Dying Fry

[UKCHRIS]

Hi,

I have started losing Fry almost daily

They seem to have bloated tummies. Has anyone else had this problem.

Water changes weekly, and all tests are ok.

Any ideas? Its only the very small fry, the older ones seem fine.

[KrisA]

What food are u using?

There's some food fry can't take, like some types of granulat thats swells up in there stomach.
The only granulat I use for my fry is SAK, that doesn't swells up.

[TwoTankAmin]

Do you have substrate or is the tank bare bottom?

[UKCHRIS]

Hi Guys,

I was feeding a range, lobster eggs, tetra prima crushed, peas, courgette and prawns (cooked and raw). When the loses started i droped the tetra prima, lobster, eggs and recently dropped the prawns. Do you think any of these could be causing the problems?

TTA - the tank has sand at the bottom of it, do you think this could be the cause?

Its important to note, this has hit the really young ones, but not the slightly bigger babies from batch 1 & 2 or the juves or adults.

Their little bellys look like they are going to pop - then they pass away 24/48 hours later.

Any ideas?

[TwoTankAmin]

No sand itself would not be a problem. Sometimes in bare bottom tanks you can get a bio-film that is a problem for very small fry.

I have always used a different diet for fry - I want small foods like cyclop-eeze, bbs but also commercial foods that get soft. This includes sticks, wafers even flake. It is also important to feed veggie matter. For this I have used a mix of veggie sticks and a regular Saturday feeding in all tanks of spirulina bits and/or flake with garlic. Because I try to create so much cover for the fish I have not used fresh veggies as uneaten parts might vanish into the crevices and rot without being seen.

One reason for fry bite sized food is those little ones love to hide in tight spaces. Tight spaces and small fry mean tiny foods work well.

I am aware of a zebra breeder who had a similar type problem which persisted for some time ( his fry were dying but not with swollen bellies). Finally, he sent some fry to another breeder who got them to a university where their lab was able to determine it was a bacteria disease. Once they knew the nature of the problem the fix was easy.

That doesn't mean this is what is going on in your tank. It is meant to illustrate that there are any number of things it might be. Starting with diet issues is not a bad place to begin.