like being told which common name to use like that, they tend to arise more organically than that! After all we don't call all fish a translation of their scientific name.


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

Still, the use of the name "rasbora" is misleading as it has been identified as a danio.

But of course...we still call the plant "pellia" as well.


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Yep reclassified long time ago.....

There's a celestial forum too....http://www.celestialpearldanio.com/index.php


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## ed seeley (Dec 1, 2006)

turbomkt said:


> Still, the use of the name "rasbora" is misleading as it has been identified as a danio.
> 
> But of course...we still call the plant "pellia" as well.


I know what you mean, but what exactly is the difference between a danio and a rasbora? They're both cyprinids and apart from danionins generally being more elongate I must admit to pleading ignorance on the morphometric differences! I know there in different subfamilies and I'm sure there's some difference but it's not outwardly obvious to me! All I can see is that danios tend to have longditudinal stripes and barbels!

I'm just saying to assume people will start to use a 'new common name', like your Pelia example is a little, well arrogant or naive (they're the wrong words, but the right ones escape me!)

Maybe we should compromise and start calling it the Galaxy Danio!


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## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

Well a few managed to make it through the filter I guess because I found 2 more in the tank yesterday. The tank sat dry for about 12 hours, so there's no way they could've been in the tank. These guys must be as tough as the rest of the cyprinids.


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## turbomkt (Mar 31, 2004)

My point about pellia is that people find it hard to change. I'm one of them. Pellia's name change was a name change long after the plant was introduced to the hobby, IIRC. Not the case for these fish...

In this case, we've been calling a fish the Galaxy Rasbora because that is what the guy who discovered (or first ID'd them?) called it. If you think about it, we're talking about a fish that was found less than a year ago. Why shouldn't we use the name the scientists have decided is more correct? Now is the time to do it, not 2 years from now.

I agree they should have gone with Galaxy danio instead, but with Celestial pearl danio being a close translation of the scientific name, I'm good with it. It still implies stars all over the place.


Anyway...

Ajax,
Congrats on finding two more in the tank! Now you need to get at least another generation going and get into a breeder's program


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## HoustonFishFanatic (Feb 26, 2007)

Hey John thats some news!!!!!!!! Congrats!1


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## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

HoustonFishFanatic said:


> Hey John thats some news!!!!!!!! Congrats!1


Thanks man, I appreciate it. I swear these things look like they are dying. They kinda shoot off real quick and then glide toward the bottom like they are on their last leg. Guess that's just the way they swim when they are babies because they've been doing that for a couple of days now.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Good work with getting these fish to breed. That must be a very good feeling! Hopefully everything works out well for you and a big school of Galaxy's emerge for you. I'm starting to think, I need to locate some of these.


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## ad9465 (May 25, 2007)

I saw my Celestial Pearl Danios went through the mating dance for a couple of times about two weeks ago, so far no sight of fry  sigh~~~~~~~~~


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## argblarg (Aug 10, 2006)

I picked up 10 of these at a LFS, first they had ever seen them, it sure looks like I have 10 females


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Was clearing out all the CRS that were in my Eheim when I found about 20 of these little guys.....


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## HoustonFishFanatic (Feb 26, 2007)

hey Q they look nice would you have any CRS for sale by any chance??????????


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Sorry, don't have any CRS to spare right now. 

I'm letting them build up the numbers right now.


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## rs79 (Dec 7, 2004)

Very impressive.

I had something similar happen once. I bought a pair of "what the hell are these" killifish in the early 80s and threw them in a 40 gallon tank stuffed full of val. A new baby forced the tank into an unsed room and "soon" never happened. About the time I went to clean it out there was like, an inch or two of disgusting green foul smelling water. As I began cleaning it out I found about 200 inch long Epiplatys fascioltus.

http://images.killi.net/f/FAS/


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Thats cool!

I almost let these go down the drain but I noticed itsy bitsy CRS so I started looking for them and that's when I found these little things dart off.....


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## Ajax (Apr 3, 2006)

Hey congrats Quoc! That's exactly how I found mine. I haven't seen any spawning activity since I re-scaped my tank unfortunately.


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Hahahaha the Eheim fry saver!

I started to look for fry after seeing the black mark over the females genital area which according to the Tropical Fish magazine article is what shows up when they are mature and breeding.


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## phreeflow (Aug 4, 2007)

Hey that's great news and a huge step toward the conservation of these little gems. I've often wondered about keeping some galaxy rasboras (I'm calling them that...adamantly :heh: ...it just sounds cooler) with CRS. How's that working out for ya? Any problems with the Galaxies eating the the CRS shrimplets or nipping at their appendages and antennae???


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## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

I have noticed a very slow increase in shrimplets so I will say that they do in fact eat those that make themselves visible to the Celestials. My tank is jam packed with plants though so I think that helps it.


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

I just had my galaxies go into a major spawning, they have been doing some typical sparring for quite a while until Saturday. I have a Magnum 350 that I use for cleaning tanks, I stuff the chemical basket with floss and use it like a vacuum cleaner. it works great for trimming hairgrass and other small plants just trim and suck up the trimmings. anyway I have some BGA going on the 10 Gal the galaxies are in and I put the 350 on the 10 and started combing the hairgrass to get the BGA out of it. after cleaning the hairgrass I left the filter on the tank and thats when I noticed the behavior. the female was burrowing down into the hairgrass with 1 or 2 males following. I have some crude video of them taken with my point and shoot digital camera. as soon as I can get it edited I'll post it. for some reason u-tube says it's to big, it's only 3 minutes and 111Meg.

John, maybe you could add a bunch of water flow and see if yours react the same. or maybe my experience was just a fluke. 

A 350 on a 10 is a lot of current.

Brian


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## pwilson460 (Jul 8, 2007)

I have been looking for some of these fish for a while so if you ever want to sell some of your fry shoot me up a pm.

THANKS

PW


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