Why Are They All Dropping Dead?

Bluesand1313

Fish Crazy
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Sorry for the million ???? marks, but today, about more then half of my little baby platy's have dropped dead! I have no idea why, either! They all looked healthy, even started to get more colour. I just look in every now and then, and yea, a couple I was sure would die at some point, but in the same day, 5-6 of my babies has died!! I only had eleven, and now it's gone down quite a bit. :( Please help before I wake up in the night and they are all gone!
 
Also, what kind of tank are you keeping them in? Is it a cycled tank? Have you maybe done a recent water change and forgotten the dechlorinator? What temperature?
 
I've moved them to the tank their parents are in with the breeder thing. There's only two little babies left. :(

The tank that made them all die, it was home to my betta Ranger. I moved him obviously to give the babies more room. It's well cycled, it was, I thought, the best, cleanest tank I had.

I think I had forgotten to do a water change one week, thought I thought I had done one. Now that I think of it, I don't think I had. :( That's probably what killed them, was the fact that I forgot to do a water change in two weeks. Doing one now.The temperature is the same as the one all my other fish are in, at around 76-80.
 
It's hardly the water change in the tank the problem. What type of trap are you keeping them in? If you don't change/flush water in those breeder traps once or twice daily at least, it can work like a mini tank and build up ammonia inside the breeder trap. Also, they don't provide enough oxygen too.
 
It's a plastic one with holes in the bottom and at the top of the thing. It's a good one.
 
It's a plastic one with holes in the bottom and at the top of the thing. It's a good one.

Pour tank water inside this breeder box as many times daily as you have the chance too. There's first not enough oxygen and second not enough water flow to prevent ammonia build up inside the breeder box itself. They might as well not have bothered putting holes in these boxes as they don't work.
 
There's quite a big gap of air in-between, I think the oxygen is fine.

Won't changing the water everyday stress out the fry? Cause it's really easy to push them around, lol.
 
They'll be stressed from the ammonia anyway - giving them fresh water will make them a lot happier.
 
There's quite a big gap of air in-between, I think the oxygen is fine.

Won't changing the water everyday stress out the fry? Cause it's really easy to push them around, lol.



Oxygen doesn't magically dissolve into water. It's highly unsoluble in water and therefore needs "water surface movent" to enter the water. What surface movement does that breeder box have?
You know, I've kept fry in breeder boxes for months without problems, but my routine was to flush(pour tank water into it) 2-3 times a day, whenever I have a chance, once in the morning and evening at least. The fry don't get stressed if you pour the water slowly. I just scoop some from the tank and pour it in. And I've had no losses with my guppies or corys. I even setup an air line the last time to make water flow from the trickle filter directly into the breeder box for constant flow. And I got 100% success with cory fry that people seem to have a problem keeping alive for some reason.

Whether this is one of the reasons or other reason for success, I don't know but based on what I am coming across around this forum I am inclined to believe people don't realise the importance of oxygen.
Recently, after setting up a cory fry tank I noticed one day the shrimp going to the surface at night and my cory fry shooting to the surface quite often. I started the tank with a big sponge filter connected to a powerhead with a spray bar. I measured ammonia/nitrites-none, then I added an air pump. It wasn't two hours afterwards when I had a bunch of playing little wigglers that barely went to the surface anymore and became quite lively. Then I thought I was imagining things and I disconnected the air pump a few days after because the tank is planted and I didn't want the air pump diffusing the CO2 out. It took about 2 hours after that for the corys to start shooting to the surface. Besides that, they were listless and staying not moving much. So how do you know oxygen levels are ok in a small box that gets little to no water movement?

I also got one of these hang on breeder boxes that pump water from the tank constantly via an air pump. There's a warning in the manual to be careful with the amount of fry due to possible oxygen deprivation if there's too many in it. And that's considering water is pumped 24/7 into this thing. In a normal breeder box, there's barely any flow and therefore oxygen levels can go down in no time. Hence people always wonder why their fish die all of a sudden with no signs, especially fry in tanks with little filtration, weak sponge filters, etc...

I am not saying that yours died because of that. Based on my personal experience with low oxygen levels, which happened in my adults tanks as well on several occassions over the years when not setting up the filter output correctly, people to take into consideration that oxygen is the first important thing, same as for humans. Fish get highly stressed and die with low levels of it and is a mysterious killer number one. It's needed for the filter bacteria to function, for organics to dissolve into non-harmful substances, etc....and these processed compete with the fish for oxygen. Unless you measured the oxygen levels somehow in that still water breeder box, you can't say oxygen is enough. Even the net type breeder boxes are known to gather tiny debris and slime on the outsides making the box work like a mini, non-cycled tank if not cleaned.

Sorry for my ranting.
 
Mine died in a huge tank, they are in a breeders box now.
I have pulled the water up and down (Don't know how to word it) into the breeder box quite a few times, I didn't even know I was doing anything for them lol. ^^
 
Mine died in a huge tank, they are in a breeders box now.
I have pulled the water up and down (Don't know how to word it) into the breeder box quite a few times, I didn't even know I was doing anything for them lol. ^^

Starvation?
 
I fed them, though the tank was pretty big, so maybe all of them didn't get to it on time?
 
Well, two DID survive, but I thought three of them would since three were getting the food every day.
 

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