Tonight I did something stupid, and I think I lost 3/4 of my larvae. There are still a number of them in the tank, but all the larger ones seem to be gone.
This is what happened:
I saw Seachem's Ammonia Alert badge has changed the color slightly. It is not totally yellow (safe) but a bit closer to light green (alert.) So I tested the water with API's ammonia test kit. It turned to strong green, indicating 3 to 4 ppm ammonia. Although my larvae was swimming normally and looked just fine, I decided to bind ammonia with Prime since I was afraid of sucking up tiny larvae if I did a water change. Funny. If this was a clownfish larvae tank or FW angelfish I would not have hasitated to do a water change at all. Anyways, I diluted some drops of Prime with the tank water in a cup and poured it in slowly. Within a minute, many tiny larvae started writhing on the bottom of the tank to my horror. It was really sad to see. So I ended up changing the water after all and the remaining larvae looked much better after that. I did not suck up any larvae, either.
It was a hard lesson... especially since I don't know when I can capture the larvae again out of my 120. It was just a sheer luck that I got these guys.
Fish breeding really sucks sometimes.
Tomoko
