Fry dying - killing each other or disease?

[BigFishLittleFish123]

Hey everyone,

My Vieja Guttulatus and Vieja Hartwegi recently started to breed after they hit about two years old. One batch of fry is about two and a half months old now, and I've been finding dead ones each morning. Sometimes I will find two or three, and sometimes I will wake up to ten dead. Also, I may go three or four days without finding any dead ones. I would estimate that a little less than half have died in the last month.

I'm confused as to why this is happening. I perform 25% water changes every three days. I sometimes notice a white fungus growing on some of them but not many.

Could they be killing each other? Some are around 3/4 of an inch long and much larger than the others. Any help or advice is much appreciated. This is my first time dealing with fry.

Thanks.

 

[Rocksor]

Using liquid tests, what are the readings for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate?

 

[BigFishLittleFish123]

Ammonia = 1.0 ppm
Nitrite = .50 ppm
Nitrate = 10 ppm

These are the current readings. This is most likely the issue. I just feel like it is a little bit weird that my water changes have been consistent, yet I may go a week without any deaths, but may wake up one morning to ten dead.

 

[duanes]

Growing out lots of cichlid fry usually requires a number of tanks, to separate larger fry from smaller fry (just a small disparity in size at that age can be significant), to keep some from directly killing each other, to allow the smaller fry enough to eat , and metabolism by-products such as ammonia and nitrite can be especially damaging to early development.
The testing numbers look like the waste products are overwhelming the filter and amount and frquency of water changes, larger ones could be killing smaller ones, along with the larger stronger, more highly developed ones keeping enough food from smaller ones.

 

[twentyleagues]

Ummm ammonia is 1.0! Well thats probably the issue. Tank isnt cycled or not adaquate filtration.

 

[BigFishLittleFish123]

Thank you Duanes for the input. I had no idea that my different vieja species would breed with each other (didn't even know if I had males or females) and they are located in a community tank so I had to remove the fry. Luckily, I had two 29 gallon aquariums on hand which now hold two different batches of fry.

As far as feeding goes, it appears that everyone eats well. They all come to the surface and eat the fry food up pretty quickly.

I will start doing more frequent water changes (every other day) and see if that helps any. If not, I will try to clear out some space to put a new aquarium so that I can start separating them by size.

 

[BigFishLittleFish123]

Also, they are laying eggs every 20 days. I lost the entire first batch, still have the second and third batches in the 29 gallon tanks, and mistakenly removed a decoration with the fourth batch of eggs while doing water changes causing them to die. This is a good learning experience for future batches which I expect to continue happening.

 

[duanes]

Since they are high bred it probably wouldn't be a good idea to spread them around anyway, we in the hobby already have so many unidentifyable cichlid mutts in circulation as is. If as an experiment you want some for yourself, grow them out and pick out the best.
Usually with this kind of cross they turn out quite generic.