My Angelfish fry are dying. What can I do?
| NOTHING BEATS GOOD RESEARCH ON THIS TOPIC. The best place for that is search page at The Angelfish Web Forum Archive - http://www.aquaworldnet.net/wfangelfish/index.cgi?search, with thousands of articles on hundreds of topics. It's not easy to learn to search this archive, but it's the best possible place to learn, and to solve difficult Angelfish problems. Click the link above, click the link "search", then enter this information to search Archive 2002/2001: | |
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| I just did this (on 12/2/2002) and found 132 articles!
The archive has its problems... it's slow, and the server crashes frequently... come back after 4 or 24 hours, it's worth the wait. Here are some things I have learned on this topic, mostly through first-hand treatment or advice from trusted breeders: |
THINK ABOUT YOUR CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY, AND ENVIRONMENT: sanitation for bugs, avoiding poisons, the right temperature and right food.
Lets eliminate the food problem first. If you feed your new swimmers newly-hatched baby brine at least once every 12 hours, and everything else is right, you'll raise 50 to 500. In my experience, no other food will allow you to raise more than five or ten. Discard brine shrimp cultures infected with bacteria (cloudy and smelly), or in any case after 36 hours, when they have very little food value. See our section on brine shrimp culture for more details on this.
Do you have slimy tank walls, scum on the surface, or cloudy water? You may have bacteria infections. Use a large magnifying glass and a strong light to examine the eggs. (If you use a spawning slate, move it close to the tank wall.) I have seen tiny white worms attacking the eggs.
To treat for bacteria, tiny worms, and other microbes, I removed the pair from the breeding tank and put them in a bucket containing fresh city water, which contains Chloramine here in the US. If you don't have Chlorine in your water, put in a few drops of chlorine laundry bleach. I also add table salt (which contains a little Iodine), about 1 tablespoon per gallon (or 5cc per liter.) This mildly toxic bath should kill some microbes. Hopefully, it won't stress your adults too much, for an hour or so. Avoid thermal shock. Watch them carefully! If you're worried about harming your breeders, test the treatment bath for an hour using a small weak fish first.
While the pair is in the treatment bath, clean the tank and all accessories (heaters, tubing, thermometers, sponge filter, nets, walls, floors, etc.) Use dilute bleach first, and dry the tank. Then use plain ammonia, rinse the tank thoroughly 3 or 5 times, and dry it. Smell it to make sure all the ammonia is gone. (Do NOT allow bleach and ammonia to mix -- don't even open the bottles at the same time!) Fill the tank with good clean, treated water. Transfer the pair to the clean tank using the clean net.
Temperatures are very important. It is best to keep breeding tanks at 83-87F (28-30C). Many parasites and diseases will not survive temperatures of 93-97F (34-36C). I think over 98.6F (37C)... perhaps short treatments at 102F (39C) for a few hours might kill bad bugs, but I'm only guessing. At 106F (41C) I'd expect permanent brain damage. See more at our section on temperatures.
Water quality is critical. In the US, many breeders had problems when all city water suppliers switched from Chlorine to Chloramines. Simple aging for a few hours removed chlorine, or a treatment with sodium thiosulphate. Thiosulphate is harmless to fish at the levels we use, and will neutralize Chlorine and the Chlorine part of the Chloramine molecule, but leaves the Ammonia compounds, not good for fish. Many of us now use activated carbon filter cartridges, either on city water or well water, to remove Chloramine and other toxic substances. Aquarium shops sell chemicals to remove Chloramine -- "AmQuel" is good, but expensive if you have many tanks... and none of these will remove harmful organic contaminants like Carbon will.
A trick one breeder used, is to simply dip the slate and eggs in a disinfectant bath for a few seconds. He used Iodine, but a very weak bleach solution should work as well. Follow this with a dip in water dosed with Amquel or Thiosulphate to neutralize the Chloride and/or Iodide, and from there to a clean fry tank.
Other breeders have used strong medicines on the parents -- organophosphates (as in "Clout" and "Fluke Tabs") -- thinking that the problem was some kind of parasite. They could be right, but perhaps they were just killing off bacteria and other microbes. I prefer to try milder treatments first. Most medications weaken already stressed fish, and do more harm than good. See our section on sick fish here.
Other sources of poisoning for fish: household sprays, or oils and chemicals from your hands. I scrub my hands and arms with warm water and hand brush or cloth, and dry them with a fresh bath towel before dipping into the tanks.
Another source of poison is vinyl air tubing... I've killed off a half a tank of young fish three times, with long runs of new vinyl air tubing. Now I boil this stuff in the microwave for 10 minutes to reduce the smelly chemicals used to make this rigid plastic pliable. This may or may not help... keep your lengths short, or avoid the problem altogether by using only green silicone rubber tubing.
