For those of you who know April and I, you know were new to fish. We also have turtles. This is going to be a long story but I will restate my questions in the final paragraph.
So we had three JD's from the spring auction this February. 1 abandoned the tank while we were at work. 1 bashed its head off the glass and went belly up. Jack, our belly up fish, was fed to our turtles. Three days later our son was asking why Mommy's fish were in his tank... Apprently the turtles ignored Jack and we now have an Undead fish. Not long after our discovery that Jack was very much alive April purchased 5 baby JDs and Sparrow, our 3rd JD was "sacrificed" for turtle food. We didn't think she survived the night but low and behold she is still with us. Her tail fin and a few millimeters of her actual tail were removed as well as a reasonable piece of her dorsal fin and back.
Somehow Jack and Sparrow have managed to not only survive but thrive in our turtle tank. So much as they have spawned in our turtle tank. Jack is not afraid of biting our turtles and even goes as far as stealing food that is hanging from their mouths. Our "substrate" consists of maybe a gallon of cherry to baseball sized rocks atop egg crate light diffuser with two large rocks for hiding under for our pleco, guppies and survivalist feeder minnows. We also have a 2in pvc pipe roughly a foot long and a small fake log. Our filter is a 10 gallon tub with 3 gallon insert full of lavarock with green scrubbies and a large piece of 1" filter cloth(blue on one side white on the other.) We have our heater in the filter with out 250gph pump. The pump dumps into the right side of the tank and our siphon tube pulled from the left rear corner. The tank itself is a 55 long and currently utilizes about 38 gallons not including the 10 in the filter.
The JDs spawned directly under the siphon hose atop a few flat rocks. If I lose the batch I won't be surprised considering our pleco feeds on the algae on the turtles durring the night, I know he won't be shy to snatch up the eggs. Regardless of how slow the turtles are they will eventually find the eggs. Also the abovementioned siphon hose. So against all odds, knowing my luck, these eggs will hatch. Then the fry are going to want to eat. I do NOT have a breeder tank. If I were to get one I wouldn't have anywhere to put it or the time to set it up. To top the whole shebang off we are headed out of state come Friday and will be gone for a week...
So in summation; What do fry JDs eat, do the male and/or female need to be removed from the tank, will the fry find a low current location after hatching or should I expect to feed them in the filter where the fry guppies are, does anyone want some JD eggs? Also my phone uses German and English so if the autocorrect is really bad I apologize and I will edit when I have a computer in front of me:)