Betta fry are gone.

[TheFishNerd]

After my betta fry have miraculously lived after not being fed I decided to leave them be. The 20 gallon long I have them in was only halfway full so I decided to set up a drip system to fill it the rest of the way up and dilute any wastes. The water was my regular tap water that was aged in a bucket. That didn't fill it up all the way so I dripped some of my 10 gallon's water into it to finish it up. I am worried this is where I went wrong since I didn't drip it. I just tested ammonia yesterday and that is clear. Nitrates and Nitrites are harder to test for with my test kit so I don't use that as often. If I detect a problem with ammonia I test for Nitrates and Nitrites more often until everything is zero. Today I woke up and there is only 2 fry and they were not moving very much. I usually don't spot many since they are still very small for a couple of minutes but after another 20 minutes only found one other. I figured they were hiding amongst the floating plants and gently tapped the plants. Nothing came out except for other tiny organisms which means they still have plentiful food. At this point I know they are dead so I check the bottom and find 2 dead ones. The rest are gone and I know the father didn't eat them because he swam past one of the survivors several times and didn't pay it any mind. I suspect the new water must have killed them because nothing else changed since yesterday. They were very active and eating well so I thought they would survive for sure. My two aliens are ready to breed so I might just have to give up on these ones and try again. Any tips? The death of the fry is difficult since I had such high hopes they would live and I don't want to repeat my mistakes.

 

[duanes]

How often are you feeding?
Fry of any species need to feed often. Once the infusoria and green water(1st foods) are used up, fry graduate to larger food like newly hatched artemia.
With my cichlid fry(or any fish), I was feeding up tp 5 meals per day, and allowing lots of algae to grow for constant grazing i between meals I would provide.I always had two artemia hatcheries going started bout 2 days apart, as one became depleted, the other became ready.

And I never thru what was left in the old btch away.
In summer it went outside into some container where unhatched eggs went, and young I missed could grow for larger fry.

These extras fed on algae the sun automatically grew,

 

[TheFishNerd]

Figured it out... The father did eat them. Guess he was good to the eggs but after they were free swimming he got tired of them. Trying again with my alien pair. Eggs were released and the female is recovering. She has some tears in her fins and missing some scales but always heals quickly. My turquoise alien male is not a great father. Keeps the eggs in the nest but isn't very protective of them. I'll remove him as soon as they are free-swimming.