Heavy losses!

Howdy...

I've recently moved my 2nd batch of young to my grow out tank, after heavy losses from the 1st lot.
I was forced to move the first lot into a grow out tank as I was moving house, after 2 weeks. Of 80ish babies, only 14 remain.

My 2nd lot, I left in their breeding net in my main tank for a month. I moved them on Sunday, and have lost perhaps 40 out of 130ish SO FAR!

What am I doing wrong?

whats youre water parameters for both tanks??
what are you feeding??
do they have any bog wood??
did you acclimatise them to the grow out tank??
how big are the second lot??
what temp is the grow out tank?

give us as much info as possable then we can try to find out the problem

Water is good, clean, very low nitate reading in both tanks (around 10 ppm), both Ph 7.2, tap water. Theyre about 1-1.5 cm long...Were some issues with acclimatising, as they wouldnt let go of the side of the bucket as I tried to pour them out, so some were out of water (for seconds)...Temp in grow out 28 degrees.

do you treat the tap water??
is it a bare bottom tank or do you use gravel
make sure youre feeding fresh cucumber and give the skin a good wash before feeding it them i always find they preffer fresh food to start with and defo make sure they have bog wood. it may just be a case of them not feeding. i never feed crushed flake untill they reach at least 2.5cm they just seem to go down hill on me when i fed them flake at a young age. if all the water is fine and the fillter is mature you could try adding a little myxazin for a couple of days at half dose i always use it when adding new fish to my tanks even when i move them from one tank to another it helps reduce stress also

Sorry to hear of your losses, as Deano says, it could be a number of reason, more info needed...
Sounds like differences in the tanks and shock...or food issues..
a run down on how you acclimatised would help..for how long, temp of both tanks ..etc...

hrmmm, sounds like me

I had a mystery illness go through my breeding tanks a while ago. Lost well over 200 fry

It can be several things. I never move my fry until they are 1.5cms but it sounds like your hand was forced.

Did you notice anything about the fry before they died? were they bloated, swimming oddly, eating or were they all hanging close to the surface.

basically from what info we have at the moment it could be 1000s of things.

So, in terms of what to do now. I would get an airstone going in the grow out tank ASAP and run it hard. make sure the water is saturated with O2. THen do a water change of 40% (if you havent already done one). then add in some multicure if you have some. If you dont then get some, its always handy to have around. Run it at half dose as full dose will kill the fry. That will help slow down any bacteria if thats what the issue is. If its a shock issue then thats done and cant be undone. I would also try and lower the pH a bit. BN like water to be slightly below 7, especially when they are younger. and drop the temp to 26 degrees. try to ease the stress on them any way you can

hope things start improving soon, this does not always happen and I must be fortunate infact my thrid spawn is on its way and while I wait the first batch are nearly at two inches and ready to go, tank looks a little crazy with so many pleco in there, but best advice I was given was to drop two air stones in there.

I had bought them for my next tank so have put them in and the fry seem to have gone wild lately and grown loads in last few days

wolverine wrote:

hope things start improving soon, this does not always happen and I must be fortunate infact my thrid spawn is on its way and while I wait the first batch are nearly at two inches and ready to go, tank looks a little crazy with so many pleco in there, but best advice I was given was to drop two air stones in there.

I had bought them for my next tank so have put them in and the fry seem to have gone wild lately and grown loads in last few days

air stones dont make youre fish grow mate lol.

if you need to use air stones put them about 2" inches under the water surface. this causes water aggitation on the surface and thats were you get youre co2 from not the rising bubbles.


im just trying another method here's what ive done ive split a batch of fry into two tanks both tanks 48 15 15 one tank is running with air driven sponge fillters the other as nothing at all in it just a peice of bog wood. ie no water movement at all. and to my supprise these fry are out growing the others at an alarming rate and are getting fed once per day all im doing is changing 10% of the water daily and leaving all their poop in the tank. i know this might sound mad but a freind of mine over in germany does this and told me to give it a go up to now it seems to be paying off. but the water needs to be hard my ph8 kh12 gh16 thats what the still tank is running at dont know why it needs to be like this but thats what i was told to do. the other tank is getting fed three times a day and still not keeping up with the others with a ph of 7.2 gh10 kh8.
the only down side is the tank stinks lol

interesting deano...very interesting

keep us posted on how this goes please

Doug wrote:

interesting deano...very interesting

keep us posted on how this goes please

will do doug might start a diary on this

thankyou for your support...

not lost any of the new fry yet, and so things are going good:)