No time to seed sponge amonia rising

I have a last minute attempt to save a clown fish fry.. I had the rotifers already and the wife/daughter wanted me to save them as they hatched so I was able to save several.. This is my first fry.. I have them in 10 gallon aquarium and they are doing well. I am on day 3 and amonia is climbing. Currently no filtration. I have read at day 4-5 start a filter sponge.. I have one overnighted but have no time to seed it as I read it would take a couple weeks to seed in my main tank. What other options do I have? I have a couple bags of seachem biomatrix that i have had in my sump for a long time now.. I keep them rinsed off when I do water changes.. Would they be benifecial to the fry tank with an unseeded sponge?

Sorry for my ignorance, I am just trying to figure out my best ption for the best chance of their survival

 

oufff, I'm new to all this too and the furthest I have been able to raise them so far is past a couple weeks.

I'm sorry to say this but the fries, or in this case larvae seeing as the have not undergone metamorphosis yet, are extremely delicate. the critical period is the 1st 72h where the little larvae have to develop their hunting skills as it depletes its yolk sac or otherwise starve. but that doesn't mean they are out of danger.

next traumatic experience for them is metamorphosis, that happens around the first week, week and a half after hatch. once the little fish pass this stage life gets easier, you will notice the first "band" appearing on its head this is a sign metamorphosis has passed.

i would definitely say that day 4 or 5 is way to early for a mechanical filter, i would live in fear of them getting sucked up and stuck in it. personally i would only add a filter round week 3 if not even 4 (haven't gotten that far however).

its really not easy to raise them, good job for having rotifers at hand to feed them. keep doing so until about day 10 after hatch. starting from day 10 i would start feeding a mixture of rotifers and nauplii and pump them up on energy as they undergo metamorphosis.

once this stage is passed you can take a breath but be very careful as they remain oh so delicate, the reason i lost mine is that i did a 50% water change on his tank and the water i added was 3 degrees colder than what he had been use to, and i believe that was enough to send it in hyperthermic shock..... needless to say i felt like a colossal ******* .

good luck!!! its really cool to see them grow.

oh also you want to do daily water changes on the nursery, but again make sure the water parameters are as close as possible to each other, don't make the same mistake i did.... also lowering the salinity to about 1.020 will help not only by increasing oxygen levels but it will also avoid you sending your rotifers into osmotic shock keeping them nice lively and appealing for your larvae (assuming you are culturing them no lower than 1.015 water)

 

Thanks for the advice..

 

Moved to-------Tropical Fish

 

With seahorse fry, I use containers with just some live nanno in there to help use up any ammonia produced, but I also add Cloram-X to bind up what might not be used up. I have a light over the containers that is on 24/7.
I use no other method of biological filtration, just open ended air lines for circulation.
I do water changes ever other day, wiping down the container surfaces that can develop bacteria film as nasty bacteria, IMO, are the worst thing to happen with the seahorse fry.

 

What's live nan no?

 

Nanno

 

Nannochloropsis.
Live phytoplankton, the easiest one to culture. Uses light and ammonia to grow.

I have also started up a new tank and put fish in on day one, adding Cloram-X daily after testing ammonia levels so as not to get to .5ppm ammonia, and the tank cycles without any harm to the adult seahorses so I see no reason why you couldn't keep the clownfish free from ammonia harm using the Cloram-X also, without any nanno. (or another binding product like Cloram-X)
You have to have the right ammonia test kit when using a binder because some kits use methods that will test positive even using binders.

 

Which kit do you know works?

 

Mine is an API test kit.