Frustrated with the baby situation

[STAR FYRE]

I'm on my 3rd round of babies (In a month and a half) and am having no luck. I keep searching for info on how to raise reidis. It seems the most common theme is to hook up all kindsa tubes and dodads, drills and pumping....stuff I just don't understand.
I currently have a BB 15 gal baby tank with a couple pieces of LR, a sponge filter, and a PH to agitate the surface. The PH is just enough to wave almost the whole surface, but it's wisking the babies all over the place. I turn the PH off when I feed, and they all float to the surface.
Can anyone help me?

[autochek]

If the fry are truly Reidi the they will hitch shortly after birth.The problem is, you have to develop a way to get water moving in a rotation. The easiest way is a kreisel system. You can find many articles in the archives and on syngnathid.org. You will need to start raising baby brine to feed the young fry. This is a labor of love and will be alot of work. If you can achieve a 3-5% survival rate, consider yourself lucky.

[VWD]

They are not the really easy, I agree on the water movement in a rotation, kreisel system I have some 19 day old now and have really put alot into them, I worked on them in the past and never had any luck with the BBS, But now I am doing green water and rotifiers and it seem to be going better, at about day 10 I started feeding the BBS along with the Rots,

As far as the hitching, These are the first I got to hitch at about day 15 they started. Good Luck and don't give up, Just have to keep trying

Tom , That Link is a good one but they have been down for the last 12 hours or more,

[STAR FYRE]

Thanx guys. I'm gonna look into the kriesel. My honey said he would help me with all the drilling, plumbing and other manly stuff. I asked my LFS to order the rotifer culture, nanno stuff and cloram X for me. Once I get everything set-up, hopefully I'll have better luck.

[VWD]

cool, The cloram-X will save you money, Amquel works but the cost over time is high, I do think it is one of your best tools to keep the ponies and the rotifiers going, I use it everyday, In the rot cultures and the kriesel system along with water changes

[cdemeritt]

Ok, I'm going to jump in here, and I don't know if this will help you at all. When I fist started with the attempt to raise Peppermint shrimp, I kept hearing about how you "need" a kriesel system to have any hope. I do not have a kriesel tank. I just used a BB 10g tank, with a foam filter and air lift, no LR. I found, at least for this attempt, this was enough to get a circulation going, the air broke the surface tention, and no further equipment was needed. frequent WC have been preformed to keep water quality up. Correct food seems to be more important IMHO. I can't claim success yet, but this is day 36 with the PSL, and they seem very well. This might help, It might not. Just thought I'd put it out there.

Chris

[STAR FYRE]

What's an air lift?

[cdemeritt]

Basically any form of filter that uses air bubbles to lift the water and move it though filter.
The following is a example, but uses a undergravel filter. The air lift principal is the same however. Air bubbles mixed with water makes the water in the tube (or even open water) lighter than the surrounding water. the pressure of the rest of the water pushes the water in the tube up to the top of the tube where it spills into the tank.

the foam base prevents young from getting into the tube, and a carefully placed elbow keeps bubbles from entering the tank. Small bubbles are more effiecent, but when dealing with babies, small bubbles can cause problems. With mine, I get decent flow keeping the babies afloat and moving, and the air breaks the surface tention to help keep that from scumming up, and my baby shrimp don't get mashed around.

[cdemeritt]

Of course this might not be enough for your needs, as I'm dealing with shrimp and not horses.

[RichardS]

How about a Hydro Sponge? The mini pancake style look like they might be good since they are for raising fish fry...
http://www.jehmco.com/PRODUCTS_/FILT...e_filters.html

Then again don't listen to me, I haven't even started trying to raise fry yet.

[cdemeritt]

That's what I use. I got the H-III and cut the sponge in half, and got 2 filters. they are great for fry.