L46 Fry Dying Out Of The Blue!

[andrewcoxon]

hi guys,

over the past few months iv noticed fry ranging from 6 weeks to 6 months keep dying out the blue. there isnt a mark on them and their bellies are full of food... iv been thinking what it is thats causing them to die but im at a loss....

iv checked all the obvious things like nitrate, ammonia and nitrite and it cant be that.

iv got my fry split over 3 tanks and the same thing happens... i lose 1 or 2 every couple of weeks and when i find them they look like healthy fry..

iv got a few ideas but would love your opinions and experiences.

Idea 1: iv just had a new boiler fitted to my house, could the new copper pipes be the problem?

Idea 2: iv just been reading the back of the "Hikari Carnivor Pellets" packet and it says it contains copper sulphate. these get fed to my adults and obviously the fry will be eating some too.

Idea 3: some kind of bloat.... iv noticed every fry i find dead has a full belly (not bloated to look at) but you can see a red/brown dark patch in their bellies which are full of food. perhaps the food is too protein rich?

thanks for your help.

andy

oops forgot to mentions the bateria build up theory.... some ppl think bacteria kills them however iv tried them in both bare bottom tanks and tanks with sand and iv noticed the same thing.

[Yann]

Hi!!

Can you explain the setuo of the tank or nursery you are keeping fry??
Cheers
Yann

[andrewcoxon]

hi yann,

2 tanks set up with adults and the fry live with them, plus a third tank set-up for fry only.

bare bottom, temp 84 degrees, lots of oxygen, multi-filtered. ph 6.7.

feed hikari carni pellets, tetra prima, some frozen foods.

cheers,

andy

[Yann]

Hi!!

I am 100% convice the problem reside in the fact you are using bare bottom, a small cover on sand should help!!
Important also to keep up good level and rythm of water change!!
With bare bottom, after some time a small film of bacteria is covering the bottom...it is what I believe to be the cause of the death!!
Any resting place for your babies that does not touch the bottom??
Cheers
Yann

[apistomaster]

I think Yann is quite right.
I would also suggest that you also add some thin pieces of bog wood for the fry to hide under.

[andrewcoxon]

hi thanks for your input!

there is some pieces of slate in the tank for with small gaps for them to hide in.

il try some sand.

also if anyone else has any ideas plz let me know.

thanks

[ablank]

What kind of frosen food do you use? I have had some bad expirenses with bloodworms and zebrafry.
Cheers
Anders.

[racoll]

Funny you noticed the stomachs full of food.

I am breeding Pseudohemiodon at the moment, and I found I was losing fry to overfeeding. They seemed very susceptible to bloating with too much food at once, and showed exactly the same symptoms as you describe.

I halved the quantity of food given at one go, and also crushed it up and soaked it for 5 mins. After this, no more deaths.

See the account here.

[apistomaster]

I fed my five little L46 earthworm sticks but their favorite was chilled bbs, black worms and frozen blood worms. I can't say they ever over ate like racoll's Pseudohemiodon fry did. They were always reluctant to leave their hiding place which was a piece of wood. All of them would stay together under it.
I bought mine as 3/4 inch fry so I can't say how to care for any smaller than that. Yann, what size/age are your fry when they die?
I do think their fry are among the more delicate species.
Barbie has been breeding wild L46 for years so if anyone knows how to care for the fry, she does.
I bought mine from her.
I believe she usually leaves them with their parents until they are good sized.
I do know that her tanks contain a substrate, caves, rocks and very good circulation.

[Yann]

They die when ususally quite young under a inch long.
After they are in a big tank with normal setup, sand etc..)
I usually have them in a nursery at an very early stage, to allow concentration of food in a small volume of space, but I vaccum 2-3 a day the nursery, totally cleaned once a week, which has help me to avoid any young loss, except once in a while but it has become very rare!!
Cheers
Yann

[andrewcoxon]

thanks for all your input.

i cant see it being caused to over eating tho, they are very shy and i never see them eating (they must eat at night) but if thats the case the food has already been given enough time to soften.

il pm barbie and see if she can help!

oh and i added a thin layer of sand last night so we shall see how it goes!

if anyone else has anymore ideas plz let me know!

thanks for all your help.

andy

[Barbie]

Sorry I'm a little late to chime in on this subject. I can't quite spread myself out thin enough the last few weeks!

My zebra tanks are actually bare bottom. I use slate caves, some with the fronts propped up, some flat on the glass. I have a driftwood tangle at one end, and a large piece of driftwood that sits across the tops of all of the caves. I read somewhere it gives the females cover to get closer to the males entrances. I'm not sure it makes any difference, but I do find females hanging out on top of males caves that way.

I have had a few fry losses over the years, but mostly to decor squashing them, frozen bloodworms (which I no longer feed anyone in my house to avoid finding 10 dead zebra fry at once ever again!), or aggression. I had zebra fry growing out with some L260 and a male started murdering fish left and right in that tank. It took three or four days to realize what was going on though and he'd murdered 15 fish total. Needless to say he's decorating a tank full of tetras somewhere now with full disclosure about what a rotten snot he is!

In my tanks, I have snails. Not on purpose, but I introduced some accidentally to a planted tank years ago and now, well, they're everywhere in differing degrees. I carefully siphon and scrub the surfaces of bare tanks with every water change to try to keep their numbers down (if I was an optimist I would say I was trying to eradicate them, but I know better!). I have no idea if this means I don't build up any bad bacteria or not. I always use driftwood in my Hypancistrus tanks, but zebras tend to hide under, facing down. L260 always hide on the wood itself, upside down, as do most other Hypancistrus, IME. I would assume that could make zebras more prone to issues from bacteria and what not growing on the glass.

I do leave the zebra fry with their parents now. I have about the same success as I did with them when I was taking the fry and raising them in condos, but I have less snub nosed fry now. I do still get some from that male, as he's very violent about shoving the little guys around (I have less when I can keep my flashlight away from him mind you!), but there are far less than when I was taking the fry and putting them in clear acrylic containers with steep sides. I also kept the containers very clean with frequent siphonings (I used a turkey baster) and I would scrub the sides with a toothbrush and flush more water through to clean them out when I was doing water changes. Again, I have no way to know if that was making any difference, but I wasn't ever having the fry loss problem that I keep hearing about.

I feed NLS Grow pellets, flake, Hikari sinking and carnivore wafers, Dainichi Veggie Fx, Frozen Cyclopeeze and Daphnia, and the adults get live blackworms occasionally (I'm not sure they actually eat many of the blackworms, but they're there if they want them). I do weekly water changes with just tap water (7.8 pH and 140ppm TDS). I really wish I had any more ideas for you, but I'm fresh out. I have a dear friend that was having this problem with fry and we've talked about dozens of different things for him to try. I think his losses are reduced now, but he still occasionally loses some, even doing things the same way I do.

My fish have been on hiatus for awhile now, since my spawning female squashed herself under a rock *sigh*. Hopefully they'll figure it back out again before I forget all the things I used to do ;).

Barbie

[andrewcoxon]

hmm so everythings pointing to bacteria build up?

would a uv filter help with this?

[AndrewC]

Last january a pair of my zebras started breeding, but i had trouble from the beginning with fry deaths.
Once they emerged from the cave, i would suck them up and put them in a hatcher in the parents tank to make sure the food got to them, but every day i kept finding one dead until they had all died over a few weeks, the average brood size was around ten to fifhteen fry each month.
But the bit that had me puzzled, was the male was also hatching eggs out in his cave in the same tank, at the same time of the deaths, and by the time the new brood appeared there was no fry left in the hatcher.
I was feeding the fry crumbled up tetra tablet food and tetra granular food.

I did have a mature grow on tank waiting for them, but always read it's best to keep the fry in a hatcher in the parents tank for the first move or so, before moving them to a grow out tank.
So after it went the same with the third brood of fry, i got a UV Sterilizer for the grow out tank as well, and started moving any fry i found straight into the grow out tank once they emerged from the cave, and at this time i also started feeding them; micro worms, freshly hatched baby brine shrimp and ZM 100 fry food, plus i started daily water changes of at least a third daily, with water heated to the same temperature as the grow out tank
The fry deaths seemed to stop, and i only then had the odd random death, but i don't know if it was changing the size of food for the first six months, or the UV Sterilizer that helped, or it might even be a combination of both.

I only used the UV Sterlizer for the first six months to let there immune systems get a boost (another fishkeeper recommended it's temporary use), and then gradually started reducing it's use over a couple of months (a couple of hours a day), until the tank was not using it any more.
I didn't want to keep the UV Sterilier on until they were adult, as the frys immune system wouldn't have a chance to get used to my normal tap water if i did this, and i won't be able to sell them on, as they would be used to highly sterile inviroment and i do not know of many fish keepers that use a UV Sterilizer on a freshwater tank.

Even worse was to follow, a local guy came to buy a few fry off me, and it was the first time i took most of the fry out of the tank and had a look at them, and for the guy to see them.
I had a lot of snub noses and a few with deformed fins, only a third of the fry looked alright in the tub, and the guy picked the best ones i had.
At xmas time, i euthanised twentyone fry, that had snub noses and deformed fins, the guy took six of them, and i now have three 1.5" fry left from six broods the female had last year.

I thought it might possibly be the male, so i moved him in with some other females and put a younger male in with the breeding female, and suprisly the younger male hatched out 8 fry last month, and i have tried again keeping the fry in a hatcher in the parents tank, but have lost three of the eight fry so far again, but it is better than that last years attempt, i would normaly have lost them all by now.
There is a new brood due out the cave this week, and if i have any more fry deaths from this brood, i will start putting them straight into the grow out tank with the UV Sterilizer on it again.

The reason i am trying again without the UV Sterilizer, is some L333 i got last year started breeding and i thought i would try leaving them in the tank to see what happens.
Strangely enough, no mass die off, i only started moving the fry when the tank was getting too crowded, and i cut back my water changes to a 1/4 daily on this tank also, and i only have random deaths and i now have over thirty L333 fry.

I do have a thin sand substrate in my tanks as i had read about bio film issues before, filtration is external cannister filters.
But i do think a UV Sterilizer is the best option for six months if you are having trouble with fry deaths, but i also think small food is need for newly hatched fry.
I normally use microworms and baby brine shrimp on small apistogramma fry i get, i used to think zebra fry would manage the larger food when you see the size of them when they leave the cave, but if you see one stuck on the glass, it's stomach is tiny.

I had been considering getting an RO Unit, and making the water for my zebra fry, as somebody suggested maybe there was a trace element missing from my tap water (it is very soft, but has phosphates levels, but i can only see that helping the algae in my tanks and won't affect the fry), but then i see my L333 thriving.

Probably possed more questions than helped you with this, but give a UV Sterilizer a try.

[racoll]

i cant see it being caused to over eating tho, they are very shy and i never see them eating (they must eat at night) but if thats the case the food has already been given enough time to soften.

I wouldn't discount the "overeating" thing entirely. I am 100% sure it was the cause of my fry losses. I was actually pre-soaking the food before the deaths, so I don't think it was the swelling up that killed them, just that they were ingesting more food than their tiny digestive organs could handle in such a small amount of time.

[racoll]

Probably possed more questions than helped you with this, but give a UV Sterilizer a try.

For the record, I was running a UV on the tank from the start, and was still sustaining losses, until I started feeding "littler and oftener".

At xmas time, i euthanised twentyone fry, that had snub noses

I've had quite a few snub-noses crop up too, but I don't think its a genetic problem. I think it is the result of the fry charging around the tank and banging their very delicate and still growing noses on the sides and bottom (which you can see them doing). Not sure how prone Hypancistrus are to this, but do you know what they get up to when the lights are off?

[AndrewC]

Sorry Racoll, i didn't read your link, but will have a look just now.
The only thing i can see against feeding little, but more often, is being around to do so because of work.

Thanks Racoll
I see your point, will need to invest in a pestle and mortar for grinding up different foods together.
In the mean time, i will try feeding them a little before i go to work, after work and before lights out.

[Yann]

Hi!!

The importance of a driftwood or half flower pots to allow fish to be away from the bottom and not stay on it all the time!!!
Barbie had snail and she was cleaning the bare bottom to control the pop..., the snail limited the problem of bacteria build up and having barbie clean it regulary also helped a lot!!

Again a small layer a sand doesn't mean you should not vaccum it once in a while...especially when power feeding to allow good growth...
and most important water changes, not necessarly a lot, even a little one but often...and a good filtration!!!
Cheers
Yann

[andrewcoxon]

hmm so im thinking i might try a uv filter....

what do you guys think?