White eggs

Hi folks,

need some help and direction here. Having real problems with my fertilised eggs truning white after 3 days. I have tired various treatments such as octozin, acriflavin, salt and coppper based treatments. I have used the octozin and copper before the fish breed to condition the tank, even mechanical. When they are ready to breed i have done a major water change and removed the mechanical filter. From here I have used a low dose of acriflavin but the eggs turn white.

The problems isn't associated with a single pair of parents but 2 pairs, I am wondering if it could be diet related or some sort of pathogen that the treatments I have used are not targeting?

Thanks for your feedback in advance!

Hi Jimmy,
Are the two pairs in different tanks, or have you tried two pairs in the same tank?
Are you attempting to parent raise, or have you "pulled" the eggs?

If you've been having these problems in the same tank, I would remove the fish, bleach the tank using Miltons (babies bottle bleach), drain after 24 hours, refill, drain, refill again, and assuming you're using sponge filters and are able to, pinch a mature sponge from a different tank before reintroducing one of the pairs.
Personally I don't use any chemicals of any kind to prevent fungus, I rely on the parents picking the fungused eggs off. Some do a better job than others, some batches are better than others. If a pair have several batches where they consistently fungus, I lower the kH to about 1dH and the pH follows that down to about neutral, if they still fungus I rest the pair and try them, sometimes with new partners, 2 or 3 months later.

I never do water changes of more than 20%, and before they breed, and whilst they have young/eggs, I keep water changes to an absolute minimum.
When you say...

When they are ready to breed i .... removed the mechanical filter.

Why? and do you leave some form of biological filtration in the tank?

It could be diet related, mine do well on an almost exclusive diet of tetramin flake, some flake foods are better than others.

Some treatments can cause temporary sterility.

Hi Rob,

thanks for your quick response, the pairs are in different tanks. I use a combination of sponge and mechanical. I find the mechanical to be too strong and remove before spawning to get a better hatch rate and prevent free swimming fry from being sooked up. I normally just let nature do the work but the eggs turning white seems for now to have gotten the bettwr of me. My initial throughts were that planaria and protozoan could be at play however with the meds I have used combined with mechanical I would have thought that they would have been tackled.

My ph is 6.8 and water temp 28C. I have considered increasing temp to 30C but unsure of pH. How would I reduce KH?

My thinking on the food was if their is enough nutrition in the yolk sac for the fry to continue development. Should I be selecting a better mix of fat/protein in the food that I am feeding to breeders?

I have tried removing the eggs and using methylene blue but same issue, I left with parents and were doing a great job moving them around the tank so I know they had removed the white fungal eggs to leave a nice clean bundle of fry.

I will go with your bleaching of the tanks to hopefully wipe out any planaria/pathogens that possible are contributing to the issue.

Hi Jimmy,
I only lower the kH in order to lower the pH, if your pH is 6.8 I don't imagine that your kH is too high. If you do want to lower it there are various ways this can be achieved, but it is important to monitor the level, as if lowered too low, the pH can become very unstable. One way, is simply to do water changes using unbuffered RO or deionised water, until the kH comes down to the desired level. An alternative is to use rain water, but take care to ensure that you don't introduce pollutants from the surface the rain is collected from. Another way is to use a chemical adjuster such as Tetra pH/KH Minus.
Certainly a diet that is deficient in nutrients can result in poor development, but unless you've change the adult's diet recently, or are using food that you've had for a long time, and might therefore have lost some of it's nutritional value, in particular vitamins, that seems unlikely as you've had previous success.
Personally I wouldn't increase the temperature above 28c, if anything I might try dropping it a degree or so, to slow the parent's metabolism and increase the period between spawns, giving them more time to build up the necessary nutrients, but to be honest, I don't think it would make a lot of difference.

I will go with your bleaching of the tanks to hopefully wipe out any planaria/pathogens that possible are contributing to the issue.

I think that's probably the your best next step. Good luck, I hope it does the trick for you.

If you have removed the eggs and they dont hatch in MB then there is a serious issue, What is your KH ? and how acurate are the thermometers you have ? I breed Discus at 28 so I would drop the temp slightly. MyPH is 7.2 so no serious issues there.

If your KH is above three I would drop with pure RO water, but be careful as a KH below 3 can be unstable and can casue PH swings, which isnt going to help you any. You also need to remember a PH below 4 will impact on the filter bacteria.

Thanks for your feedback guys! would strip tests be ok to measure kH or would it be best for the dropper style bottle?

The dropper ones give much more accurate results.

Hi jimmy
Sorry to here you have this problem and sorry late reply been very busy,
Just had a thought you say you do water change but is this aged and airiated
water becouse i had a similar problem and found it was the chloramine in the water
as it is a gas disinfectant the only way (I could get rid of it 100% ) was to heat and
Airiate the water for 24hrs as it disperses with the air bubbles busting and releasing
the gas out of the water.
And if i am right this gas would in time penertrate the ferterlized egg and kill the young.
Cheers Tony

Hi Tony,

thanks for this, I have bought a GH and KH test kit alonside some epsom salts and bicarb, these should hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. I also bought the baby bleach Rob recommended so will follow through the sterilisation procedure and GH/KH adjustments. As a safety check I think i'll buy this water treatment from TA:

http://www.ta-aquaculture.co.uk/

Has anyone used this before, do you think i will be messing around with the water chemistry too much? should I check the KH and GH daily or every two/three days? Thanks guys!

Ok guys here are some results:

Tank 1: pH 7.0, GH 35.8 ppm, KH 2

Tank 2: pH 7.0, GH 35.8 ppm, KH 3

Tank 3: pH 6.4, GH 35.8 ppm, KH 1

I have both bicarb and epsom salts, sounds like a daft question but what one should i use? The packet for the test kit recommends parameters of 3-6 for GH and 50-100 ppm for KH so based on this I think I should aim for GH of 4 and KH of 75 ppm. What dose of bicarb and epsom salts should I use? thanks.

Hi Jimmy,
the carbonate hardness in water comes from calcium carbonate, bicarbonate of soda is sodium hydrogen carbonate, my chemistry knowledge is very rusty so I'm not sure of the wisdom of using it in an aquarium.
To raise the kH of 100 litres of water you need to add 1.78g of calcium carbonate.
General hardness is a measure of all the dissolved minerals in the water, whilst adding epsom salts would therefore raise the GH, I'd again be very wary, I know some people add epsom salts to treat some conditions, but there's more to general hardness than magnesium sulphate (I googled it).
Beyond that proceed with caution, and once you think you know how much to add, experiment on a bucket of water without fish in first!

Hi folks,

ok i'm using an api tap water purifier to clean my tap water. I would like to remineralize the water can any of you recommend a good product?

Thanks Jimmy.

Hi Jimmy, IMO isnt the API TAP an expensive way to sort your water as the price of replacement colums is rediculas so wouldnt an HMA filter be a better way to go & you wouldnt need to use remin.but discus remin should do the job if thats what you need to do & i hope you get it sorted soon.

Paul.

Hi Paul,

thanks for the update, do you have any recommendations for HMA system? I bought a second hand API tap water purifier and it cleans the water really well. I was pricing a replacement cartridge at my local Maidenhead as the carriage on a replacement catridge is >£10. I can get the catridge for around £20. The guys from maidenhead said that Scottish Water had changed to a new lime filter and causing pH swings. Some people had been having problems with their Discus hence how they found out. The other main issue as Tony pointed out is to do with chloramine and I think has been the other major problem. I had a good run using straight tap water for a few years but glad I am now sorting out the water part of my hobby.

I more or less fill 10 x 10L water bottles with the purified water and add a little bicarb and magnesium sulphate to sort the KH and GH. My fish are breeding just a case of ensuring conditions are ultra clean for the albino fry. Fingers crossed - anyone identified the optimal water parameters for raising albinos?

Hi Jimmy,
I have been reading this thread with interest. Having not had any problems with white eggs I feel I can not be much off help. But what I have noticed is that you don't mention if you put any treatment in your water changes. I know the best way is to allow your water to stand for some 24 hours to rid it of the nasty bits. I used to use Seachems Prime, do you?
I found it a god send and I believe it, influence the breeding as if I never used it at any stage I had a poorer breed. May be just coincidence but I thought I would just mention it. Phil

Hi Phil,

long time since I heard from you, hope all is good, I will add prime to my list, the water was so good here for so long that the LFS I used did not add any treatments to their water hence why I got into the habit of using straight tap with great results.

I did a Uni course and this knocked me off quite a bit that combined with family life. This left me short on time in the evenings to find out what problems needed to be addressed. With Scottish Water changing things this escaped my radar and has had me stumped for a while as I was following the same old routine of quick water change, feed, study.

I use biozyme to tackle organics but given choloramines and pH swings then I haven't been addressing theissue. I couldn't tell what was/is causing the problem and thought it to be a biological pathogen so I went down the route of mechanical and chemical.
I thought it was down to a couple of pairs as other fish were still breeding to which I had success with. It could be the case that I was doing larger water changes for my prime pairs (the ones I really want to breed) and hence they were being exposed to greater pH swings and choloramine.

For the pair producing the albino's I'm going to completely sterilise a tank and use the puriified water with optimial parameters. I am going to avoid dosing with any antifungals and raise the fry artificially.

I will post some pics of the albino’s from this thread as developing quite well.
Thanks everone for all your help and interest.

Hi Jimmy i got my HMA filter from Devotedly Discus the 80c model, if you look on there website you will see the couple that they do on there,or give them a ring as Mark who owns the shop is also a sponser on BIDKA & is a great guy always willing to help & full of great advice.Or look on the BIDKA website as you may just get a secondhand one on there.

Paul

Hi Jimmy i forgot to say if you are going to use a RE-MIN then use Tropic Marine Remin as it really does the job & worth every penny.

Paul

Thanks for all your help.

Hi folks,

been a while but to update this thread I have since moved to RO and reminieralsing with my own formula to keep costs down. I figured this was best as working with 98% pure water and given the trouble i've had makes me feel easier as working with a bseline with no more additions (chloramine/pathogens) to contend with. I basically leave the 50 GPD RO running 24/7, this fills a 220L water barrel and has an auto-shut off valve fitted.

I am in process of making the necessary fitting to pump the water from my water barrel (with minerals added) to the fish house. This will make life so much easier long term and reduce the burden of water changes.

Thanks for your helps guys i'm hoping i'm over the worst and can get back to the joy of the hobby.