Surprise fry! -- Trying to figure out what's best for them

[palgrnstar]

Hi there...

I'm new to Planet Catfish, but I've been a member of several other fish forums for quite awhile. I'm hoping that some of you may have good suggestions for how to deal with my dilemma! This is essentially a question about catfish fry, but I think my unique tank circumstances may need to br addressed first!
I have a community 20 gallon freshwater tank (power filter, gravel bottom), currently with 2 neon tetras (neither is doing well), 2 zebra danios (one about to die, though), 2 upsidedown catfish, 3 bronze cories, and several small (about 1/2 of an inch long) catfish fry! The tank was established in March 2003, and did very well for about 8 months. So well, in fact, that around Oct/Nov we got lazy and stopped doing frequent water changes. As far as we can tell, a bunch of water evaporated and the pH dropped substantially (to somewhere below 6.0... my test kit only reads to 6.0!) We tried dealing with this carefully. We began more frequent changes, and tried raising the pH, first with "Proper pH 7.0" powder (which worked well but ran out) and then with "pH Up" drops (because no LPS nearby had the Proper pH powder). The "pH Up" was added daily, but I was never able to raise the pH past 6.4. During this time, two tetras and three danios died. We think they died of Dropsy, which we read occurs when fish immunity drops in stressful situations. The danios especially had the classic dropsy symptoms of bloatedness and pinecone-like scales. We have been operating under the premise that things will be okay if we can get the pH back up, since (from what we've read) Dropsy occurs naturally in a tank but doesn't hurt healthy fish. We left for over two weeks recently on a trip, and though the tank >looks< good now, the pH is sill at 6.4.
Meanwhile, when we looked in the tank upon returning home from vacation yesterday we noticed two cory fry! We're amateur fish owners, though we do try to educate ourselves and stay informed. We never planned on breeding the fish, and so this was a pleasant surprise. After reading information on this and other websites, it seems that the tank conditions during vacation may have been conducive to catfish breeding. At any rate, now we have these two (and perhaps more) fry, and we'd like to raise them successfully. I imagine that other eggs and fry may have been eaten by the adult fish, though we had a self-timing feeder dump crushed fish flakes in the tank every 12 hours while we were gone.
So, here are my basic questions. First, I'm not certain if the fry are cories or upsidedown catfish! They are very smal, so it's hard to tell. They look like my bronze cories in terms of eye position and body shape, but they have tiny black spots in patterns like our upside down catfish. They swim right-side up, but perhaps upsidedown catfish don't turn upside down for awhile. So...

1) Any suggestions on how to tell which fry I have?
2) Does it make a difference for raising them?
3) Should I remove the fry from the tank and put them in a separate place to grow?
4) If so, how should I move them without injuring them? A net?
5) If I move them to a separate place, what should it consist of? I'm going to the LPS this afternoon to pick up supplies. I'm imagining I need a small aquarium (the smaller the better because we live in an apartment and have limited space!), but don't know what type of filter system it should use, and I wonder if a higher pH will hurt the fry. My tapwater has a pH of 7.0, so a new tank would probably have that pH. Also, does this new temporary tank need a heater? I'm in Massachusetts, and it's COLD out! I'm looking for the cheapest way to do this successfully.
6) If I remove them, when should they go back in the big tank?

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the extremely long post, but I just want to be sure I get all the info that I can. Thanks very much in advance for any help!

Cheers,
Sarah

[Viking Bear]

The fry are most likely C. aeneus. They will spawn in a community tank especially after a large water change. If you only have two fry I would leave them in the tank. There should be enough small food for them to survive. I have a goup of six that I raised like year. It is easier to raise a group of fry than two in a separate tank. It is hard to not feed them too much. They need many places to hide like plants or rocks. C. aeneus fry are tan with brown spots and a brown line running from the eye to the stout for the first couple of months. They slowly lose the spots and develop a green spot on their side that grows large until they look exactly like the parents. If the parents spawn again you will want to remove eggs and hatch and raise them in a separate tank. Always use the water from the tank of orign to hatch and raise the small fry.

[Coryman]

Firstly I think the fry will be OK where they are If they have suvived ths long they shou continue to do so there is nothing that you have in your tank that will bother them.

With regard to the pH I would not bother with buffers, a ph of 6.5 is fine, if you are concerned about water quality all I would do is change water more regularly 25% every other day.

Ian

[palgrnstar]

Hi all...

Thanks very much for your advice. We bought a guppy breeder box, put some gravel in the bottom, and put the fry in. It sank to the bottom with the weight of the gravel, so in order to keep the lid from floating off I put a few big pieces of gravel on top of it.
We bought frozen baby brine shrimp at the LPS, and gave the fry about 1/2 of a frozen cube. It's really hard to tell how much they've eaten but I don't want to underfeed them!
Thanks also for the pH advice... I would think that the pH would be okay at 6.4 but with all the livebearers slowly dying since the pH change I'm not too sure. A slightly higher pH won't hurt the cories will it?

Thanks again,
Sarah

[Viking Bear]

You can't keep cories in sealed box with no access to the surface. Cories when two weeks old need to get to surface every few hours or they will sufficate. Have you noticed that the adult swim to surface every hour or so? I hope get this message before it is too late. Some die if the water is too deep. They will be able to survive if they are in the guppy breeder trap with access to the surface. I have raised small batches that way. I think the brand name of the breeder is Lee's. The slots on the side are small enough to prevent the fry from escaping.

[micahgee]

In terms of PH, im a fan of Seachem's Acid and Alkaline buffer. Mix em to maintain a stable PH, also has NO phosphate (no algal blooms), Its in everyone of my tanks and you can use different ratios to achieve and maintain PH levels from 6-8...