is it safe if the fry get the ich treatement?? they are the size of a grain of rice some smaller. i believe there is ich because i've seen some of the platy flick off objects as to scratch, however there are no spot signs as of yet. i'm hoping to avoid that.
They should survive it, i treated fry once for ich treatment and they were fine, if you don't treat them and the whole tank for ich they could risk getting the parasite themselves and transferring it to the new fry tank.
A 10gallon sounds fine for a fry tank, but i would advise filling it all the way to the top instead of only half-full; fry are very sensitive to water quality and water quality can be difficult to keep good in fry tanks, the more water you have in the tank the less the water quality will fluctuate.
Filtration is definately important in fry tanks, just get a sponge filter for the tank (UGF's are not that great)- you should transfer some muck from your old filter/s to the new one though and run the new filter in your current established tank for a few days to help transfer the beneficial bacteria to it though, because otherwise if you just put it straight in the new fry tank and then add fry, the tank will start to cycle and the water quality will become very unstable and this will have a negative effect on the frys health.
Sand is the best substrate for fry tanks since small fry can get trapped in gravel if they are spooked, and gravel traps a lot of waste in it (and uneaten decomposing food in the substrate can harbor the lethal fish disease Columnaris)- sand is a lot easier to keep clean so is better (either that you can opt for a bare bottom tank). Having some planting in the tank will be beneficial for the fry too, it'll reduce their stress levels and the plants will help absorb nitrates in the tank (which can become a problem in fry tanks with their high stocking densities and regular feeding regimes etc).
You will need to keep the tank very clean since fry are so sensitive to so many things and you don't want them to get diseased and have to medicate them loads, you should aim to do 1-2 30-40% water changes with dechlorinator (also making sure the new water put into the tank is as close to the temp of the water in the tank as possible) once a week and make sure the substrate is kept clean at all times.
If you can, feeding the fry 3-4times a day is the best- small but regular meals are the best for fry, since they have very small guts so can only handle small feedings but also get hungry quickly.
And thats about it when it comes to raising livebearer fry
. As long as you maintain the tank properly keeping it clean, and feed the fry regularly in the right amounts and keep an eye on the health of the fry, you should have very high fry survival rates and have very strong healthy fry with good growth rates
. I would still advise treating them all for ich though either way just to make sure they aren't carrying the parasite (since the parasite does not always make the fish show external physical symptoms at its certain stages in its cycle), more info on understand ich/whitespot and treating it successfully;
http
/www.fishforums.net/content/Tropical...2/What-is-ICH-/
http/www.fishforums.net/content/Tropical...-Your-Aquarium/
.
