Fish heat stroke!!!

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weston

Candiru
MFK Member
Jun 14, 2015
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Yesterday I came in to one of my fish floating in a 60 gallon tank that it had to itself. I'm still trying to understand what happened to the fish because it seemed healthy up until this point? If this helps I live in a really old 2 story rent house on the first and second floor. this particular tank was on the second floor and I think the tank just overheated and I cooked my fish on accident. My girlfriend and I usually leave the A/C on in the house when we are comming in and out but we were out of town today and turned it off. We have done this before and no fish in the house have died if anything I just figured it gave my heaters a slight break, however when we left today it just so happens that the tank was in a room my girlfriend pulled the blinds back in that morning to do her makeup and left them open. She's arguing me saying the fish was just old (which it was I think?) or it died of some other cause (my fault) but I think the fish was cooked and I need some help determining this! the water was a good 85 degrees when I came home and the room felt about 95 it was hot as hell in the appartment I'm not sure how hot the tank was durring the middle of the day but it had already been dark for a couple hours when I got home. What do you guys think? Did the fish die to some odd reason or did it get cooked durring the heat of the day? Also I'm moving the tank to my bedroom after this. Just let me know and I'll show her the input, has this happened to any of you?
 
Got it from a store that pulled it from a display tank at a hotel in Austin it was too agressive for the other fish they said.
 
I really don't think that 85 degrees could have killed it, but i'm not sure.
It was 85 when I saw it after I'm sure it had a couple hours to cool down. I don't think I put this in the original post but it was already 10:30 when I got home I found the fish dead and checked the temp then.
 
It was 85 when I saw it after I'm sure it had a couple hours to cool down. I don't think I put this in the original post but it was already 10:30 when I got home I found the fish dead and checked the temp then.
It could have died from stress from being too hot.
 
From what I've read American cichlids should be okay in temperatures like that. I keep the temperature at 79-82 in all of my tanks and have had no problems. You should adjust the heaters they max at around 80 degrees.

Any pics of the fish? How big was it? How long did you have it? Was it eating?
 
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I think it would probably be fine in water that was 85 or maybe a little higher, but I'm thinking that maybe the drastic temperature fluctuation is what did it. If you have it set to 78 or 80 then that's probably what it was at in the morning, and if it was 85 at 10:30 that means it probably got up to like 87-88 at one point during the day, so potentially a 10 degree change in less than 12 hours
 
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