baby fish found dead is something wrong?

[cinder]

I have the shubunkins and earlier this year I lost 7 of my fish, , now so far all seems well. They had babies, but now I seem to be finding them dead. Not all of them but a few were dead, and not sure why. A couple of them looked injured. Any one have any ideas? This is the first time I have seen so many of the babies. When I find them they have been about half inch and smaller.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

The people on here who can help you will need you to test your water and share the results.

 

[Mmathis]

Agree with JB (hey, that rhymes!) that we need to know results of your water tests (actual numbers).

It's normal to have a percentage of fry that won't survive for one reason or the other. Many are "born" with deformities. But (as I learned....) fry can be difficult and challenging to raise. They grow fast and the amt. of waste they produce is deceptive -- I was surprised that such tiny beings could produce so much ammonia! And their food requirement are unique when they're very young, which they can usually find in a mature and planted pond, but otherwise we have to provide appropriate foods for them.

What are you keeping them in? How are you filtering their water? Are you doing water changes? And are you adding de-chlor to the water? How many are there?

 

[Dave 54]

Never bred myself but fry need water to be perfect otherwise they quickly die , what are your water perameters on the tank you have them in at the moment .
What have you been feeding them as fry normally have a special diet .

Dave

 

[Meyer Jordan]

but fry need water to be perfect otherwise they quickly die

Not really true. If it were, there would be no wild specie of fish. No natural body of water is perfect. In fact, most are polluted to some extent.

Cinder, you state that the dead fry appear injured. They may have fallen victim to predation by insect larvae or other creatures.

 

[Mmathis]

@cinder I went back and skimmed over your older threads. Did you ever resolve the problems you were having before?

 

[mrsclem]

I had 2 tanks with fry in them this year. I lost most in one tank to frogs but the other one had many that died and most seemed to be deformed. One tank had a filter and airstone running and the other was just green unfiltered water. The ones with the filter and air grew much faster but couldn't keep the frogs out of the green water tank. I still ended up with 150 koi fry.

 

[cinder]

Sorry i wasn't thinking. I tested the water and everything registered fine. I have the test strips. The only thing that registered a little higher was the hardness . I haven't separated them from the pond. I didn't know I was suppose to. I know 1of them looked like it was half gone, maybe something took a bite of it.
I did solve the problem from my older posts but not really sure what it was. After I drained the pond and refilled the remaining fish are fine.
I've had the fry before as you call it, (I learned something new LOL) before and I never did anything they just grew. maybe I just didn't see them when they died before.
I'm really glad I found this site. I'm learning alot. Thanks everyone for all your posts.​

 

[addy1]

I lose fry off and on, don't worry about it, all part of the life cycle. Now if I found a ton dead, yep then I would start to worry.

 

[Dave 54]

Cinder those test strips strips arent that accurate you really need to buy a drop test strips API pond master plus a seperate nitrate kit should see you fine and give you a better idea whats going on in your pond .
I was under the assumption that you had netted your fry out and they where in a holding tank or like we do in the Koi world have a seperate QT unit with an attached filter, a 15 watt Kockney koi UV-C, submersible pump, venturie and bottom drain giving us total control of our water and its conditions .
@Meyer Jordan I say perfect water conditions because for after the chosen koi have spawned on their spawning ropes the eggs need it to aviod fungi, that means a continued flow of good clean water. as do the fry, so it stands to reason that you keep the best optimum water conditions for their continued developement .
We may not have bred our own koi yet but I've been around enough koi keepers who do so, all say the same as I've just said .

Dave

 

[Mmathis]

I haven't separated them from the pond. I didn't know I was suppose to. I know 1of them looked like it was half gone, maybe something took a bite of it.
I did solve the problem from my older posts but not really sure what it was. After I drained the pond and refilled the remaining fish are fine.
I've had the fry before as you call it, (I learned something new LOL) before and I never did anything they just grew. maybe I just didn't see them when they died before.
I'm really glad I found this site. I'm learning alot. Thanks everyone for all your posts.​

No, you don't have to separate them, I just assumed -- silly me! I've done it both ways, and the ones that survived in the pond did just as well as the ones that I "babied along," but I don't have numbers to quote either way. My pond-babies are going to be more prone to being eaten by other fish, attacked by predators, etc., but then, the ones I babied are at risk of being killed by ME, LOL!

 

[Meyer Jordan]

Cinder those test strips strips arent that accurate you really need to buy a drop test strips API pond master plus a seperate nitrate kit should see you fine and give you a better idea whats going on in your pond .
I was under the assumption that you had netted your fry out and they where in a holding tank or like we do in the Koi world have a seperate QT unit with an attached filter, a 15 watt Kockney koi UV-C, submersible pump, venturie and bottom drain giving us total control of our water and its conditions .
@Meyer Jordan I say perfect water conditions because for after the chosen koi have spawned on their spawning ropes the eggs need it to aviod fungi, that means a continued flow of good clean water. as do the fry, so it stands to reason that you keep the best optimum water conditions for their continued developement .
We may not have bred our own koi yet but I've been around enough koi keepers who do so, all say the same as I've just said .

Dave

But it is not necessary, Dave, as Mmathis points out in the immediately preceding post.

 

[Dave 54]

No, you don't have to separate them, I just assumed -- silly me! I've done it both ways, and the ones that survived in the pond did just as well as the ones that I "babied along," but I don't have numbers to quote either way. My pond-babies are going to be more prone to being eaten by other fish, attacked by predators, etc., but then, the ones I babied are at risk of being killed by ME, LOL!

But it is not necessary, Dave, as Mmathis points out in the immediately preceding post.

There is a difference as to how koi keepers raise their koi in the UK , I think its because of the teachings of various koi breeders however this works very well indeed .
So its a question of if it aint broke dont fix it , in the pond enviroment in a formal UK koi pond we dont plant out thus it stands to reason that any eggs laid would either be taken down through the bottom drain or be eaten by the adults , the same can be said for the fry.
I assumed everyone did this with their koi fry obviously if your pond isnt formal there are lots of aquatic plants for them to hide but devoid of all plants its not worth letting nature take its course we have to give it a helping hand.
@Mmathis herself states that she has used both methods of raising fry its just a question of how many survive either way in reality
Doing it the way we do in the koi world, includes picking the parents to try and get specific classes of koi shuch as chagois, ogons, shusui's seragois Kuhakus etc.
Normally one or two males are picked to one female to divercify the genetoic and are left in the QT fasility until they have mated.
Once they have mated all three are then returned to the pond whilst the QT fry raising fasility does its stuff .
Also the culling of fry falls to us whereas in the pond the smaller fry will end up cannibalized by the adult fish with only the larger wiser fry surviving , this culling process continues as the fry grow with all deformaties etc being culled out ..
In the end we may be left with a dozen or so Koi that are half tidy the best we would keep and the rest are either given away or sold off

Dave

 

[Mmathis]

@Dave 54 I didn't get the impression that the OP was necessarily trying to breed the fish (Shubunkins, from the sound of it) but that they "just happened," and now some of those fry are dying off, etc. and he's wondering why...... I think some of those possible reasons have been covered (normal attrition, canibalism, pond predators......to name a few).

He has had fry before, but [apparently] has never has a die-off like this before. I can't help but wonder about the problems he was having with the pond back a month or so ago, and wonder if that has anything to do with this? I think there was some question as to whether a chemical agent accidently got into the pond and was killing the mature fish vs. general water quality issues [over-crowding]. Even though he's cleaned the pond, what if there were chemicals present initially.... Would they have all been removed by a cleaning? Would filter media be harder to clean from that standpoint? And what about the chemical effects on the parents possibly causing "genetic" type issues? Not saying this is what's going on [I thinks it's normal attrition, etc.], but you do have to keep the HISTORY of this pond in mind.

 

[Meyer Jordan]

There is a difference as to how koi keepers raise their koi in the UK , I think its because of the teachings of various koi breeders however this works very well indeed .
So its a question of if it aint broke dont fix it , in the pond enviroment in a formal UK koi pond we dont plant out thus it stands to reason that any eggs laid would either be taken down through the bottom drain or be eaten by the adults , the same can be said for the fry.
I assumed everyone did this with their koi fry obviously if your pond isnt formal there are lots of aquatic plants for them to hide but devoid of all plants its not worth letting nature take its course we have to give it a helping hand.
@Mmathis herself states that she has used both methods of raising fry its just a question of how many survive either way in reality
Doing it the way we do in the koi world, includes picking the parents to try and get specific classes of koi shuch as chagois, ogons, shusui's seragois Kuhakus etc.
Normally one or two males are picked to one female to divercify the genetoic and are left in the QT fasility until they have mated.
Once they have mated all three are then returned to the pond whilst the QT fry raising fasility does its stuff .
Also the culling of fry falls to us whereas in the pond the smaller fry will end up cannibalized by the adult fish with only the larger wiser fry surviving , this culling process continues as the fry grow with all deformaties etc being culled out ..
In the end we may be left with a dozen or so Koi that are half tidy the best we would keep and the rest are either given away or sold off

Dave

Very familiar with the process that you described

as do the fry, so it stands to reason that you keep the best optimum water conditions for their continued developement .

This statement is what is at issue. What you feel are optimum conditions clashes with what Koi breeders and hatcheries feel are optimum conditions for immediately after hatching the fry are transferred to mud ponds which are highly eutrophic and rife with all of the organisms common to natural ponds, including pathogens. duplication or approximation of a natural environment together with a natural diet is proven to be optimum.