What happened to my Biera98s?

[octane99]

I hatched a batch of Biera98 eggs on 9th Dec. Manage to seperate them using a sterile syringe amd kept them in a small breeding tank. Everthing seems fine and well till just now when i check just now and found most of my fries dead leaving only a couple of fries left. PH is at 7 to 7.5 region everything seems fine, can't seem to figure out what is wrong. Anybody can help me out?? Is there something that i missed out on ??

[Morgrid]

Die offs like this are often attributed to velvet. Did you add salt to the water? Nothobranchius fry are very susceptable to water quality issues (at least that is what I have heard). I have had similar problems and have more luck when I use salt and also a water conditioner that removes both chlorine and ammonia.

[timebomb]

Clarence,

You mentioned using a syringe. Did you transfer them gently? I remember when I hatched my first batch of Nothobranchius eggs, I had more than 3 hundred fry. It was a lot of work using a turkey baster to catch and transfer the fry so I was rather hasty. I was too rough and one day after transferring all of them into a big tank, I lost more than 90% of the fry. In fact, out of the 3 hundred or so fry, I only had 20 left.

The best way to transfer fry is to use a plastic soup spoon. But I didn't know that at that time.

I don't think it's velvet because this parasite does not kill so quickly.

By the way, the plural of fry is also fry.

Loh K L

[timebomb]

Sorry. On reading your post again, I realised that the fry were hatched on the 9th of December. In that case, it could very well be velvet.

It's hard to tell when fry gets velvet but if you had kept them in a glass tank, the spots on the fins are visible. If it's velvet, the surviving fry should also exhibit such spots. Take a close look and let us know what you see.

Loh K L

[octane99]

Hmmm...... Its a little hard to see if it is actually velvet as the fry are too tiny to spot any defects. I did use some salt but i am not sure if i had used the correct amount. I will try to hatch a second batch again sometime next week. I heard of dabbing some menth blue on the eggs would help for velvet any comments on that?? Juz got another female beira98 from KeeHoe lets juz hope that my male is up to it for more babies soon.