My Ange lFry are Dying- High PH

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Bonniegiff

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Jul 18, 2010
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My Angel Fry are dying and I am trying to figure out why. I thought it might be the PH. I was using the test strips before, but found they were very expensive. I just bought a API PH Test Kit and my tanks read 7.6, I never had a PH of 7.6. Is the API Test Kit bad? Some people say don't use PH up/down because it will hurt the fish, then what do I use. I need to go down to 6.8 - 7.0. Can I uise baking soada to bring the PH down?
Thanks
 
1) DO NOT MESS with the PH. It is fine.
2) Baking Soda brings the PH up.
3) The PH is not killing your frys.


My brother and I use to raise lots of Angles from babies when I was young. They use to breed in our community tank and the babies still lived! The Angles will be fine with a "Stable" PH from 8.0 to 6.0 Just keep the PH stable==Do not mess with it.
 
RO water is better for fry but you need to add minerals to buffer the water as well as provide valuable minerals for growing fry. I use Replenish by Seachem.
 
how old are the fry and what are you feeding them? give us a little more info, maybe we can help. I also doubt it is ph.....
 
I have double black Angels and Platinum Angels. They lay eggs but will eat them, so I move them to another tank. They breed on a piece of slate or on a plant leaf. We remove the slate buy putting it in a plastic bag filled with water and then move them to another tank. I carefully remove them from the bag and set up the sleight with an airstone and the bubbles flow gently around the slate. The angels seem to do fine for a few days and then they start dying on me. I cycle the tanks by using strained filter junk from my other 24 tanks I also use some of the water from the parents tanks. I keep the temperature at 80. When the eggs are first put into the new tank I use Hydrogen Peroxide daily or the blue stuff. I also add salt and dechlor. I feed the fish as soon as they are free swiming. I feed them Brine shrimp which I make myself every two days and if I run out of that I use decapsulated shrimp. I also freeze some of the shrimp. I use an eye droper to feed them and give them about three eye dropers full of brine shrimp three timnes a day. I am also using egg yoke and Fisoriua ( it might be spelled wrong). If they last over a week I give them powered food like first bites. My water is hard, I have no ammonia, low Nitrates and Nitrites. My PH is 7.6, I checked my house water and let it sit out for 48 hrs and that ph is also 7.6. I have the babies in a 10 gallon tank. I have done this 8 times so far and end up with two or three left. No one can eat them becuse they are by themselves. It seems like I get 100 fry and them most of them swell up and die or just turn to dust. I clean the tank once or twice a day. Some days its a 50% water change one time and if its twice I do two 15% water changes. Every ten days I get a batch of eggs I have 7 maded pair of angels in their own tanks. I leave the airstone in the fry tank untill they are all free swimming then I put a sponge filter in the tank. I have many live bears to and have no trouble with them. I have had 10 batches so far and I have only been able to keep one tank of 20 Platinums and one tank of 31 Double blacks. Those are all dime size now and in 20 gallon - 40 gallon breeders. I am almost ready to get rid of my egg layers. I have also tied Rainbow fish and gotten about 40 eggs but I am down to 11 Fry. They get Brine shrimp, Infasoria and green water. I don't know what I am doing wrong. Please give me some suggetions.
 
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Actually it looks like you are doing everything right. You said that you have low Nitrate and Nitrite?? Nitrite must be (Like Ammonia) at "0".
 
Cichlids are normally good parents and eating their eggs are an indication that they're stressed about something. Since you have 7 mated pairs, you could try leaving the eggs with 1 pair while you/ we try to figure out what's going on with the fry in the breeder tanks.

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Bonnie, have you tried aging water?

some consider it an antiquated technique , however, it is often changes in the water that can be at issue.

bacteria, heavy metals etc can have a drastic effect on raising fry.

you may actually need to run RO/DI and add any stabilizers..however large daily water changes may make it so you don't need to do anything but add pure RO...most Angels really don't acquire much in terms of minerals from the water but usually get what they need from their food.
for those in doubt..think wild angels which don't seem to have much problem in their pristine ,low TDS, very acidic water..
the problems for these fish really come from intervention or intrusions to their habitat..which introduce toxins..which result in low hatch rates and low survival rates.

I would suspect it is possible issues you see are a result of the water conditions.
how do you condition your pairs for breeding??
 
Much more of an issue than pH here is your TDS (total disolved solids) as a proxy for this you should check your GH and your KH. If it is indeed something about your water parameters, I would look to hardness.

And before switching to 100% ro and remineralizing, I would try a mix of ro and tap. However, there is no point in shelling out for an ro unit unless you know it helps. I went through this process for handling Altum angels and I did it in a 29 gal not a 10 where it is cheaper and easier.

Go down to your local supermarket and buy 10 gals of distilled water. I used to pat between 80 and 99 cents a gal. Then the next batch of eggs you pull dilute your water with 25% distilled when you set up the tank. Check the params before moving over the eggs.

It is important, if you are adding Methylene Blue, that you remove if from the water when you get wigglers.

With the new mix of 25-75 ro/tap, so all water changes with a similar mix (hence the extra jugs). See if that makes a difference. If not, you may want to consider trying it again at a 50/50 mix.

Also, bbs are pretty much worthless w/i 24 hours of hatching. You need to hatch out a batch a day. I used to ween mine off of live by beginning to mix frozen cyclop-eeze in with the live bbs at about 10 days. I would start with 20% of the feeding as the cyclops. Then I would increase the ratio of cyclops to bbs each day until at about day 15 I was at 100% non-live. I also removed uneaten food 15 minutes after each feeding. Baby angels sleep on the bottom at night so it is imperative it be clean when they do.

I agree with the suggestion about spawning pairs in their own tanks. You can use a 20 gal for this.

Good luck with it and keep the thread updates with what you try and if it worked or not.
 
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