Cheap DIY Hatchery for Babies

[koikeepr]

It was pouring rain yesterday, so I grabbed a bunch of scrap PVC and got to making an inexpensive hatchery for my eggs/babies.

You're looking to make a rectabgle, and I had a whole bunch of these on hand:

Next, just put all the parts together. If I would have had a can of black spray paint on hand, I would have sprayed the pipe black or used ABS pipe, but all I had was this and black paint. Sigh!:

Next, put all your pieces together to form the top and bottom. I made my hatchery particularly large (34") because I wanted to potentially use to separate a fish in the pond if I had to, or to put in a specific breeding pair of goldfish. You can make yours any size you want by cutting the PVC length accordingly.

Put the pieces of PVC in between the top and bottom now to build your box:

 

[koikeepr]

Next comes the screening. I happened to have this in the house. It's pet screening that is not metal like window screening, but rather plastic so it's nice and pliable and soft. It was not wide enough to fully go around the frame in one pieave, so I cut the smaller side panels out.

Initially, I was planning on sewing the screening together, but I had no fishing line to do so. So, I thought about my favorite zip-ties, and figured I could use 'em!

Here's the hatchery after all the zip ties (or cable ties as some folks call 'em) cut:

It's a little big for my current pond, but I wanted to make it bigger since it will primarily be used in my new pond. I've got the two spawning mops with eggs on them in there (hard to see). Unfortunately, there were not many eggs left on the spawning mops since I started building my hatchery the next day. But there were still a bunch.

As I said, if you spray painted the pipes black or used ABS, you will hardly see the hatchery in your pond. But it's only something you use a short period, so it wasn't a big deal to me. I figured the hole thing took about an hour and 15 minutes to make and cost under $10 bucks to make.

Happy DIY'ing!

 

[koidaddy]

Great DIY project koikeepr!

Whats the dia. on the pvc?

 

[koikeepr]

The top and bottom are 3/4" and the side walls are 1/2". You can easily make it all out of 1/2" or 3/4". I just had the particular 3 prong fittings where the down hole was a smaller size, so had to make it work.

 

[mrsclem]

Koikeeper- I have the same setup in my pond. I call it the playpen! I keep my lilies in it so they don't get eaten. Last year the koi used it as a spawning mat and I ended up with several hundred babies for the first time!

 

[koikeepr]

Sweet! How the koi get in, did they just jump?

 

[mrsclem]

The big female got pushed up and over the side by 2 large males. I've got last years babies in there now as one side is just below water level. It's getting raised tomorrow! The little guys can be just as destructive as their parents.

 

[DoDad]

:smile:

 

[nigil]

Cool!

 

[mrsclem]

Well the playpen did it again. I haven't seen my fish spawn this year but when I moved the playpen to shallow water- eggs & fry!! Didn't really want or need more fish but I guess it was meant to be. Lots more to sell or give away-

 

[jenn.]

is that netting fine enough to keep the fry from escaping? or do you need to wait till they are a little bigger before putting them in from another tank?

We just saw fry swimming around our lights last night and really want them to survive.

 

[koikeepr]

You buy the finest netting you can find at the home improvement store. Basically, if it can keep a mosquito out of your window, it can keep fry in.

 

[jenn.]

gotcha! heading to Home Depot for pvc and netting tonight

 

[jenn.]

As promised:
Frame

Skinned

In the water. we caught some things that we believe to be fish fry. i hope we are right.

 

[koikeepr]

Cool. You did a vertical one instead of horizontal!

You will find frogs will also dump their eggs into this thing too!