cpo baby deaths

[sloshy]

I have a 29g. with 8 cpo's in it. I always put the mothers in breeder nets and remove them asap. I loose babies right away, and I'm lucky to have any survive a month. I have lost no adults the whole time-8 months. I've had around ten broods and I've had three babies make it. I feed them crushed snails, peas, bloodworms and crab bites. My parameters are spot on. I put moss and marimo balls into the nets, and use a power head to get circulation. I have no pollutants of measurable amounts in my water. I know I've lost some to each other, but I can't figure this out. I also use tea leaves. I started off simple and after loosing several broods I started using live plants and leaves in my nets. Since then I've had a few make it a month and of those I've lost none.

[msjinkzd]

I jsut leave my berried moms in the tank and make sure there are tons of hiding spaces and dense areas of moss (its a species specific tank). I have a super high survival rate. Perhaps the shifting of tanks/space is too much stress.

[sloshy]

I put the females into the nets asap- this seems to help me against white eggs. I don't see how they can survive on the mother in the exact same conditions then die within a fews days of release.

[msjinkzd]

what is your tank water like (pH and hardness as well as temp)?

[sloshy]

ph 7.5, temp 75, hardness 7. My city water is 6.8 hardness 2-3. I use equalibrium and prime for water changes, and as I said before I haven't lost a single adult this whole time.

[msjinkzd]

what are you doing to elevate the pH to 7.5 in the tank? Sometimes adults are more resilient than babies. For example, alot of times people will have success keeping caridina like CRS or tigers in hard water, though the young survival rate is really low for the offspring.
I don't see anything glaringly off about your params. What is your maintenance routine an schedule.

[sloshy]

I use seachem ph alkaline to get my ph up. I do weekly 10-20% water changes, and I watch my ph and hardness and dose accordingly. I use no ferts and I have no measurable ammonia or nitrate. I don't mess with the tanks setup/ decoration. The only thing I suspect is there aren't any infusoria in the nets.

[msjinkzd]

I would recommend using something like a buffering substrate rather than a chemical to buffer your water. The chemicals can be pretty unstable as far as results. Using something like crushed coral or a substrate like cichlid substrate (for africans) is a more consistent way of increasing pH. You would want to do small, low volume changes (as you have been) rather than larger ones so that there is less shift in params for the critters.

As a side note, add some established plants to the net and there should be infusoria on that. Or if you leave the net in th etank all the time, it will have a good growth of biofilm. I don't think its necessary to seperate out the female, to be honest.

[jetajockey]

im with ms on this one, i suggest to stop using PH adjusting chemicals, the swings caused by chemical additives are often more fatal than a stable (yet low/high) ph level