I've had my tank up and running for well over 6 months now with only 1 or 2 fatalities....until the last 2 weeks. I've had 3 baby angels kick the bucket in 2 weeks and 3 neon tetras die in the last week. No one has signs of disease or any blemishes. No one is breathing erratically. I go to bed with healthy, lively fish every night and wake up to bad news. My angels eat and swim and play in the evening....Then I wake up to them lying on the bottom or swimming in circles staring straight up, and they're pale as a sheet. The neons are all schooling together well and eating veraciously. Then I get up and notice there's 1 less. My water looks good. However, I've been doing water changes daily just in case. I've been using Seachem Prime to treat the water in the tank in addition to 1tbsp. of salt per gallon. Any ideas?
Mysterious fish deaths...
- Thread starter KYeasting
- Start date
I've just deduced the cause of my tetra deaths, I think. I just looked over my last dead fish (from this morning, in addition to a dead baby angel). It has a bite sized chunk missing from its stomach. I get a feeling my tetras are being hunted by my angels while they sleep. I knew this happens but I've kept tetras and angels in smaller, less planted tanks with no attacks. The angel was far larger and the school was far smaller too........
My angel has color on the tips of its fins but the body is pale. It breaths erratically. It doesn't swim. It lays on the bottom or twitches its way through the water.
My angel has color on the tips of its fins but the body is pale. It breaths erratically. It doesn't swim. It lays on the bottom or twitches its way through the water.
What else do you have in that tank.. my angels and tetras live fine together for over 6 years.. if something was eating that fish it could have been after it died... sounds like something is really going on in your tank.. check water with a tester...
That's it with the exception of a large dragon goby. He's too big to make such a small bit in the tetra. I haven't had any deaths in the tank until I put the angels in. I'll test the water today. I checked it yesterday and it wasn't bad.
large dragon gobys have very small mouths..even though mouth looks enormous.. they can only swallow very small pieces or they choke.. he may be the culprit..mine was quite nasty after it became mature.. they also require brackish water ...
I don't know why this is the case, but I've had a spike in nitrate in my tanks in the last month. I had 0 nitrate, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite. I checked my water one day and suddenly my nitrate was way up. No ammonia then, no ammonia now. I've been doing water changes and things are calming down now. Any idea as to why this happened? I change the water once a week when everything looks good (I've been doing them daily to keep the tank cleaner lately. It definitely helps keep everything cleaner... the water params read about 10ppm nitrate and everything else is 0).
I realize the goby has what appears to be a large mouth but has a small throat. I've tried feeding it large items before and learned it couldn't eat them when it rejected it. I've only seen it go after the smaller items. But when I said there was a small bite missing from the tetra's stomach, I meant it was really small. It was about the size of a small food pellet. Teeny tiny bite.
I'm not too sure which way to go with the goby. I've heard of keeping them in full fresh, brackish and marine. One store says brackish, another says fresh, one person says brackish, another says fresh/marine...... It keeps a healthy appetite, it's colors are immaculate and brilliant. It doesn't have cloudy colors or behave like it's irritated.
I realize the goby has what appears to be a large mouth but has a small throat. I've tried feeding it large items before and learned it couldn't eat them when it rejected it. I've only seen it go after the smaller items. But when I said there was a small bite missing from the tetra's stomach, I meant it was really small. It was about the size of a small food pellet. Teeny tiny bite.
I'm not too sure which way to go with the goby. I've heard of keeping them in full fresh, brackish and marine. One store says brackish, another says fresh, one person says brackish, another says fresh/marine...... It keeps a healthy appetite, it's colors are immaculate and brilliant. It doesn't have cloudy colors or behave like it's irritated.
My water is perfect. I checked it last night and everything read 0 ppm. I woke up to 2 more dead tetras. My goby has been in hiding ever since I put the angels in the tank. I put the angel in a large net breeder and the goby came out of hiding as well as the remaining 5 tetras. I'm not sure why, but it looks like I had a couple of grumpy angels in the tank. I'll post tomorrow if I have dead fish or not.
I've had another fish drop dead today. That makes 9 fish in the last 3 weeks, 5 this week alone. My tank is about 80- 82deg. F, there's about 1 tbsp. of salt per gallon, I've been doing 25%+ water changes every day or every other day, my water params are perfect. No aggression from other fish, I've isolated them from each other so they can't be tearing each other up. I looked at my last dead fish closely and it had rather red gills (even for a neon tetra). This appears to be the only visible sign on their body. Any ideas as to the identity of my killer?