Why have they all died?

[Truffs1178]

All my baby axolotls which were about 2-3 weeks old have died all on the same day. The temp in water was 19 degrees Celsius on that day. They were feeding on daphnia and brine shrimp. I had cleaned their water two days before they all died. All their tails were bent in the middle at right angles after they died and they have a fuzzy fungus growing all over them which now looks like a bubble surrounding them. I use dechlorinated water. The only decoration in the tank was a fake plant which had been in since they were eggs. I had no substrate yet. Here we're about 20 babies in the tank.

What did I do wrong? I feel so bad for killing them all.

 

[Tephra]

I'm no expert on this, but isn't the water of babies supposed to be cleaned every day? Did you take a reading of the water?

 

[mikeg]

I have learned a simple trick that seems to be helping me to stop these random deaths in babies, use cycles water from your adult tanks. I have been doing this for my last few batches and have minimized to about 20 deaths out of all the eggs hatched and i clean all my tanks once a week regardless of age ( But i am also careful to take out uneaten food after a hour).


I have 8 10 gallon tanks lines up beside each other usually 20-30 babies in each one, yes i know seems like allot in one tank but they are only 1 inch and i usually sell most by the time they hit 3-4 inches plus i feed so often i don't have a problem with cannibalism, i clean the tank every Friday and fill about 4 inches high of water from my adult tank then i replace the big adult tank with a bucket of fresh chlorinated water.

 

[auntiejude]

First of all - you didn't kill them, they just died. Don't feel guilty.

Sounds environmental to me, if it were an infection/contagion they would die sequentially and the infection spread through the group.

I would say it was a water quality issue - I agree that water changes should be daily. And using cycled water sounds like a great idea to me!