ABN fry, why so many losses?

Why are you moving the male? I have a 30 gallon breeder w/the male and female in there all the time. I also have a 20H that I move the bigger ones to for selling purposes. They breed constantly it seems and I have very few losses. Maybe keeping them together will help. What are you feeding them? Mine get wafers, green beans, butternut squash and zuchinni (?) - I just add some every day, they eat all the time. Also - do you have any drift wood in their tank. I read somewhere that the BN's need drift wood to really do well.

Just some thoughts. Hope they help.

My BN breeders are in a 30L, along with 6 L-333's growing out (for over a year now, slooow growers they are) and hundreds of ramshorn snails. I don't move the fry until they're around 1". I've pulled as many as 160 out of the tank at one time. I recently added a few endler's too. There is plenty if driftwood in the tank, but BN don't actually eat it like some other pleco's. I feed them mainly NLS Grow and Cichlid pellets twice daily, with canned (or fresh in season) veggies once weekly. The tank also contains a large mass of Najas to help with water quality.

My red lizard whiptails are sharing a 38 with more than 50 juvie BN around 2" now. Also some cherry shrimp and an ever-growing population of ramshorns. I moved the tube containing the male and eggs to a 10 gallon tank, then returned the tube and male to the 38 after they hatched. The 10 also contains mts and ramshorns, with a load of Najas. The 38 is the odd tank, it has a large amount hornwort instead of Najas. As far as I can tell I haven't lost any L-10a fry yet, though it's impossible to say for certain. I have lost a few BN out of hundreds from multiple spawns. Occaisonally I'll come across one or two that are very emaciated, while the rest look normal. What I don't understand is why it hits them when they're several months along. I've tried moving them to other tanks, but the thin ones always die. It certainly isn't for lack of available food, and if it was disease or parasites there would be more than 1-2% affected.

Maybe ammonia spikes are the problem. Try some fast-growing live plants. Duckweed will grow under any light, even a standard FL hood. If you have medium lighting Najas or hornwort will work too.

It's hard to say why you've had large losses. It has nothing to do with moving the male out. I have to pull my caves out of the 55G and 75G before the male lets them out. I'm actually planning on doing it immediately after spawning next time. For one thing, with the huge fins on mine, dad's fins swish a few of the newly hatched fry out of the cave. The other reason is....I've lost two black cories while dad was fanning a batch this time. We know the cories are not the sharpest tools in the shed.....they go in the cave. I find one sleeping in there when it's not being used for a spawn. So two of them have done that last week and he killed them.

I would look at the water quality, maybe you need to up the water change routine on the fry tank. I keep my little ones in a 10G with a couple of shrimp and cory fry with a gravel substrate. Do you have bare bottom or gravel substrate? Are you being careful with the temperature of the tank?

It's normal to have some fry that won't survive. You can see they don't look like the others from about 4 weeks, color is pale, etc.

My first thought was food. Raw carrots and sweet potato are a must. They sink on their own and don't foul the water. I feed my new bn fry heavy with flake, pellets, and raw veggies. It works for me.