Bristlenose fry not surviving?????

[thenicksta16]

I have a 4 foot tank with only bristlenose in it. (Quite a few) The common ones have laid a couple of batches of eggs, but the eggs hatch and about 3 days later they all die... Havn't had one baby survive, ive even seperated the eggs after being furtilized.. The ph is at neatural, and nitate and nitrite levels are right.. water temp about 26d always do small water changes every couple of days (to get crap out of the bottom that baffle filter misses) and a 30-40% water change every couple of weeks.. They have been in there around a year... Any ideas that could help me plz??? Thanks.

[Mick John]

G'day Nick. Mate if all of them are dying then it could be a couple of things. From what I know Catfish breeder's insist on lots of water changes when it comes to fry. Water quality must be very good as the Fry are very delicate. Everyday if you must. Say 10-20%. The other thing could be and most likely is the reason for them dying is that they require extremely well oxygenated water. Which means that you have to capture them and place them into a fry saver and place an Air Stone on the surface of the water in the compound of the Saver to achieve this. Placing it on the surface I believe limits the amount of current that may stress the Fry out. Good Luck!

[wombat1100]

HI nick, what is it you are feeding them on? i always fed mine on zucchini and finely ground up flake, although the flake was messy. Also i siphoned out the waste daily in mine so i was effectively doing a small water change everyday. What is your ammonia level like , must be zero as I'm sure you know.

[cichlidboy]

it just takes a lot of tinkering with.
I've heard of people with crappy water having successful batches of fry that pop out of caves when they're larger.
just keep tinkering =]

[thenicksta16]

Hi, thanks heaps for your replies, i just got another small batch of about 30 or so eggs on sat night, the male threw them out of the cave so i got a big fry net/holder, but its all fish net [i was using smaller plastic containers before].. So now its alot bigger and the water flows through a million times better. I also put a small filter flowihng into the container, but i have it upside down to suck a small amount of air aswell.. I feed them the algea wafers and fresh zuccini.. But they normly die before they eat it as they have the yellow sack still.. They should hatch by around tommorow so ill let you know if they survive.. Thanks again.

[thenicksta16]

All the eggs got eaten by a couple of baby guppies just after they hatched while i was at work... The guppies are out now so ill try again on the next lot.