cac fry

[brad]

So I've been asking here what to do to get my cacatoides to spawn, reading lots of info on the web......I decided to get through the first couple of weeks with my krib fry then try what I've learn to entice my apistos to spawn. Meanwhile they decided they's spawn regardless of how ready I am. Tonight I look into the tank and nearly all are free swimming. You'd think I never looked in this tank. Turns out mom is quite the engineer too. She dicided she didn't like any of my 5 caves I provded and decided to dig her own. Tomorrow I will start feeing bbs. Anyway, just thaught I'd share.
Oh BTW my water parameters for those who feel theirs isn't good enough: ph 8.2-8.4 gh 12 kh 10.

 

[blueblue]

congratulations for having the fries ^.^

By the way, for the pH:
are you sure that your tank's pH = 8.2-8.4?
It is too high for any apisto!! You probably wish to lower it
or else the health of the fish may be under threat...

 

[brad]

At water change it drops to 7.4. Then it slowly rises to 8.2-8.4. I was thinking my sand or possibly the rocks were causing it to rise. I`m going to start c02 for my plants and I`ll see where that gets me.

 

[BigDaddy]

If your substrate or rocks are raising the pH, the LAST thing you want to do is inject CO2. CO2 dissolves into carbonic acid, and if your substrate or decor is leeching calcium/magnesium etc... adding CO2 will increase the rate at which the minerals dissolve in the water column.

 

[brad]

All the rocks are coming out today then we`ll see if it`s the rocks or the subtrate. Thanks for the head`s up.

 

[ciclidcrazy!]

Hey, congrats on the new fry, Brad!! Yeah, your ph is reallly high. Hope your parameters go down. If the rocks are not the prob, continue doing water changes, maybe it will surprise you!

 

[brad]

All the fry died off one by one. they didn`t get eaten, they just....died. The mom would go pick up the dead ones and move them to where the live ones were, until there were no more live ones. Really sad to see.

Now the second female has little ones. We`ll see what happens.

My water is getting better. Hardness still climbs throughout the week but not as high and not as quickly as before. The entire tank is getting redone soon (if they`ll stop breeding for a minute)