African dying for no apparent reason...

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Cyclop3000

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 22, 2005
448
1
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Quebec, Canada
Ok guys I need help. I am keeping a spawn of 10 yellow labs for my wife, which I was able to breed about 6 months ago. Some of them were 2" last week, some others way smaller. Everything was good for them, until last week.

I grabbed two of them and gave them to my father in law for his first tank. A couple days after he settled them in his 30g, one died. The other is fine.

From there on, I have had 2-3 of them die on me each week. No signs of illness or parasites, no signs of agression. They looked perfectly healthy. I have a couple other cichlids in the tank and they are fine. Unfortunately I did not check water parameters before I did a 50% water change today. I now have 4 left, and they seem to always hide and not happy.

I did notice they were breathing quite fast, faster than usual. When they die, they do not float...they just lay on the gravel.

Can anybody please help me? Or at least give me ideas on the problem so I can at least know...The tank is a 20g, they are in there with a gourami, leulupi and a baby frontosa. As I said, no agression otherwise I would have split them.

Thanks all for your help :thumbsup:
 
The gasping makes me think ammonia or anoxea but if your filter is working and you are doing your water changes that shouldn't be it.
 
I'd check your water parameters for nitrites, nitrates, and ammonia. I'd bet one of those is the problem.
 
Yeah i thought ammonia too with the breathing...but like I said I went and did the water change before testing. Guess i'll have to wait and see. I also realised I have quite a few plants in there that were not in too good shape...plants that go bad screws up the water parameters...so i decided to remove them...only left one for hiding spots.

Should help...thanks for your replies guys. Wife is not happy her fish are dying :(
 
Like I said, no signs of agression so this is out of the loop...a few more died since my last post...dang I can't get my finger on it.
 
i had a very similar problem a few years ago when i began breeding platy for profit. after two generations and all my stock had bred it was clear that interbreeding had resulted in week fish that would die for no reason and they would never get any decent size on them to be worth selling. am i right in guessing all ten labs are related? if so its possible they could have come from other related stock and who knows how many times interbred. if you are serious about breeding them then bloodlines are the key

oh and you have overstocked that tank in my opinion. you need a 40 really.
 
danny boy said:
i had a very similar problem a few years ago when i began breeding platy for profit. after two generations and all my stock had bred it was clear that interbreeding had resulted in week fish that would die for no reason and they would never get any decent size on them to be worth selling. am i right in guessing all ten labs are related? if so its possible they could have come from other related stock and who knows how many times interbred. if you are serious about breeding them then bloodlines are the key

oh and you have overstocked that tank in my opinion. you need a 40 really.
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on the inbreeding note, all yellow labs were spawned until very recently from just a few pairs of original fish. They have been inbred like cockerspaniels and french bulldogs. This certainly leads to weak fish. though usually introducing one or two mbuna into a mbuna tank usually leads to death. It's better to add them in groups. also yellow labs are no where near as aggressive as fish like zebras.
 
ogre929 said:
on the inbreeding note, all yellow labs were spawned until very recently from just a few pairs of original fish. They have been inbred like cockerspaniels and french bulldogs. This certainly leads to weak fish. though usually introducing one or two mbuna into a mbuna tank usually leads to death. It's better to add them in groups. also yellow labs are no where near as aggressive as fish like zebras.
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yeah i had heard that story about the guy starting out with 2 labs and creating 20,000 within 6 years.
 
i hadn't heard that, but i heard it wasn't very many pairs thats why wild ones are so damn expensive. though i could be wrong. but it would be the first time. it's like the story about richard gere, you hear something from so many different people it's gotta be true. but seriously, wild caught labido's are way more expensive than they should be.
 
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