How do you raise your bristlenose pleco fries?

[yhbae]

Grrr... More and more of the spawns are dying on me. Out of my first spawn, most have died in the community tank where the parents are present. During the second spawn, I moved them into a smaller (5.5g) tank which was also established (other fishes were there, but I moved them out). Again, one by one, they are dying.

Currently, the water is at 81F, obviously, ammonia and nitrites are zero. Nitrate is under 5. The tank contains significant amount of java moss. The tank is driven by a sponge filter. I am trying to feed them blanched zuchini without much success. There are plenty of algae in the tank though.

How do I prevent them from dying? I must be overlooking at something...

 

[smithrc]

i do a water change every 1-2 days in our 4gal - only a jug full - probubly just less than a liter.

every few gays we syphon the bottom of the tank (bare glass for this reason) to keep debris very low.

and other than the cucumber incident ours seem to pull throught ok (ok the odd few pass away but thats to be expected)

we have an internal power filter in the tank that will probubly filter loads more than a sponge filter. (i guess air powered) you may need better filtration

 

[yhbae]

i do a water change every 1-2 days in our 4gal - only a jug full - probubly just less than a liter.

every few gays we syphon the bottom of the tank (bare glass for this reason) to keep debris very low.

and other than the cucumber incident ours seem to pull throught ok (ok the odd few pass away but thats to be expected)

we have an internal power filter in the tank that will probubly filter loads more than a sponge filter. (i guess air powered) you may need better filtration

So far, I've been doing WC every two days, not much each time though as you have mentioned already.

Ok, so I may need a better filter - I may pick up another Aqua Clear Mini or something and keep the sponge filter in the tank as well.

The tank is bare bottom as well, and I honestly don't see anything there to syphon out, but I'll try that anyways...

Thanks for some suggestions.