A. agassizi alenquer - fry dying

[steph]

Hi All

My A. agassiz alenquer produced a lovely cloud of fry (40+) on 16 March and they seemed to be doing a great job, with minimal parental aggression, then suddnely 6 days post free swimming I noticed that there were only a small number of fry, and i could even see a dead one floating in the water, the next day they were all gone.

I have no idea why ?

Thoughts to date are father ate them or they starved or something was wrong with the water ?

Temp 26C
Water is pure rainwater, hardness measures at about 20ppm, I dont have the pH but it will be on the acidic side (too low??)

The tank is a 60cm x 30 x30 and the only fish in it are the aggies. There was no obvious aggression between the male and female apart from a little tail waving. The tank is only about 2 months old, small sponge filter, about 50 litres and I do 20% water changes twice a week. There is some leaf litter and drift wood and a few plants not as much as I would like. I was feeding some decapsulated brine shrimp eggs but not daily as well as small sinking food for the adults. In the past the baenschi fry I have raised, just seemed to have thrived on picking at the micro organisms in their tank and havent required huge amounts of additional feeding.

Any thoughts/advice would be really appreciated.

The tank next door now has some free swimming panduro fry as of yesterday, so I would like to avoid repeating any mistakes if I can.

Thanks Steph

 

[Mike Wise]

Sorry to read of your loss. These are just my speculations from 35 years of breeding dwarf cichlids:

If you're seeing dead fry, then I doubt that they are being eaten. Your tank is a bit small (similar to a 15 gallon tank in the US), but shouldn't be a problem at the size the fry were at the time, so that shouldn't be a problem. That basically leaves water and food. It is possible that the pH is lower than you expect. Very soft water can quickly drop into the pH 3.0-4.0 range. This can stress fry more than adults. The fact that the tank is only 2 months old could mean that it isn't completely cycled yet, especially with the addition of all of the added food put in the tank for the fry. Again, new fry will have a bigger problem with this than adults. Finally, and in my opinion the most likely problem, you are feeding only prepared food. Apisto fry tend to feed more actively on moving (live) food. In an 'old', established tank there often is enough food to carry the fry over for a week or two. This is less likely in a newly established aquarium. Additionally, if the pH is very low, normal tank micro-organisms don't reproduce as quickly, so there is less available to the fry.

If it were my fish, I would check the pH of the water, and feed any new fry with microworms or baby brine shrimp.

 

[kristina]

oooh no sorry to hear it steph, and I had just congratulated you on another thread where you announced the emergence of fry!

 

[Bilbo]

oooh no sorry to hear it steph, and I had just congratulated you on another thread where you announced the emergence of fry!

Me too, sorry to hear about that especially for such a nice looking fish.

I have a similar problem but I think in my case its water quality. I will bow to experience here but I think that fry need almost perfect conditions otherwise they use all there energy just trying to survive and usually don't. This is especially important for fish from extreme and specialized conditions like these are.
Pity I don't like Africans because they go gangbusters in my local water.