Problem with moving fry

[yashinfan]

I have many many zebra danio fry, and although one casualty doesn't really make it as a statistic, it still upsets me. So this is my problem: When I move my fry between tanks, my fish get super stressed as soon as I put the net into the tank. After I take it out (~5mins later) they are perfectly normal again. They are so serverly stressed that they will clamp their fins!!
So when I finally do catch some fry, and get them into the net and then have to manouever the fish into the bag as gently as possible since they are already SO stressed. I have had two die during moving so far (the second one just happened :( ) Mainly what happens is that the net in the bag takes up most of the room, and it takes the fish too long to get out of the net so they constantly stress themselves out. The fry today died while it was still in the net being put into the water. And honestly, it is out of water for one second, and the water in the bag is straight from the tank! So the only cause could be stress.

Anyone have any suggestions for a stressless move or to cut back stress?

[HungryGoldfish]

Zebra danio fry are indeed very small. How about you get some flexible tubing (say 1/4 inch inner diameter or larger) and siphon the fry into a container? That way the only stress is taking a trip through the tube. In and out in say 5 seconds.

[yashinfan]

So pretty much suck the fry right out of the tank? Now I can think of a couple of problems with this method: 1) the tube would have to be bigger than the biggest fry just in case, and I do not want any stuck or to get hurt on the sides. 2) I would have to suck out A LOT of water before I got any fish. It would probably take at least 30 minutes. 3) How do I choose which particular fry I want out?

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Rometiklan]

I'm not sure if this would work for zebra danios, but I use a turkey baster to move Angel fry around from tank to tank. Angel fry aren't particularly large or lightning quick, so I can suck them up in a baster quite easily. You can pick up a turkey baster at any kitchenware shop for a couple of bucks.

[yashinfan]

Holy cow these things are FAST! Some of them are actually pretty big at 1/4 inch, others are 1/6 or 1/8. I wish they were slower, it'd save me SO much time!

[Oscar_Wild]

I have used the siphon and baster methods. They both work great. I move convict fry with these methods all the time. The difference though is that I am moving mine to be feeders.