My other eel died; why?

[Dez]

I'll keep this short, I'm just looking to try and figure out what happened to my eel out of concern for my BGK, which is the last remaining fish in the tank.

For the past few days now I found my peacock eel lying on his side, but with his middle arched up. He was literally sitting in an upside down U shape all the time. If I poked him with the net he'd swim away, seem fine, then drop back into that position again. Before this started happening I'd find him draped over the little sucker thing holding the heater in the tank, not sure if this was an earlier sign that something was wrong or what, but now I found him dead and I'm very worried about my BGK. He's eating well and seems fine but I just don't know.

Had been having ammonia issues with my tank but that has since been more or less resolved, I test almost daily and have been doing frequent water changes to combat the ammonia, and it has since gone down immensely. It is a newish tank and is 10gal.

Lastly, I did notice that there was a red line down the eel's belly area, no idea if that's just a natural coloration or if it was a wound or what. My BGK didn't bully him as far as I could see.

 

[Owain4]

how many fish are in the 10gal???? thats a tiny tank. I bet its ammonia issues. fish that die of ammonia poisoning often get alot of red marks.

This is why people tell you not to cycle a tank with fish, or to make sure a tank is cycled before you add fish.

 

[Dez]

The ammonia has been going down, though. It's at about 0 or 0.5 according to the chart on my testing strip container. The tank started out with a very small BGK and two peacock eels. One died by a filter incident, now this one by undetermined causes, though I guess your point might be it. Maybe the ammonia got to it before I could get rid of it all in time? My BGK, as I said, seems okay thus far. Active, eating...

 

[Owain4]

Any ammonia is bad ammonia, just gotta deal with it until your tank gets fixed, try adding some prime to detoxify the ammonia till it drops. with one fish you will have less problems. dont buy anymore for the time being

 

[Dez]

I definitely won't. I do use Prime as my conditioner for each water change. Should I put the zeolite packet back into the filter overnight, to try and drop the levels again?

 

[pbass510]

yea same with my eel never could figure out what happened? maybe a fish scared it and it got stuck like that because its muscles tensed up or something

 

[Dez]

So I'm not the only one then. It was just the strangest thing. Would swim fine and then just plop back down exactly in that position. Weird.

 

[MonsterMinis]

Stress will kill spiney eels.. Just keep up with the water changes for your BGK.. what was the eel eating? the red line suggests a few things but mainly physical stress be it from internal parasites, poor water quality, or infection. the stress from the small tank, combined with the water quality issues. May have been enough to slowly kill the fish. But its also more then likely the ammonia poisoning caught up with him. Spiney eels are delicate fish in general.

 

[Dez]

Hey Monsterminis, guess I'm learning these things as I go. I fed them both tetracolor pellets, and had tried bloodworms a few times in the past too. Never actually saw the eels eat, but I assumed he must have been eating when I was in bed and the room was dark. Will my BGK be okay in this tank by himself for a while longer?

 

[MonsterMinis]

Chances are he never ate... and you BGK really should be in a larger tank. I would be planning on moving him into a 75 or at least a 55 in the near future, the 75 would be better as they can reach 12" and the extra few inches of width in a 75 would make it unlikely he'd ever need a bigger tank unless you wanted to get one. They will grow pretty fast once they settle in and start eating good, Most I've raise/help other raise ect hit 8" between 6 monthes and 1yr.. and putting him in a bigger tank now will help keep your water perameters more stable. But I would deffinately cycle the tank before putting him into it. ( ie leave him in the 10 by himself while you cycle the tank)