One of my personal goals this year is to breed more species of fish for BAP points at my local fish club. As such, I wanted to find a systematic approach to being able to successfully raise fry of several species, simultaneously and particularly that critical first couple of weeks. I don’t have a large fish room. My fish are in the “man cave” so I want my setup to look somewhat nice. I work full time but have some flexibility on hours. I just needed something that works for me.
I’ve been using dedicated 2 ½ gallon tanks for each spawn. This works but it’s a major pain setting up tanks each time a pair of fish spawns. Even more so, it is a hassle and tearing down the same tanks if the spawn fails or after moving fry to a grow out.
I’ve seen various “fry systems” on the fishy YouTube channels. I dismissed the shelves of plastic containers that several killifish people have. It just seemed clunky and wouldn’t look right in the area I have for it. I like the fry rack, quarantine setup that fellow club member Lucas Bretz of LRB Aquatics has. But unless I could get a great deal on the specimen containers that he bought by the pallet load, I didn’t see that working for me either. Additionally, since I like to breed temperature sensitive rams, I needed better control of higher temps than what I think I can do with that.
I’ve also seen a couple of videos featuring a system used by Dean Tweedle, aka “Master Breeder Dean”. There are aspects of that system that I like but some things I didn’t like. Dean, being a teacher, is pretty good at explaining his system. Lucas’ interviewing skills really drew that expertise out of Dean in the YouTube video titled “Wild Cool and Crazy Rare Fish Dean Tweedle’s Fish Room Tour”.
Dean’s system uses a 20L aquarium with a canister filtration system. He then has acrylic freezer trays that he “hangs” in the tank. Each tray has air and water pumped into. The water overflows out of each tray, through a sponge, so the fry constantly a constant supply of fresh water and then the water gets filtered by the powerful canister. The bio-load is pretty low for what the capability of the filter so the water should be pretty clean.
What I really liked about Dean’s system is the temperature control, simplicity, and looks. At least for my desires, I recognized a couple of drawbacks as well. Dean admits that his fry system evaporates about a gallon of water per day. This is because the trays sit above the tank’s rim preventing the use of any lid. With Indiana’s humid summers, I really try to minimize water loss in my tanks. Also, if I were to let that go a day or 2, the fry trays could easily be above the tank’s water line. It’s not too much of an issue, but I don’t like that feature.
The biggest drawback for me is that Dean’s design requires an internal water pump to circulate the drip system into the trays. I’d like to grow into a single pump air line system for my fish room and try to do all my filtration via air driven system. I wanted to take Dean’s system, but use an air driven drip system to circulate water through the trays. I wanted something like Swiss Topical’s German Breeder Rings (GBRs) but with the acrylic trays. I also want to be able to keep a glass top to cover the tank.
To begin my fry system, I setup a bare bottom 20L with a 200W Colbalt Neo-Therm heater and filtered by an AquaTop UV canister. The Neo-Therm heaters are completely submergible and can be accurately set to any of a wide range of temperatures. AquaTop may not be a top of the line canister, but it has a very usable UV feature that can easily be turned on and off. I only run the UV feature for a few hours every 3 or 4 days. And since the filter was for a 40 gallon tank, I felt it was more than suitable for mine. I then placed a glass top on the tank and installed a gang valve with air above.
Without any other effort, I can use German Breeder Rings in the tank. I could also fit a 1 gallon jar configured for angelfish eggs and fry in the system as well. I wanted the acrylic trays for several reasons. It was my intent to leave a fry tray in the system for up to possible 4 weeks at a time. They acrylic seemed easy to clean up. Also, the GBRs tend to drift around the surface more than I wished.
Making a working, floatable air driven acrylic tray was the only real DIY aspect to this whole project. I experimented with several iterations of design before settling on what I liked best. I was able to find tray like what Dean uses at the local Container Store. I was also able to find something similar but smaller on Amazon. All of these had the handle that Dean uses to hang the tray. This turned out to be problematic for my floating trays. I solved that problem with a $9.00 blade for my table saw labeled for cutting plastic. If I find similar trays without the handle, I’d rather use those.
Dean paints his trays with white Krylon spray paint. While I used the Krylon, I painted some of my trays black and some “Blue Ocean Breeze”. I don’t know that color matters but I did think the black could potentially be used for light sensitive fry.
Providing a sufficient opening for water drainage proved to be my biggest challenge. I tried just a single 9/16” hole that could be plugged with a sponge. This failed miserably as the water backed up in the tray and then over flowed the sides. Any surface swimming fry would have been released into the main tank. I ended up drilling 2 holes in the drain end, then cutting out the slot between them. Once again that plastic saw blade came in handy.
To get the trays to float properly, that is above the tank water surface, I used silicone to glue a 1” X 1” piece of insulation foam to the container. My initial prototype had the top of the foam match the top of the tray. I found out that placing it about 1” down works much better. This raises the bulk of the container and lets the over flow go through the slot as intended. Yet again, that plastic saw blade worked far better than a box cutter knife for cutting the foam into uniform pieces.
I purchased a couple of small Jet Lifters from Swiss Topical’s to circulate water through the containers. To secure the Jet Lifter, I drilled a ½” hole in the foam glued to the tray. The Jet lifter can be secured and removed simply and without much effort. I didn’t like the output portion of the Jet for two reasons; (1) it sticks up too high for my lid unless I keep the water level a little low and (2) its height causes more water surface disturbance that I wanted. I corrected both issues with a P-PVC street elbow from Lowes.
Overall, I am very happy with what I’ve put together. It is very versatile. I can use it to do an initial grow out for many types for fry, including rice fish, dwarf rainbows, rams, plecos, corys and even angelfish. It is easy to maintain, and I don’t have to water changes on multiple, small tanks. The trays are easy to swap in and out. I have a variety of sizes too. I can leave the trays in the system for as long as I like with out them getting clogged with detritus. Each tray keeps the fry in a compact space, closer to food And, as a bonus, all my littlest fry are all together making feeding times much easier as all I need to do is go down the line tray by tray.
You can find this and other fishy articles at my website www.JohnsAquatics.com.