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I have successfully bred and raised aenues and sterbai. But I am failing with adolfoi. I feel like a tool and worse for having to ask for help with this. I can not keep adolfoi fry past day 5. I have tried in a marina breeder box connected to the main tank and also in a 2.5 gallon tank with sand bottom. I have tried feeding powdered fry food and frozen bbs. I normally hatch them out in the breeder box then after a few days after absorbing their sack, I transfer them to the 2.5 gallon. This last batch, I split in half and tried keeping one batch in just the breeder box & the other in only the 2.5 gallon tank.... and I lost them all. I've read something about them needing to be with other cats to learn to eat. I cant imagine a species needing to learn to eat. But in the 2.5 gallon, I did have 3 albino aenues that are 4 weeks old.

Do you use rain water or RO? Or distilled?

Adolfoi need super soft GH, below 90ppm GH, so the fry may struggle to survive if your water is harder than that.

Both sterbai and aeneus are fine in harder water in comparison, up to 268ppm GH, so big difference.

I'm not sure what my hardness is. I use a whole home filtration system and water softener. Ph is 7.4. Our water was normally around 8 before I had the water soft filtration system added. I'll check the hardness out. Thank you

Is it a salt-based water softener? These are not good as they replace the magnesium, calcium, and other minerals with sodium. "Softened" water will typically have 12.8 mg of salt (sodium) in 8 ounces of water, but in some systems it could be much higher. Many blackwater fishes can not tolerate even very low amounts of salt. For the next spawn try raising the fry in a mix of 1/3 tap 2/3 rainwater or melted snow.
-Shane

It goes through a salt based softener and a di resin based filter. Not sure in which order.