1000 Ways to Kill a Fish volume 1

[Potato Patatto]

Just sharing a little story I experienced today almost killing my fish, outside of the normal causes of death - feel free to share your own!

I cleaned the filter pads in my fx6 in a separate bucket of tank water yesterday just squeegee’ing them out a few times and did a 40% water change. I came home today to all my fish breathing heavy and I thought maybe I caused a mini-cycle, maybe I cleaned to thoroughly, so I tested all my parameters and 0s across the board.

Man what the hell is wrong I’m thinking, even my bichirs are breathing heavy. As I’m looking at the filter valves thinking I may have left the intake at half capacity to feed, I notice my heater thermometer is sitting on the fx6 lid.. registering a room temp of 70 degrees. I throw the thermometer in there and it skyrockets to 87 degrees ? I instantly starting running cold water into the tank and got it down to 83. A few more hours and I was probably gonna lose everything.

 

[eon aquatics]

my tank had a bacteria bloom on the sides of the tank idk if that means its cycled though but i did a water change today

 

[Deadeye]

Put it with a red bellied piranha like an idiot (we lost a lot of good men out there)

My biggest one is notice a problem, say it will fix itself or I’ll take care of it tomorrow, and discover something dead.

I could have lost a fish by feeding it. My parrot got overexcited and decided to jump out of the tank for the pellets. Luckily I was there And could put him back in. I now only have the lid open for no more than 3 seconds while feeding to avoid this.

 

[eon aquatics]

before i was experienced i had killed fish a few times but im pleased with my bare bottom 55 gallon its very easy to clean
i might put some more filters in it today actually

 

[BIG-G]

I notice my heater thermometer is sitting on the fx6 lid.. registering a room temp of 70 degrees. I throw the thermometer in there and it skyrockets to 87 degrees

When I had Africans years ago I came home from work and noticed that they were super fired up darting around the tank fighting and such.
I get close to the tank and could physically feel the heat from the front glass.
The heater had gotten stuck on.
Tank was 90. I unplug the heater and started cooling the tank over the next few hours.
The fish were lethargic for a few days after but I didn’t loose any.
I’m thinking heater malfunction is probably the leading cause of premature death for aquarium fish.
Next to our own human errors of course.

 

[Polypterus_36]

I got too eager to add fish to an uncycled aquarium.
I lost a 6 inch silver datnoid from it.

 

[Deadeye]

I put 8 mbunas in a few day old tank. I saved about 5. 3 are still alive today.

 

[Andyroo]

A few years ago we moved house. Everybody came through fine, and was put into a ~5' wide "mister-turtle" kiddie-pool on the covered balcony while I did the last couple of trips to the old house (~10Km up the road). Last trip I did a tour of the yard with my garden clippers, nicking some final cuttings including a gorgeous night-blooming jasmine.
Back at the new, the day was hot & dry so I put the cuttings into the MrTurtle for safe-keeping until I got some soil ready, then went in to unpack the aquarium-stuffs box & get that ball rolling. 40minutes later & every fish belly-up, 2~3 fish & every invert was dead. Clean buckets & fresh water & air etc, @120minutes everybody was dead. This was a 10year+ slow-accumulation collection of half-dozen 3~5" clown loaches & other loaches, 4+" RTS, big rainbows, some native stuff - It's an island so the imported stock was/is hard to find & erring to costly so grown from fingerling, IE borderline irreplaceable. I didn't get the tank set-up again for another ~3yrs, couldn't really face it. Lesson learned.

Take-home message: don't trust anything pretty (including flowers)

 

[Backfromthedead]

I have:

-forgot to plug in heaters
-forgot to turn off heaters
-forgot dechlorinator
-overfilled tank during wc
-overdrained tank during wc
-failed to quarantine
-failed to properly identify pathogen
-overdosed medication
-used wrong medication
-introduced incompatible tankmates
-failed to provide proper diet.
-dropped lights into tank
-failed to provide proper size tank
-failed to maintain healthy water quality.

All of these have resulted in a fatality for me at some point in time. Couldn't help but get down on myself when trying to think of this list, but I would still say I'm a better keeper now than I have been in the past at least.

 

[The Masked Shadow]

What are some causes of fishies breathing heavily??? I mean besides temp wise.