bushynose pleco fry

[soleil1980]

Hi,

I need advice.  I have a 60g freshwater with live plants.  Stock is guppies, bushynose plecos, cories and 2 Siamese algea eaters.  My plecos bred for a first time this summer. I didn't do anything since I do the same thing for my guppies and I have a lot of fry and many survive to adulthood without any intervention from my part.

So the first batch disappeared within a week (why???).  Last week, my tank had somewhere around 20 baby plecos sucking on glass (yay!!!).  This time, I decided to transfer them to a 5g tank with the same water as the 60g where they came from.  Please see picture for tank.  I added 2 clay pots, a java fern, a moss ball and I little piece of wood.  I have no heater but none of my tanks do. It has a filter (topfin internal filter good for up to 10g)

Everything was going good until tonight when I found 5 of the 14 baby plecos dead.  I feed them algea pellets and powdered flake food.  I put 4 baby guppies as a "control"....  I am good at keeping them alive so I figured if everyone died something is wrong.  Even with the filter, I do about a 50% water change every 2-3 days.

any ideas why the plecos are dying but not the guppies

[robt18]

My guess would be food, the babies eat like crazy. Feed them lots, do lots of water changes and you should be fine.

[neon1423]

From my experianced breeding angelfish and gouramis, fry need pristine water. Keep ontop of water changes and make sure they have plenty of food and you should be fine

[Laura]

I don't understand why you didn't leave them in the main tank. 5 gallons is hard to keep water quality up for feeding that many fry.

If you plan to leave them in the 5, did you seed your filter with old filter material from the main tank?

[exv152]

That's unfortunate. Transferring some water from old tank will not transfer the bacteria you need. That bacteria grows on surfaces. The 5g is most likely going through a cycle.

[soleil1980]

I didn't leave them in the 60g because everytime I did that in the past, they would disappear after a few weeks.  I never recovered a body so I cannot say if they were eaten by other fish in the tank before or after dying.  I will keep the 5g running until I get another batch of baby plecos.  It shouldn`t be long as they seem to have a steady "breeding schedule".  Thank you all for the info