Peppering on Spotted Butterfly fry???

[Hooked]

Hi Brian,
thanks for the reply. Yes, whilst my display tank is fairly light, the actual refuge areas are all very dark drift wood. Hollow logs etc. The Butterfly parents are both healthy and lay eggs regularly so I'm happy with that. My breeding tank came with a very dark Blue background also which probably didn't help. Its a type of contact adhesive so I'm going to change it to white as an exercise to see if the peppering lessens on the parents when they are in there next. As they tend to darken at breeding time it may well make little difference.
The young ones in the grow out tank have lightened up a lot since first posting this. The majority are clear of peppering now. My main problem was bacterial. It was weakening the fish and the peppering was a result of not being very happy. As Marlon mentioned there would be, a few are still peppered. They are mainly the runts. This has been my first batch that I have attempted to grow out and I've definitely learnt a lot. I'm feeding less and pre treating the change water with Potasium Permangenate and Hydrogen Peroxide. They seemed to become much more active after the use of the PP and HP in treating the change water. I'm also definitely getting a UV before attempting another batch.

Cheers

Hi rex82,
you are probably right. Although as a relative newbie I've actually found the peppering a blessing in disguise. Its been a good indicator of when the fish are not happy. My problem was knowing what to do about it when they were unhappy. Is it Flukes? Is it bacterial? Internal? External? etc etc
I wish I knew what I know now (still probably not much!) when I started to grow out the fry. Hindsight is always 20/20 they say. : )

Cheers to all

[rex82]

A higher nitrate reading seems to make them pepper up a little more as well, if that's any help.
If you are attempting to sell the fry down the track I find it better to keep them in a darker tank, that way it's easier to see the undesirables and cull them out saving you the time and money in growing them out any more than you have to.

UV..... You will find mixed feelings about using UV on fry for grow out, I used it for a bit and found that it helped my losses but when I sold the fry off to other hobbyists they had issues with the fish in their systems because they weren't running UV, my guess is it suppresses the immune system of the fish making it susceptible to the next thing that comes along in their new homes. Once removing the UV the strong prevailed and had a lot better results in the long term.

I'm not saying it's crap straight out, it's just my own observations and the beat lessons learnt are the ones learnt yourself, HTH.

Like I said with the pigeon gene, always created more headaches than they were worth with arguements over pepper. absolute PITA. Lol

[Hooked]

Hi rex82,
great info thanks mate and definitely food for thought. Always great to hear first hand experience.
Your mention of the Nitrate level made me check and I see its at about 5.0ppm (in the display), quite low. I'm going to keep a closer eye on it as it always use to be zero. The adults in there have grown a fair bit over the last year. Larger fish, more waste I suppose. It's water change day tomorrow for the display tank. I'll up my change frequency in it and see if it has an effect on the few pigeon based adults I have. Its no big deal if no change (don't really expect any), I'm just interested. Just glad the young ones seem sorted in the grow out... for now. I'm going to keep growing them out at this stage. I'm enjoying watching them grow and change.

Cheers