Dead Goldfish Fry Stuck To Filter Tube

My goldfish fry are about ten days old now. They're in a plastic storage box with an Aqueon Quiet Flow 10 filter that has mosquito netting wrapped around the intake tube. I do water tests and changes by using a baster to suction water from inside the filter, and so far I haven't found any fry in water from there, so the netting is apparently working to keep the fry from being sucked into the filter.

Yesterday I noticed the filter was sluggish. I unplugged it, took it out, pulled off the intake tube, and swished it in a container of water to dislodge what turned out to be a lot of gunk that had been stopped by the netting. I also saw two dead fry in the debris that came off.

After cleaning the intake tube and removing and swishing around the piece of netting, I wrapped some filter floss around the tube before rewrapping the netting. I hoped that extra layer would reduce the strength of filter suction enough to not overpower fry that get too close.

This morning when I removed and cleaned the intake tube I found two more dead fry.

Are they dying because they get sucked in and stuck against the net-covered tube and can't swim powerfully enough to get away? Or are they drifting until they get sucked in and stuck against the tube because they're already dead?

Is there a way to further protect the fry from getting too close to the intake tube?

 

Unfortunately I think it's likely that these fry have already died and are just being sucked up like poop and debris is.

 

Actually I would consider it fortunate if the filter is doing its job and catching dead fish, and extremely unfortunate and unacceptable if the filter turned out to be killing the fish.

This is my first (and I hope only) time hatching and growing baby fish. I've read that a lot of them don't survive even if you do everything right. How many fry deaths are normal, and how many would indicate that something is wrong?

 

Goldfish generally aren't particularly easy to raise. I can't really give you a certain number. But once they're about 2 months old I wouldn't expect many more deaths. Usually any that reach that stage are pretty much in the clear in my experience.

 

I only lost one that I was aware of and I sadly dropped that one. 62 survived. I placed a piece of panty hose over my intake and I used a small HOB filter. The intake can suck them in at this stage. I think I would put some panty hose over the floss on your intake and get rid of the netting altogether. I just wiped my hand over the panty hose to clean off any debris that was stuck to it. I know this is against your beliefs, but hatching brine shrimp provided the protein that helped the fry grow strong quickly. I respect your individual beliefs on this though. Good luck with the rest of the fry. I’m sorry for the ones you lost.

 

BottomDweller, what do you mean when you say they aren't easy to raise? Things they need doing that are difficult to do (like what specifically?), or high death rate no matter what you do for them?

Goldiemom, I'm wondering how you came up with only 63 fry to start with! I only saw about four eggs left when I moved my filter bag and its contents out of the pond where the adult fish had had a couple of days to munch on them, and I think I got a couple of hundred fry!

What are the relevant differences between panty hose and mosquito netting for covering the intake tube? I used mosquito netting because I already have some in the house, and panty hose would be something I'd have to go out and buy (with so little money that I had trouble paying for the $4 purchase of a new filter bag and a bundle of plant sprigs). I'm also concerned that panty hose might come contaminated with detergents or other chemicals. I have read that newly manufactured clothing is often sprayed with stuff like formaldehyde to prevent insect infestations during shipping. And used panty hose, if I could find some in a thrift shop, could have been washed with fabric softener which, unlike detergent, is designed to stick to fabric and *not* wash out in the rinse. (When I buy new clothes for myself at thrift shops, I not only have to wash them several times, I usually have to leave them hanging outside through sun, rain/snow, and wind for three or four months before they stop smelling like perfumey fabric softener.) How did you make sure your panty hose was non-toxic for your fish?

More dead fry when I swooshed the filter tube last night. Some of them looked bent and twisted, like pictures I saw online on sites talking about which fry to cull. So maybe they died because they had something wrong with them. Or maybe their bodies got bent and twisted by suction trauma. I wish I knew.

What if I got one of these, or (money being so tight) made something similar from netting/panty hose and wire, and put the filter inside it to make a protected no-fry zone around the intake? Lee's Fish Net Breeder

Think that would work?

I tested the water last night. All parameters perfect again: zero ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, pH the highest reading with the regular drops and lowest reading with the high range drops. That's the same pH reading I consistently get for the big fishes' pool and for plain tap water.

 

BottomDweller, what do you mean when you say they aren't easy to raise? Things they need doing that are difficult to do (like what specifically?), or high death rate no matter what you do for them?

They seem to have a high death rate in the first few weeks compared to other fry I've raised. Ive bred goldfish a few times. Very clean water is the most important thing. Through trial and error ive found feeding them just twice a day works best. I used to feed them 6 times a day but the water became dirty quickly even with twice daily water changes. The best schedule ive found is feeding twice a day and doing a 50% water change around half an hour after feeding. Even with this quite a few die. You still end up with a lot of fry in the end though since you start off with hundreds.

 

I think a panty hose is all you need. I had 63 from one female. That’s all of the eggs that I removed from the tank and put in a nursery tank. They ate the rest. I knew I couldn’t handle anymore so I let Mother Nature take her course with the rest.