Livebearer food

[Jakeroman]

I have a 10 gal tank with 3 platys and 1 candystripe pleco. It all started as a birthday present for my 7 year old son; now I'm hooked I take care of this fish like they were my babies Inside the tank I have a breeding trap with about 15 fry on it. I am feeding the fry brine shrimp (freezed dried). For the adults I am using Nutrafin Max Livebearer food. Its a mixture of flakes and tubifex worms. However, I think its clouding the water. Could it be the food? If its not the food what can it be? I do weekly water changes and do not have any live plants in the water. Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Pufferpack]

Hi Jakeroman, Welcome to the forum.

A couple of questions come to mind:
How long has the tank been set up? Is it fully cycled?
Do you have test kits to check the waters parameters, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite,Ph levels? and if so what are the readings?
How much do you feed the fish?

I don't think that it is the food causing the cloudiness, unless you are seriously overfeeding
If the fry are getting bigger the biological load on the tank might be too big for the filter to handle ...what size filter do you have?

Sorry to have more questions than answers for you, but if you could give us a bit more detail I'm sure someone here can pin down the trouble for you

 

[Jakeroman]

Thaks for your reply! I'll be happy to answer your questions. I really appreciate the help.

I've had the tank since March. I believe it is fully cycled.
I do not have any test kits and I have never tested the water for anything. What kind of kit do I need? What shlould I be looking for?
I feed the fish twice a day. (The babies three or four times a day)
The babies seem to be developing great The biggest one is a little less than an inch.
The filter I have is Top Fin and it came with the tank (starter kit).

If you have any more questions let me know. Any suggetions will be gratly appreciated.

 

[Tanked]

Based on the info given I would say the filter is being overloaded with the fry.
as far as testing water you want to look for a master kit that will test Ph, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

 

[Jakeroman]

Thanks for the reply Tanked! Do you think that I should move the fry to another tank?

 

[impur]

if you have another tank it wouldn't hurt. You can set up a fry grow out tank relatively cheap, maybe $20. No need for substrate. Just a tank, heater, and sponge filter powered by an air pump. This may help your situation. It will definately need to be done at some point, when the fry get larger it will overload your tank. This may be whats happening now. Just a thought for ya.

here is a link to a thread involving a quarantine tank, basically same thing is needed for a fry tank.

linkage