Good luck Barbie !!!!!!.
Thanks, I did see that photo. Hopefully another photo of Dad and his babies soon .
You say you have lowered the temp.Was that before laying or after, and what was the reason?. Do they still need a drop in temp to trigger their spawn?..
Des the babies finish absorbing their yolk sac, or almost, and drop dead. 3 spawns worth so far. SOMETHING is very not right. There is no trigger required for the L333. At least not for mine anyway! I do weekly water changes and they just spawn as soon as the female is remotely full of eggs again. I've never had a fish spawn as often as this where it's just one female doing the spawning! I keep the tank at 84 usually, the same as my L260, and cooler than usual for the L46. I tried slightly warmer last time, and lost just as many fry, so this time I'm going with 82 and we'll see how they do.
Hope all goes well this time round and that the temperature drop to 82 does the trick. Kevin mentioned in one of his articles that high temps can cause problems with fry absorbing the yolk sac, perhaps this could be the problem.
Thanks Des, organics aren't the issue though, honestly. The tank has less fish in it than even my zebra tank and the same maintenance schedule. I do not routinely lose fry of any kind in any of the 1250 gallons of tanks I keep. These have had me baffled. I really think it has to be temperature related. I'll definitely try that if this doesn't work .
Any ideas yet as to why the fry don't survive? Must be very frustrating!!!!
Roughly how large are the cave that you are using? From the pic they look quite large. I know you nominate the dimensions based on the catfish but I am curious to actually know the external dimensions.
It turned out that my L333 are probably L318. There has been the same marginal success with them. Each spawn a few of the fry survive. There are guppies and LDA08 in the tank with them and their fry do just fine. I have some suspicion that there may be a parasite problem that causes the fry to not survive, as I've recently had 2 month old fry just sort of waste away, while everything else was fine. I've got flubendazole on the way and I'm going to go against all my own recommendations and try treating the tank with it. I'll update everyone on the developments.
As to the cave size, I'd honestly have to go pull that cave out and measure. I'd say the inside is 3 inches by 1.25 inches or maybe a bit taller and 7 inches long. That fish is BIG and has no problem trapping his female in there.
The cave is actually one of the first ones I ever made before I knew there were restrictions to the dimensions. I have had an L260 spawn in it, also .
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