Babies Fainting

[loui]

Hi Frank

I now the babies faint every know and again, but this is turning out to be my biggest problem. I had 19 baby banngers about 3 weeks ago and know I am down to 5 every time there deaths where the same thing I would feed them and next thing I knew there was a couple floating around the water column some times they would come back and others did not. I thought that maybe I was over feeding them, but that was not the case due to lowering the amount of baby brine I was giving them and they still fainted. I was wondering if the size of the tank was to large maybe they where over extending them selves to get the food or maybe the water was to cold. I keep the water around 72 degrees and the salinity around .021 also I have them in a 20 gallon tank hooked up to 3 other 20 gallon tanks with a 30 gallon sump connecting them all together. Water quality is not an issue here I am sure of that. I have raised the water temp to 77 to see if this makes a difference one of my pairs has eggs again so in about 3 weeks or so I will be a dad again. I am able to get the babies, but keeping them alive after feeding is the problem, which stinks. Every thing is fine I feed them and a couple die, after all the trouble they die when they are doing the most natural thing they know (eating) any ways was just wondering if the water was told cold as to this being the problem or do I need to maybe put them in a smaller tank?

Thanks

[FMarini]

Loui:
Thanks for the email...
yes fainting is a big problem and fortunately its an easy problem to address.
It has nothing to do w/ the tank size.

Its called sudden fright syndrome (please do a search for it here). It mean thats the fry have not recieved sufficent HUFAs to allow proper nerve cell formation. Actually its not the nerve cells but the schwan cells which insulate the nervous tissue. Becuz of this the fish when they get scared have the equivalent of a "short circuit" and drop to the bottom. It is often times its lethal.

So how to correct this? increase your HUFAs and VitA in their diet. The easist way is to start feeding your fry shaved shrimp chunks which have been soaked in selcon. get them onto prepared foods by day 10 and you will not see SFS. If you using baby brine, feed/enrich the baby brine on DTs or any other phytoplankton mix (taithan blend comes to mind), and add a drop of selcon to the BBS water 1-2hr before feeding the BBS to the banggers.
Have you read the articles on raising banggers? its goes into depth about enriching the BBS before feeding
http://www.eparc.com/banggai/banggai.shtml

goodluck
frank

[loui]

Thanks for the Info, will give this a shot hopefully I can find some selcon in my area if not I guess I will have to order it.

[FMarini]

Loui:
Zoecon is the same stuff.
Also DT phytos to feed the BBS will help immensely.
frank