fry jar water change question

[bhali333]

Hi,

I jarred 10 of my 6 week old male fry 3 days ago, they are in square beanie baby boxes 4x4x8

Today I did a water change which consists of the same as I do with the adults, I have another identical container which has day old conditioned water in it and has been in the same area as the containers the fry are in and is the same temperature 78 degrees.

I net the fry and transfer them from the 2 day old container to the new one.

Today is the first time I had done a water change since I originally jarred them 3 days ago.

My concern is that they are all now staying at the top of the containers very still and not moving just hanging there. Could I have done something wrong which is harming them?


these photos are of two different fish


What is the normal procedure for doing water changes on fry containers??

Any help is appreciated!!

[ChoclateBetta]

It probably has something to do with diet or lack of exercise.

[bhali333]

they are getting BBS 2 times a day and a feeding of dry food in between. as far as exercise how do you supply exercise in a betta container?

[bhali333]

Also they were fine in the containers until I did a water change today and I am thinking it may be the stress of moving them from one container to another, but I feel safer asking more experienced breeders here than speculating.

[tpocicat]

Put two jars near each other so that the bettas can see each other. Do this only for maybe 5 minutes, they should start flaring at each other. That is how I exercise mine.

[ChoclateBetta]

Or have a 10 gallon and let them be in it for like 30 minutes each every day it might help with help activity. I wish to breed Bettas when I have the Big tank for females jars for males young enough fish live food spawning tanks and conditioning tanks and of course Indian Almond leaves plus people to give them too. How many did you raise 20.

[LittleBettaFish]

They are still only young and they might just be suffering from a mild case of shock. Even though the temperature might be the same, there are still other things such as pH, hardness and TDS which might be different.

I would just give them time to settle and perhaps next time acclimatise them a bit more slowly to avoid such an abrupt change.

[indjo]

+1 Thebettafish
I also think it's shock due to water chemistry differences .... plus the stress of being netted and moved twice. Sometimes this also happens to adults.

Instead of one big WC every 3 days or so. I do daily 10-20% and 50 - 100% weekly (depending what I feed).

I usually pour them into a net/hand and place them in small jars. After their tanks are cleaned, fill tank half full and pour everything in (betta and water). IMO this is less stressful because they don't get chased and netted twice.

[vilmarisv]

I had a similar problem in my last spawn... lost 4 guys overnight because it didn't out the two and two together.
Did you use water straight from the tap or did you let it it overnight?
Sometimes there will be more chemicals in the tap water than normal and this will affect them. I would do another water change just in case. Sometimes we do things to often that it's hard know if the steps we remember are from today or two days ago.
Hope they are alright.

[bhali333]

OK here is what I did!

I took 8 of the jarred fry that where affected the most and returned them to the grow out tank.

Then I sat and tried to figure out why 8 where affected and not the other two who where acting normal, after a while I realized that what I had done was changed the lighting from incandescent reflectors on the barracks to a florescent light strip the day before and it provided about 25% less light.

The fry containers where placed near the bottom of the barracks shelving and had even less light. I removed the florescent strip and replaced the reflectors and there where 2 fry that had been affected that almost immediately responded to the extra light and began to move around the container and act normally.

I don't know whether they where going into a sleep mode due to lower light or affected by the shock of the water change or possibly both but I will give it 2 days and do another water change and monitor the results.

So far it points to the light factor, as of this morning all is well.