Al Anderson
“Most of my Fundulopanchax eggs I gather using fine sand or fine peat,” says Al Anderson. He boils the peat three times to remove most of the tannins, then puts the peat into a blender and chops it until it is so fine that it passes through a homemade net made out of mosquito netting bought from a fabric store. The netting is coarse enough to allow the peat to pass through, but fine enough to hold the eggs.
Harvested eggs are rinsed off into a small bowl of clear tap water, then picked up with an eyedropper and gently rolled around on a paper towel to clean them off. For storage, Al places the eggs about a half inch apart on a sponge that has been boiled and wet with tank water that has a small amount of Acriflavine in it. The sponge is kept in a light-proof container (he uses a shoebox spray-painted black on the outside). For the first few days he removes any white eggs, then leaves the eggs alone (except for checking that there is enough water in the box to keep the humidity up) until they are eyed up.
When the eggs are ready to hatch gold eye rings are visible, and if a strong light is pointed at them, the fry will sometimes spin around inside the eggs. For hatching, the eggs are placed in a bowl of tank water about one inch deep, stirred to bring the eggs together into the center of the bowl, then a few microworms added.
The bowl is then floated in the shoebox where the fry will be raised, and the fry gently released. Al keeps the water level in the fry tanks about 2″ deep for the first week or so.
– G.C.K.A. Newsletter, October 1999