Dying fry

[XJfella95]

So I have a brood of about 40 fry and the last two days I've come home to dead fish. They lay on the bottom and seem to die slowly. I checked all the water parameters and they are as follows. Ph-7.2. Amm-0 trite-0 trate-0. I've been doing partial water changes of ro water and still can't figure it out. Today I came home to 7 dead and more acting as if they will pass. I've been feeding them frozen cycops and daphnia. They take to them well.

Does anyone have any suggestions, before I loose my whole brood?


Here's a video of one on it's way out.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v243/xjfella95/79ba82ef.mp4

Thanks in advance

 

[Mike Wise]

My guess is not enough food. Or they may be eating some, but not all of the food. The leftovers could be 'spiking' your water conditions for a while. Personally, I would use live foods like microworms, newly hatched brine shrimp, baby daphnia, etc. These will live in your water long enough that all will be eaten before they can die (if not overfeeding). I've found the survival rate of fry increases noticeably when using live foods.

 

[XJfella95]

Thanks Mike.

I took the mother as well as the hatchery out of the tank last week because she got to the point of chasing them around. Also figured it was time to end the wheaning and feel them souley other foods.

I'll throw the hatchery back in the tank tonight and see if things improve. I hope not to many pass before the shrimp hatch and are eaten.

I toss in a chunk of food and watch the whole brood feast on it until it's gone. Ten an hour later I'll notice more laying on the bottom. I guess food is a good way to start.

This sucks, i have 3 months wrapped up in these guys. Oh well hopefully some live and I learn.

 

[Mike Wise]

Are you using a net hatchery in your tank? If so, I would expect large losses. They have no way to brows on the bottom, where they get a large part of their food.

 

[XJfella95]

Nope. The have a 10gal grow out tank with lots of java moss and sand bottom. The hatchery I'm referring to is Tom's brineshrimp hatchery

 

[XJfella95]

Came home today and cleaned up 20 dead ones. Some seemed to have popeye and persed lips.

Any ideas?

This sucks

 

[flashbang]

Hi, i am also in the same situation as you after moving 40 young cacatuoid fry into a spare tank.
After a lot of thinking and testing i have gone all out to try and save the remaining 20 fry so i have removed all the fry and put them in another tank with totally new water and different plants and decor etc.
At the moment they are looking very well and fit in the different tank.
This was a decision i made on the assumption that there must be something wrong with the first set up as i had recently made the tank from some spare glass i had and also used a black silicone which states on the tube it is safe for aquarium use but this was new to me and i had not used it before. I am now going to remove the black silicone from the inside of the tank and reseal with a clear silicone that i have used before and i can trust.
This may or may not be the problem i have encountred but it will give me peace of mind about the silicone.
This is my attempt to help the fry survive and maybe nothing to do with your situation but i will try anything to help the fish i have in my collection.

 

[XJfella95]

Yeah. I think it's some type of disease. They've been in this tank since they became freeswimmers. And other then cycling, they are also the only things that have been in this tank. To cycle I used syphoned water and filter rings from my main tank. I think it's safe to rule out any communicable diseases. It's either from the crushed freeze dried blood worms I started adding to their diet or the frozen daphnia or cyclops.

It seems like any kind of activity (like swimming away from my net as I cleanup dead ones) puts them over the edge and they soon die. At firsbi thought it might be a poor oxygen exchange ratio so I lowered the water level so the return flow from the hang on back filter created more turbulence. This doesn't seem to help.

Even tho I set up the BBS hatchery last night, I won't be surprised if I go home tonight and have lost my whole brood.

 

[ste12000]

Problems like this are almost always due to water quality, its easy to damage the fish with a couple of days without water changes and even when you resume a normal routine its quite often too late and the damage has been done, quite often the gills get damaged and the fish drop one by one, its happened to me numerous times and its often easier to scrap the lot and start again, its fairly easy to have this attitude with a 70 tank fishroom but loosing a single batch after 3 months is really hard and i feel sorry for you, just dont let it put you off!!!

I have also converted your 10 US gallons to the litres that i use to size tanks, it works out to 37 litres, now if you take 3-4 litres due to the gap at the top of the tank and another 1 or 2 litres for displacement with the sand then your tank holds only 32-33 litres!!!! thats around 8.5 US gallons and far to small for a batch of 40, 3 month old fish.. After seeing this i would almost guarantee that the problem is water quality, they would pollute this tank almost as quick as you can change water!!

Also im not a huge fan of water test kits, many of them are not accurate at all and can mislead the aquarist into thinking things are fine, best to keep the water and not the fish and use the fishes behaviour as a guide to how healthy your tank is!!! All you can do now is change lots of water every day and hope the rest of the fish are not too far gone.

I answered another post like this on my other forum, maybe you would want to read through it and see my opinion on test kits!! http://www.britishcichlid.org.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1336

 

[XJfella95]

Thanks for the info. You're probably right. It is a loss but I hope to have better luck next time. They were all doing well just three days ago.

If I get another brood do you think it'll help if I get a very large biowheel type filter? I have two grow out tanks. Both at 10gal. When they get bigger I'll split them up too.

I appreciate you taking the time to figure out some things for me.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Problems like this are almost always due to water quality, its easy to damage the fish with a couple of days without water changes and even when you resume a normal routine its quite often too late and the damage has been done, quite often the gills get damaged and the fish drop one by one, its happened to me numerous times and its often easier to scrap the lot and start again ...... Also im not a huge fan of water test kits, many of them are not accurate at all and can mislead the aquarist into thinking things are fine, best to keep the water and not the fish and use the fishes behaviour as a guide to how healthy your tank is!!! All you can do now is change lots of water every day and hope the rest of the fish are not too far gone.

I agree with all of Steve's post, to properly measure water parameters you need lab. grade analytical kit. I'm lucky enough to look after a lab. with all the kit, but even with selective ion electrodes you can't really measure the ammonia content of water accurately. There is a technique that will give you an estimation of water quality, it is a measure of the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), but unfortunately it isn't something you can do at home.

think it'll help if I get a very large biowheel type filter?

Yes I do, any "wet and dry" filters are very efficient for biological filtration.
This is to do with their extremely large oxygen/CO2 exchange capacity.
I've written an article that covers aeration and biological filtrationfor another forum, with apologies for the cross-post, but the details are here:

http://plecoplanet.com/?page_id=829

cheers Darrel