Re: Changing Water in Baby Tank

[IDMiamiBob <IDMiamiBob@aol.com>]

Steph writes:

<< I am having rotten luck keeping babies, of any sort, alive.  I have had
> the same problem occur three times with krib's, rams' and bristlenose
> pl*co's.  Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated.
 
> I have a small (5gal) tank that I set up and move babies into it (in the
> case of the rams the eggs were moved) When I do a water change I siphon
> out 10 - 20% of water and then fill from my main community tank, where
> the babies come from in the first place.  Next morning, 12 hours later
> 1/2 or more of the babies are dead !!  In the case of the Kribs I lost
> all of them within about 24 hours of the water change. >>

Fry are VERY sensitive to nitrates.  Get a nitrate test kit and test your
community tank.  I don't understand the logic of taking water from your
community tank anyway.  I recommend you get another bucket and fill it every
day AFTER you change the water in your fry tank.  Make any pH and hardness
adjustments and let it sit overnight.  Tomorrow you will be ready to change
the water again, this time with *fresh* water.  The whole point of doing water
changes is to get some fresh, clean water into the tank.  Putting used, dirty
water in from another tank is pretty much a waste of time.  When I am setting
up a fry tank, I will use water from the spawning tank, to redude shock, but
then I start doing 10% changes daily for a month ( a practice that finally let
me get angelfish fry to survive) until I know they strong enough to tolerate
higher nitrate levels.

The only other approach I know is to raise the fry in a tank that has enough
plants in it to eliminate all the nitrates.

Bob