Illness/Sickness: All larvae with curled tails and gills within one day

I hope someone can actually help this time because I posted about this before but no one answered and I have not found any posts or info about this happening before

I'm raising 5 larvae about a month old, I was baby sitting an entire clutch for a friend who left me with 5 as a thank you. I have used all the same tools and foods as I did with hers so I don;t think this is from any contaminated products. I fed the babies last night with bbs, this morning I removed the few dead shrimp and did a water change. It was aged water and I don';t use any chemicals to treat it. Within a couple of hours one of the babies had curled gills. I hatched more shrimp and introduced them to the container. I checked on them a couple of hours later and 2 of the babies were swimming erratically in circles. I removed all the shrimp from the water as I thought maybe they had eaten too much and went out for errands. When I came back all 5 of them had curled tails and gills, 2 were upside down and not moving much. I had no more aged water so I grabbed some from my adult tank and melted some ice cubes to make it cooler than the water hteyre in now. I put their container in the new water so the temperature was the same and then let them in. They look like Gs right now, tail curled competely in and their gills are curled so tight they look like they've been chopped in half. This is the second time this happens, exactly in the same way except last time I had a clutch of 50 babies that were 2 months old. What could cause this? Please help

I am guessing it is something about the water. Is this from a municipal supply? Is there any chance that sometimes they are adding additional chemicals? (I can't imagine what they would be adding that would cause this, but the timing seems suspicious.) Do you have a hard water conditioner or anything like that?

I suggest getting a good water conditioner like Prime that detoxifies lots of things found in tap water, such as chloramine and heavy metals, even if you are on well water. I don't know that this will help, but it shouldn't hurt.

Good luck with the babies.

You say you age your water but don't use chemicals - I think you need to use a dechlorinator to make sure you don't have chlorine, metal salts and chloramine. You could try

Are you sure you are rinsing the BBS thoroughly? It could be salt affecting your babies.

By taking water from your adult tank you are introducing a much higher level of nitrates that you babies are used to.

This is one of the few times I would recommend bottled water, at least you know you're getting good quality water with no additives.

LSuzuki said:

I am guessing it is something about the water. Is this from a municipal supply? Is there any chance that sometimes they are adding additional chemicals? (I can't imagine what they would be adding that would cause this, but the timing seems suspicious.) Do you have a hard water conditioner or anything like that?

I suggest getting a good water conditioner like Prime that detoxifies lots of things found in tap water, such as chloramine and heavy metals, even if you are on well water. I don't know that this will help, but it shouldn't hurt.

Good luck with the babies.

Click to expand...

This is why I'm surprised that this has happened twice, and killed all my babies in the space of 24 hours from a water change, because I use the same municipal water aged for a few days and there was no problem up until the sudden death of all babies after a water change. It would make sense that it was additives to the water supply if the city scheduled the release of a chemical once a month or something like that....but then other breeders in the city would have a similar problem. I asked the person whose babies I was sitting and where I got mine from if hers had been sick and she said no. It's just frustrating and heart breaking to have this happen TWICE with absolutely no warning or discernible change to my regular routine. I always thought it was better to just age the water rather than add more chemicals to it, but I don;t think I'll be taking any chances after this one

auntiejude said:

You say you age your water but don't use chemicals - I think you need to use a dechlorinator to make sure you don't have chlorine, metal salts and chloramine. You could try

Are you sure you are rinsing the BBS thoroughly? It could be salt affecting your babies.

By taking water from your adult tank you are introducing a much higher level of nitrates that you babies are used to.

This is one of the few times I would recommend bottled water, at least you know you're getting good quality water with no additives.

Click to expand...

I did the same I always do in terms of water changes and rinsing of the BBS, so if that were the cause I would regularly lose babies to those same symptoms, but I've raised clutches before without significant loses and that's why I would think it was due to something other than my husbandry. I thought maybe someone had seen these symptoms before but neither my research nor posting here has brought up much in terms of others experiencing the same. I used the water from the parents tank out of desperation, I had no dechlorinator because I don't usually use it and no bottled water, I knew from the severity of the stress and the speed at which it manifested itself that they probably weren't going to survive, much like what happened last time. Thank you for your advise, I'll use dechlorinator from now on just in case but I honestly don't think that was the reason

Update: Unfortunately all 5 babies died within hours of the stress symptoms becoming apparent. This is the second time this has happened to me without any explanation and it is beyond sad and frustrating. I'm posting pictures of them so if anyone has ever seen this happen before, please let me know. I will be using dechlorinator with every water change from now on as was suggested, hopefully that will prevent this from happening again if there is something in the water causing this much stress

Unfortunately some babies just don't make it - if your environment was good then it may have been genetic.