Peppered Cory Fry Dying, Literally Right Away
Posted: 09 Mar 2017, 23:49
Hello everyone! I'm hoping someone on this forum can help me, my LFS has no idea....
I have a 20 gallon, fully planted tank. The only thing in it are 6 peppered corys (Corydoras paleatus, 1 female and 5 males), a mystery snail, a nerite snail, and 2 juvenile guppies that showed up a while back as hitchhikers on a Brazilian Pennywort mat.
The corys breed like mad, I don't know why, I guess they like their home. The female lays roughly every 3 days, sometimes less. She's been doing this for around a month now. But not a single fry has made it past a few hours.
I've use Bio-active Live Shrimp water in my tank exclusively ever since my large mystery snail started to experience some shell damage (long story, but I've had him for over a year, and he's pretty awesome). This was what was in my tank when I got my "little cat friends". Originally, all that was in that tank was the snails and a betta. When the betta passed, I got my little cory school. They lived in it happily for around a month, and then started this breeding frenzy. At first we thought we'd leave them to their own devices, if the eggs made it, then we were lucky. Then we realized that the corys really liked caviar, and I bought a breeding box that goes on the outside of the tank and cycles water through, to put the eggs in. This is how we know the fry aren't making it. Some of them hatch, and then die almost immediately. Some don't hatch at all.
The thing is, I know that the PH is high. It's the way it comes out of the box. I have 2 pieces of mopani wood, and I have peat moss (fluval peat granules in a filter bag in my AquaClear), but my water is between 8 and 8.5 PH. I'm hesitant to use chemicals to lower it, and I'm not sure that is what the issue is with the fry. Literally all of my other water perimeters are perfect, and I test them once a week. I even tested them again just before posting this. I don't add anything to my water, I even stopped fertilizing once they started breeding (I was using Aquaviro envy), so I stopped that a month ago. My LFS is the one that suggested the water for my snail, and is the one that suggested my school of cats when my betta died. They knew that my PH was high, but thought it should be fine. Of course, now that they are breeding, no one knows anything about it.
Could PH alone be enough to make not a single fry out of hundreds of eggs make it? Should I add chemicals to my water even though everything else in the tank is healthy?
I've included a pic of my tank in case that helps. There are around 10 eggs in the breeder box right now.
I have a 20 gallon, fully planted tank. The only thing in it are 6 peppered corys (Corydoras paleatus, 1 female and 5 males), a mystery snail, a nerite snail, and 2 juvenile guppies that showed up a while back as hitchhikers on a Brazilian Pennywort mat.
The corys breed like mad, I don't know why, I guess they like their home. The female lays roughly every 3 days, sometimes less. She's been doing this for around a month now. But not a single fry has made it past a few hours.
I've use Bio-active Live Shrimp water in my tank exclusively ever since my large mystery snail started to experience some shell damage (long story, but I've had him for over a year, and he's pretty awesome). This was what was in my tank when I got my "little cat friends". Originally, all that was in that tank was the snails and a betta. When the betta passed, I got my little cory school. They lived in it happily for around a month, and then started this breeding frenzy. At first we thought we'd leave them to their own devices, if the eggs made it, then we were lucky. Then we realized that the corys really liked caviar, and I bought a breeding box that goes on the outside of the tank and cycles water through, to put the eggs in. This is how we know the fry aren't making it. Some of them hatch, and then die almost immediately. Some don't hatch at all.
The thing is, I know that the PH is high. It's the way it comes out of the box. I have 2 pieces of mopani wood, and I have peat moss (fluval peat granules in a filter bag in my AquaClear), but my water is between 8 and 8.5 PH. I'm hesitant to use chemicals to lower it, and I'm not sure that is what the issue is with the fry. Literally all of my other water perimeters are perfect, and I test them once a week. I even tested them again just before posting this. I don't add anything to my water, I even stopped fertilizing once they started breeding (I was using Aquaviro envy), so I stopped that a month ago. My LFS is the one that suggested the water for my snail, and is the one that suggested my school of cats when my betta died. They knew that my PH was high, but thought it should be fine. Of course, now that they are breeding, no one knows anything about it.
Could PH alone be enough to make not a single fry out of hundreds of eggs make it? Should I add chemicals to my water even though everything else in the tank is healthy?
I've included a pic of my tank in case that helps. There are around 10 eggs in the breeder box right now.