johnrutz wrote:
well my "fry experiment" seems to have failed

I had 10 in an aquarium feeeding brine shrimp
and another 10 or so still in the kiddie pool with algae varios pond
bugs fed powdered fish food
the rest still in the Koi pond

the ones in the Koi pond are nearing and innch long and starting to show
color
the other two batches did not grow at all the aquarium group is still a
quarter in long after nearly three weeks

thy are now in the veggie filter probably with the most available food stuff

so we will see how they do in comparison to the ones in the Koi pond.

I will try to post again near the end of august as to who grows best now

This is not suprising. The pond has the largest volume of water and
therefore likely had the most stable water quality of the 3 environments.
Prime water quality is needed to get fry growing at good rates. This is
why many hobbyists who breed fry (for any kind of fish) are very diligent
with water changes in fry tanks. They do frequent partial water changes or
they have some sort of automatic water changer to maintain good water
quality. Even if the food source is high quality, if the water is not
pristine (in terms of nitrates and other similar measures), growth rate
will be reduced. This came as a frequent problem for me with my last batch
of cichlid fry because my tap water is far from pristine (high nitrates)
and it was hard to reduce nitrates enough to get good growth. Currently
planning the indoor equivalent of a veggie filter tank for next batches of
fry in order to overcome this issue.