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I have a 33 long with L201s breeding. I've been putting the fry in floaters. Everything has been going well, until I did a water change today. I lost 6 fry after I did a routine 3 gallon cleaning. I have been using 50% tap/ 50% RO water with some dechlorinator. I have set up a 10 gallon with some of the water from the original tank and plan to put the fry in there. A sponge filter is being used. How old should the fry be before transferring them to the 10 gallon????

Consider not moving the fry from the breeding tank until they are older. I would wait until they double or triple their size before moving them.

Forget the "dechlorinator" the 50% tap water age it for 24 hours during that time put an air stone in it
From what l have read it seems that you have not removed them from the breeders tank just isolated them in the fry savers, good idea all though this can slow the growth down once they hit a certain size of any catfish, this is my opinion and experince any way

Thanx for the advice. I really appreciate it. I will skip the dechlorinator from now on, What I can't figure out is why is this happening now. I have been doing this routine for over a month with no loss. What about replacing the tap water with the waste water from the RO unit? Or is that just full of concentrated levels of impurities?

plecoboy wrote:Thanx for the advice. I really appreciate it. I will skip the dechlorinator from now on, What I can't figure out is why is this happening now. I have been doing this routine for over a month with no loss. What about replacing the tap water with the waste water from the RO unit? Or is that just full of concentrated levels of impurities?

Waste water from the RO unit is fine as "supplement" to RO water. As the RO unit produces roughly 5 times more waste than pure water, it's only about 20% more "impurities" in the waste water than in the tap water (and just the same impurities as there was in the tap-water in the first place). You may want to consider a 60/40 mix of RO/waste to compensate for the "extra strength" of the waste-water. Of course, since the waste water has passed through the pre-filter for the RO, it would contain no chlorine or sediments, just like the filtered water, although I doubt very much that a good quality dechlorinator would cause problems with the fry.

More likely is that the fry are dying because:
1. Starvation - young fry need feeding FREQUENTLY - just like human babies.
2. Toxic waste in the fry container - the babies may suffer from buildup of bacteria on the bottom of the fry container, which produces toxic material. Janne (Ekström) has written about the likely cause for fry death in bare-bottom tanks from this cause.

I agree, don't move the fry until they are fairly robust.

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Mats

Thanx again for the advice. The reason I think it's the water is because when I dumped the water in, the fish started doing loops and then died.

plecoboy wrote:Thanx again for the advice. The reason I think it's the water is because when I dumped the water in, the fish started doing loops and then died.

Sounds fairly convincing to me...

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Mats

WE Here in Australia have seen our tap water chemistry change over the last 9 months due to a baaaad drought, for other reasons local to your water supply you also may find changes in your tape water, test it some time and then compare it at the change of seasons even, you will be suprised the difference