Drinking a Martini to Celebrate...

[pacificdune]

Well, 14 months after I got my 1st set of zebs I was rewarded with my 1st spawn. Unexpectedly. I was sitting at my computer and happened to look at my zebra tank and OMG what is that on the front glass? A 1/2" zebra fry!!! I don't even know which pair spawned. My largest zeb is about 3" so I was not expecting anything yet. Go figure. I've since found at least 10 fry in the tank. For now I am leaving them be. They seem to be doing well.

[sam]

congrats enjoy your drink

[kingfisher]

Great news

Congrats!

Let us know how they're doing. Any pictures?

[cols]

cool!

Hopefully in 1-2-3 years time i will get the same shock!

Hope they all survive and do well for u

[pacificdune]

Now down to 3 or 4 remaining from the original 10. Not sure what is wrong. Remaining fry and adults are all healthy and active.

Temp = 28C
Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 20ppm
pH = 6.2
GH = 75
KH = 80

Tank has sand bottom with slate caves, rocks, and driftwood for hiding places. Filtration is Eheim 2227 and Fluval 305 with activated carbon and fluval nitrate remover. (It was just changed though.) There are 15 adult zebras, 7 cardinals and 4 galaxy rasboras. Currently feeding tetra color flake and pellets. Do weekly water changes ~15% with RO water. (tap water in Phoenix is not suitable for tropical fish) Use Kent RO right and Seachem Neutral regulator as water treatments. Treated with Seachem Prime after I found 1st couple dead fry. This is my first spawn. Any advice on what I should do to keep them alive would be much appreciated. Only thing I can think of is to increase water change amount to 30% weekly and treat with some sort of preventive medication, but not sure what. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Pacific

[McEve]

your water seem to be very hard considering you use RO?

I would keep the babies in a species only tank, soften the water and try to get the Nitrate below 15. What's your turn over rate? Do you have plants in the tank? (thinking about CO2)

[smithrc]

sorry to hear about the losses - but at least they have started spawning

If it helps - we had 15 fry from our first spawn and lost all but 2 of them....

we've since had 5 more spawns (one failed due to me and 2 more failed due to a 2nd male not knowing what he's up to yet) but from teh 2 further spawns from the original pair - we havent lost a single fry - we have 8 that are about 12 weeks old and a cave with 10+ at about 2 weeks old

I guess what I'm getting at is that we've changed nothing since we lost the first batch - yet spawns since then are doing just fine.

So fingers crossed its just first spawn bad luck

[pacificdune]

Well, the die off seems to have stopped since I replaced the filter media and treated with prime. Maybe there was something in the water that the carbon removed? I'm hoping that was the end of it. The remaining fry are vigorous and I saw them all in front of the tank eating from some sinking pellets. It's amazing how they seem to move around almost as much at the adults... If not more.

My turnover is pretty good. The tank is 72 gal and I have an Eheim 2227, Fluval 305, and Aquaclear 50 powerhead with a prefilter to generate current. There are no plants in the tank except for a few Japanese Mossballs that I keep in there to try to reduce some of the nitrate.

I also redid the decorations to give more smaller hiding places for the fry so they are less stressed.

I will perform some more water changes to get the nitrate level down a bit lower and add less RO right. I added it to try to get some buffering in place to reduce pH shock. I was concerned that 6.2 was getting too low. Any thoughts on this?

Cheers!

Pacific