# Overstocked fry tank, suggestions?



## allllien (Apr 6, 2012)

I have a really small fry tank, approx. 22L or 6 gallons which houses assorted livebearer fry..

It's usually sufficient -I move the fry when they get big enough to separate the different species, and go into tanks with adult fish (until it becomes time to sell them) so it never really gets too overstocked under normal circumstances. 

But recently I've had just about every female drop huge amounts of fry, including some new guppies and I've suddenly got a couple hundred fry in there! 

I don't really want to cycle a new tank, as fry tanks need to be fairly established from what I believe, but I know it's way overstocked..

The tank is still running well, but there's a lot of muck building up in there, even with 3/4 water changes twice a week.

I'm wondering if I should change the water more often, or would this take too much of a toll on the good bacteria?

How can I get rid of the build up in the bottom without sucking up the fry? I added some extra 'bio-booster' but that's about it, I used to have a heap of ramshorn snails in there but it was too much of a bio load, so now there's just one and its babies (waiting for them to get a bit bigger and clean the tank lol).

Any suggestions for now?

How many fry (under 1cm) could I safely keep in a 6 gallon before problems start arising?


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

Ramshorn snails are the biggest contributors to muck in a fry tank. Yes, they eat uneaten food, but they process it into a much more difficult to clean waste product. I'm always at war with snails - when I siphon my grow out tanks, I target them first and the mulm second. 
I see your problem as follows: if you keep 100 fry in a 22l, growth will be affected, and they may wipe out;
if you set up a second, uncycled tank, growth may be affected and they may wipe out;

It's almost certain they will die in the 22L. It is way overstocked. If you have another tank at hand, go for it. Try to get filter media in from an established tank, but you really have nothing to lose. That many fry in a 22L without daily 50% water changes are done for anyway. 

Change water heavily in the new tank, and see what you can do.

I have a 35 litre tank as a spare, and I spilled a container with four killie fry into it. It was empty, and I resigned myself to raising four valuable and rare fry in a tank that size. I usually start them in a 20L or smaller. These fish are three or four times the size I would expect at their age, two weeks later. The accidental experiment has shown me that even a well maintained small tank is not ideal for raising fry. These four fish are thriving.
If I had put 30 fish in there, they couldn't be this big or active - they just never are. 

Short term, change all the water you want. If it doesn't have a bactericidal agent in it (chlorine or chloramine) it will simply remove waste. Beneficial bacteria attach to substrate, and aren't especially effective in the water column. I've seen hobbyists with automatic water change systems that do more than 100% changes daily in fry tanks, and the results are spectacular, rather than being a problem. In the wild, these fish live in a water change.


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## allllien (Apr 6, 2012)

navigator black said:


> Ramshorn snails are the biggest contributors to muck in a fry tank. Yes, they eat uneaten food, but they process it into a much more difficult to clean waste product. I'm always at war with snails - when I siphon my grow out tanks, I target them first and the mulm second.
> I see your problem as follows: if you keep 100 fry in a 22l, growth will be affected, and they may wipe out;
> if you set up a second, uncycled tank, growth may be affected and they may wipe out;
> 
> ...


Cheers, yeah, I've had too many snails in that tank before -I got rid of them months ago except for 1 which has now laid eggs.. Too many is bad I know, but a couple in the tank works well, I'll just have to keep culling them to keep their numbers very low.

I usually have around 50 to 100 fry in that tank with no problems at all, which is odd I know, but the growth thing isn't really much of an issue as they go into 55Litre tanks when they get to about 1cm in size, they grow quickly once they get moved to the bigger tanks, so it's just while they're really small because I don't have too much space for more or bigger tanks at the moment unfortunately (I'd love to keep a bigger fry tank, but my tiny one runs smoothly so I don't really want to fix what isn't broken yet if you know what I mean 

I have probably over 200 fry at the moment though - About double what I normally have in that tank so i think I'll just have to keep up the extra water changes for now. I also use 'Esha 2000' in the fry tank.

I usually do a 90% water change weekly (in any of my tanks) when I'm heavily overstocked, so I knew that could be done, I just wasn't sure about daily water changes, so thanks for clearing that up  

I'll set up another indoor 'tub pond' if I get too overstocked in future, but I usually sell the excess fairly quickly which helps, often before they're even full grown


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## Crazy (Mar 1, 2012)

I would say that 200 fry in a 6 gallon means it is time to fix it because this method is now broken. This may be the first time this has happened but I promise it won't be the last, just invest in a larger fry tank and call it a day.


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## allllien (Apr 6, 2012)

CrazyMFFM said:


> I would say that 200 fry in a 6 gallon means it is time to fix it because this method is now broken. This may be the first time this has happened but I promise it won't be the last, just invest in a larger fry tank and call it a day.


Yeah I'll be looking into it eventually for sure, but I guess I could always float some of the larger ones in a net breeder in my pond if I start having problems with the tank so I have got another option, although not the best solution.

Do you think I could use 2 of the same type of filter in one larger tank when I do get one though? I just really like the set up I have now 

It's one of those hang on filters but it doesn't suck up the fry.


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## Crazy (Mar 1, 2012)

as long as it will filter twice the tanks capacity it should be fine


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## allllien (Apr 6, 2012)

CrazyMFFM said:


> as long as it will filter twice the tanks capacity it should be fine


Ok, thanks. I would use the larger sized filter (in the same series) instead, but it's noisy for some reason so I think 2 of the little ones might do the trick  I just remembered I had that spare noisy filter so it might end up coming in handy at some point.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

When you have too many fry it you an always let them take their chances in the tank with the parents. Some will get eaten but with good cover some will survive.


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## allllien (Apr 6, 2012)

snail said:


> When you have too many fry it you an always let them take their chances in the tank with the parents. Some will get eaten but with good cover some will survive.


Thanks for that, yeah I do move them in with the adults as fast as I can, usually when they reach about 1cm long and 0.5cm wide, I've found they don't get eaten or sucked into the filter at that size  

(if they're any smaller than that they just end up stuck in my filter unfortunately lol)


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

allllien said:


> Thanks for that, yeah I do move them in with the adults as fast as I can, usually when they reach about 1cm long and 0.5cm wide, I've found they don't get eaten or sucked into the filter at that size
> 
> (if they're any smaller than that they just end up stuck in my filter unfortunately lol)


You could put a sponge over the filter intake.


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## allllien (Apr 6, 2012)

snail said:


> You could put a sponge over the filter intake.


Its a great idea, I hadn't thought of that  -Unfortunately the filters I use in my main tanks sit in corner brackets though, so there's no real way to tie a sponge over the intake unfortunately  The fry fit through the corners and edges of the brackets lol. 

I'm hoping the first drop of fry is nearly big enough to move though, which will help out a bit with the over-stocking for now..

Thank you for everyone's suggestions


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