They are DEAD ! what did i do wrong ??!?!?

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T

Tillie Fish

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 31, 2008
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Southern Ontario
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ok so i was excited to set up my 65 gall brackish tank (I was upgrading from a 45 gall with a slow leak)... i put 3 finger monos, 3 scats and 3 puffers in a 5 gallon bucket.......... ALL the finger monos are dead and one scat !!! what happened... are these guys more sensitive than other fish.. hell they were only in the bucket about an hour..... it was full with their own clean tank water (no extreme stress in catching them either) the were beautiful too... about 5-6".....

any ideas what happened ?!

so sad here :(
 
From what it sounds like, you may have rushed things a bit. I may be wrong, though. How long was the tank running before you put them into the new tank's water?

Also, monos and scats are HUGE waste producers, especially the scats. Having all those fish in a bucket is risky. Puffers are notably not tolerant for a build up of wastes, so maybe this is the reason why they died. I also know that most puffers can get quite aggressive to their co-inhabitants, especially in a small area. I guess the 5 gallon just wasn't enough space for them, and they may have harassed (possibly killed) the other fish. It's hard to tell though.
 
thanks... they died in the bucket... I should have said that- the puffers are fairly small and the monos and scats were pretty big.... do you think they are "delicate" they have always seemed like fairly tough fish to me... so now i have this 65 gall tank with 3 puffers and 2 remaining scats.... very sad and empty :(
 
Any chance of contaminants in the bucket?
 
As far as I know, Monos are quite hardy fish. However, when it comes to stress, they don't take it so well. There are a few stories of Monos dying soon after being moved, captured or relocated.

Scats are about as hard as brackish fish get - they take pollution quite well.

What Madding said might be true. How long have you had that bucket, where did it come from and have you used it for anything else before?
 
My guess is the ammonia shot up to deadly levels in there.
 
If the puffer died first, would his toxins polute the small bucket causing a chain effect? My son had a green puffer and when it died several other small fish died in his 29 gallon. (Keep in mind it's a 10 y/os 29 gallon tank with sub-par maintenance).
 
Did you have an air stone in the bucket? If the water surface was static and there was no flow hypoxia can be fatal in such a short period of time.

The other and most likely option is that the bucket was contaminated with cleaning products or some other chemical.
 
9 fish in a 5 gallon bucket, and some of those fish are pretty big..... anoxia.
 
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