fry dying off

[shifty51008]

I am not sure what I am doing wrong, my fry hatched last night.

they are in the 10 gal tank that is darkened from all sides,

I added about 3 gal. of water from the DT

temp is stable at 81.2

the seachem ammonia alert badge is yellow so no ammonia.

I have a heater in the tank with a bubbler surrounding it.

light has been dimmed with paper sheets

added some rotifers, not sure how much but there is enough so the babies can get them without moving far.

and tinted the water slightly green

there were alot of fry swimming this morning but they seem to just die off every now and then, they lay on the bottom and hardly move, (not doing the head stand from to much light).

any help is great, I still have about 20-30 swimming around so if I can save them it would be a great bonus.

 

[ernieq]

The first few days you will have massive die offs. Some fry just don't develop properly and can't make it. Usually I'd loose about 1/2 of my take the first 2 days, and then another 20% or so the next 3 days. I rarely lost any after meta. In general my hatched to juvi success rate is around 40%, so out of 300 hatchling, I'd end up with around 120 juvis. Make sure you remove as many of the dead ones as you can. Also make sure there's enough surface agitation for O2 exchange, with decomposing dead fry, rotifers and fry, you need to keep good oxygen levels. Usually a pair of air stones would do the trick, one on each side of the nursery. Make sure it is nice a strong, not so much that the fry get tossed around, but enough to have a constant bubble stream popping at the surface to cover a good 25% of it.

 

[woodspool]

Not sure how large your batch was, could try adding more rots. I'm on batch two and have lost 10 out of about 70. I'm using led lights with no filter, nothing on the sides to black out, two airstones, and a heater to keep it around 79. Up until day 7 I kept the rots in the tank at very high levels, only had one gorge itself to death. If the batch is large you may look at breaking them up into to tanks.

 

[shifty51008]

thanks everyone, this hatch I am guessing there were a little over 100, I did take out all the dead ones and the others right now seem to be doing fine, I still see a good amount of rotifers in the tank so they should be good for now. so we will go from there.

 

[Jaypilot]

Lately I have been using a 1 gallon masson jar filled with parent tank water and I just put that jar with an air stone in the parent tanks sump. By doing this the temp is matched perfectly along with all the other peramaters. I also remove and replace about 5-10oz of water every time I feed them and this tends to keep the water quality up. As far as light goes I have a single bulb led night light that is on inside of my sump 24-7 for the first week.

After the first week I move to a 10g tank with 3-5 gallons of display water and I start to feed BBS at that time. Then I add about a half gallon of fresh water everyday until the tank is full and after that I do about a 20% water change a week.

I haven't been able to find a simpler or more productive way yet.

 

[shifty51008]

well I still have around 20-30 fry left with no extra die off's this weekend. of course my rotifer's crashed on friday so I am hoping by keeping the fry tank tinted green it will keep the cultur up enough till my other rotifers get here. I am still seeing plenty in the tank though.