Water current killing fry???

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fernie831

fernie831

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Mar 28, 2015
92
27
36
CA
Got home from work today and a lot of my motaguense fry were dieing and swimming around in circles. They are in a 75gal with the parents. I just did a 75% water change yesterday. I'm thinking it's the current being to strong?? I did take some fry out before this happened and put them in a 10gal with a sponge filter and they are all fine.

image.jpeg

image.jpeg
 
Beautiful colors on your female :)
 
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I can't say for sure it's the current. My guess is the water change. Fry that size are very susceptible, as you might imagine due to how small, to minor changes in water chemistry and temperature. IN my tanks with fry, if I do any water change for the first couple weeks....it really minor. Better to do 10 or 20% over a couple days. Not saying that's it. Only what I have done.

I also wait until the fry have been free swimming for couple weeks before removing. Couple reasons for this. If the weakest are going to die off, it will be rather quickly. As hobbyists, pulling a max amount of fry shouldn't be as important as pulling the best fry. In the wild, survival of the fittest ensues and the strongest of the bunch survive. If you pull them all...and they ALL make it, you are bound to have a weaker less worthy fish in the bunch. You don't need that in the hobby. Better to let nature cull the weak.

Second reason is that I think keeping half in the tank lets the breeding pair form a stronger bond and also gives them practice to be better at raisin their fry. My personal observation is that when I do this, the fry that are left with the parents will invariably grow larger faster than the fry I pulled.
 
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Agree with Mo.
I usually do small daily water changes on fry tanks,and because they are all on sumps, when new water is added, it is added to the sump, instead of the tank so it is well mixed before getting to the fry tank.
Also agree that large die offs are normal, because there are almost a certain amount of deformed, sickly and substandard individuals, so this saves you some culling later on.
Keeping only the strongest and best is always my goal, if I only end up with 25 healthy fry out of a spawn of hundreds, that's success for me
 
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Cool thanks for the replys will keep all that info in mind. Had this pair for a while and all they do is spawn I just never tried raising their fry until now
 
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