Gar Death dont know what caused it this time

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jpcampbell123

jpcampbell123

Redtail Catfish
MFK Member
Feb 18, 2011
2,014
528
150
In the water
I lost another gar tonight came home to find laying on its side at the bottom of tank.
I took it out to examine it and noticed its stomach was all sunken in like it had not eaten in while but it had plenty of access to food.
this makes 3 i have lost so far. yesterday all of them was fine. i did a rough autoposy on the fish and this is what i found i know its hard to see but it looks to me
like theres some kind of growth where the circle is colored in in the picture. What is this? the belly of the fish was really red too.gar death.jpg

gar death.jpg
 
I think this is also an IP. Some worms bury themselves in the lining of the stomach and lie dormant. If he was eating regularly and still appeared to be thin, this would be my best guess.
 
what were your water parameters? temp? how many fish in the tank? how long had the tank been up and running? successive gar death is usually environmentally based compared to parasites. i would guess potential ammotox, chemical leaching and therefore tox, or something similar.--
--solomon
 
the waters temps are about 73 and i checked the nitrates it was at 5ppm before i did a 25% water change yesterday. there was only 4 of them in the livestock tub. started out with 6 all together now down to 3 the tub is rated 100 gallons and i have a large canister filter rated at 166 gallons for the filter. tub was up and running for a week before they started dieing off.
 
jpcampbell123 said:
the waters temps are about 73 and i checked the nitrates it was at 5ppm before i did a 25% water change yesterday. there was only 4 of them in the livestock tub. started out with 6 all together now down to 3 the tub is rated 100 gallons and i have a large canister filter rated at 166 gallons for the filter. tub was up and running for a week before they started dieing off.
Click to expand...

nitrates were 5ppm, but what was the ammonia and niTRITE? nitrates won't affect gars. also, unless you used old biomedia from another tank, 1 week is not long enough to establish a biofilter in the tank. given the info we have now i would lean more toward ammonia toxicity as the cause of death--
--solomon

PS-- get some biomedia from another filter (old filter/tank) into your canister and keep tabs on the ammonia and nitrite (which need to be ZERO).
 
E_americanus said:
nitrates were 5ppm, but what was the ammonia and niTRITE? nitrates won't affect gars. also, unless you used old biomedia from another tank, 1 week is not long enough to establish a biofilter in the tank. given the info we have now i would lean more toward ammonia toxicity as the cause of death--
--solomon

PS-- get some biomedia from another filter (old filter/tank) into your canister and keep tabs on the ammonia and nitrite (which need to be ZERO).
Click to expand...

x2.

Prime/Amquel will be your best friend for the next few days/weeks.
 
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