Jaguar Catfish - Help on Cause of Death

[kno4te]

Sorry for your loss. One of my fav catfish.


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[thebiggerthebetter]

Ya, I wonder if 80% water changes twice a week is wiping out my bacteria colony and thus causing spikes in ammonia. I only do such large water changes because my tank is heavily stocked. Perhaps I need to reduce my bioload?

WC cannot have a significant effect on nitrifying bacteria (BB) as 99.9% of these reside on surfaces and not in water column. Large WC when done right (same water temp, pH, chemistry) are in general very good and desirable. The larger, the better.

Now running overstocked can be done but it is very, unjustifiably risky. Even with a good margin for error we kill more fish than we care to count and remember because, after all is said and done, our hobby amounts to keeping our pet fish on life support and that's no metaphor but literal truth.

But, it also kind of depends on what you call an overstock.

-- If you mean the tank water volume and physical dimensions alone, that's less risky - the fish are just cramped and suffer from poor mobility but instant dilution and bio-filtration are good (after you read the whole thing it will become clear).

-- If the tank+sump water volume is overstocked, you are not going to ever provide healthy conditions for the fish IMHO, because the instant dilution of the toxins produced by resident fishes will never occur to a satisfactory degree.

-- Same goes if the water flow / changeover ratio is insufficient for the stock - the instant dilution (and bio-filtration too) will not keep up with toxin production.

-- If the overstock means the bio filtering is not keeping up, then this is totally wrong - just stating this for the picture's completeness.

-- If overstocked means WCs are not keeping up, that's, needless to say, totally wrong too.

In conclusion, I'd say any unexplainable and unforeseen fish illnesses and deaths that occur in an overstocked tank are far, far, far more often than not connected to the "overstockness". I am speaking from experience, not from a high chair. I've committed this error too many times too when I was too lazy to figure out total water volume (tank+sump usually) and apply even the simplest of rules like 1" cubic inch of fish per gallon, etc. In retrospect I found out that sometimes I did not do this simplest due diligence because deep inside I knew I was not going to like the answer. Denial. Paid by my fish's lives. But that's me. Don't read anything between the lines please.

I saw the full body the day before when i was cleaning the tank and rearranging some of the rocks. He swam around until i put the rocks back and he found a new place to hang out. Usually upside down for some reason. He showed no signs of what was going to happen. His jaguar print looked fine. Next morning, found him floating.... Barely alive and huge portions of his skin looked and felt like slimy, wet marshmallow goo.

I think that if you were able to catch him and inspect him, you'd see the reddish areas that day or days beforehand. The extreme sliminess occurs in the days, hours before the fish dies as a result of extreme stress it is under from an illness. Occurs in almost all fish.