P. Taeniatus fry

[tillbarnem]

Hi everyone. I've got a quick question. I have Taeniatus fry that are now almost 2 weeks old and doing great in my community tank. The parents are wonderful at looking after them. My question is, when and how am I going to be able to get them away from the parents and into the grow out tank. Should I wait another couple of weeks? Thanks

 

[tjudy]

The parents should still be tucking them away into the cave it night. If the cave is completely enclosed except for the opening, you can cover the hole and pull out the cave fry an all to transfer to a different tank. If that is not possible a wide siphon will work, but as the fry grow they will be more able to avoid the current of the siphon. If you are not comfortable with that the last option is nets.

 

[jmtrops]

Which type of taeniatus are they? Are you registered in the West African Cichlid Maintenance program?

Jim

 

[tillbarnem]

I'm not sure. I purchased them from Two Fsh Guyz and then they went out of business. I'm not registered. Please give me more info.

 

[tillbarnem]

Hi everyone. Sorry to bother you but I'm having major problems. I had been unable to get my P Taeniatus fry out of the large tank due to problems cycling my grow out tank. The fry are now around 5 weeks old. This of course put a strain on my tank. To compensate, I added a second partial water change, weekly to my tank. Last Wednesday I decided to add a new food to my regimen. Unfortunately, the food went uneaten and there was a lot of it. Within 24 hours I had a serious problem. The fish were definately having ammonia issues and were see-sawing at the top. I did an immediate 50% water change which helped and at that point lost only 1 fish. By the next morning the see-sawing began again. I cleaned, vacuumed, changed the filter media, and did an additional 50% change. This helped a lot. The next morning, I had a bacterial bloom. I can't even see past the middle of the tank. I have decreased feeding. I am worried about the fry and the other fish from that standpoint. Any ideas. Sorry about the length of my post. Jeff

 

[jmtrops]

I'm sure people here can help but we need more info. Tank size, filter type, what kind of maintenance do you do, how long has it been running. It sounds like you did the right things to save the fish but it seems like your biofiltration is not very stable.

If you go to the west african cichlid section there is some info about the maintenance program and you can check out the web site at www,jmtrops.com/wacmp.html

Jim

 

[tillbarnem]

This tank has been running for about 6 years. 54 gallon hex, community tank. Recently, I had several apisto spawns in addition to the taeniatus. I have a marineland 350 pro canister filter with white diamond blend filter media. I change 20-25% of the water weekly and vacuum as well as rinse out the filter pad. I hadn't changed the filter media for several mos until the other day. The tank is also rather heavily planted. When the taeniatus spawned, I began a secondary 20% change in addition to the routine cleaning, weekly.

 

[tjudy]

Water changes... It sounds like the addition of the new food that went uneaten knocked the biological filtration out of whack. I would do partial changes every other day or when you see signs of stress, and cut way back on the feeding. Small amounts of high nutritional value food that the fish will eat all of and have little waste, and feed every other day. After a week or so the tank should balance again.

 

[jmtrops]

This is a good example of when feeding a new food feed in small amounts until see how the fish eat it and how it reacts to your tank. I had the same thing last week in one of my grow out tanks. I used a new flake food, it is a plankton/krill type, the fish really liked it but it seemed to disolve in the water very quickly. What the fish didn't eat right away disolved and ended up cloging the two sponge filters and the tank clouded up. Cleaning the sponges and feeding smaller amounts solved the problem. This was a 40 gallon with about 100 1" fish and the sponge filters when cleaned didn't miss a beat so I'm a little surprized you had lost that much of your biofiltration. I don't know about the filter you are using but I have never had a problem with biofiltration with canister filters. What does yours have for filter media? I always put in the ceramic peices or lava rock with a sponge layer.

Jim