What happened to my Frontosa?!?!?

[KenyanSandBoa]

Hey guys,

I just got a call from my girlfriend that my second frontossa died. I've been trying to figure out what the hell happened to them.

When I bought them they had a little area that looked faded...I figured stess from being recently shipped. But after a day or so it spread all around the eye and down to the mouth. It looked like something was just eating away at them FAST!! The eye looked like it was sinking in. This happened so fast that I didn't even get a chance to get pics before I lost them. My girlfriend put the last frontosa in the freezer so I'm going to see if I can get pics from him.

They were little guys (1.5") so I put them in a 30 gallon grow tank. The tank is well established and I do weekly water changes of 25%. I was feeding them a mixture of bloodworms, brine shrimp, krill, haddock, and cichlid pellets.

Their tankmates were various platys and variatus, so aggression is out of the question.

Does anyone know what this was? I have never lost a fish that quick and now I'm concerned about the tankmates so I need to find out if this is something more specific to frontosa or if this going to spread like wild fire.

 

[KenyanSandBoa]

I noticed I posted this in the wrong group. Could a MOD please move this for me?

 

[Oddball]

What is the tank' pH, temp, etc. Are you running the tank with crushed coral, aragonite, or block limestone (holey rock)?
Fronts can tolerate neutral to high alkaline conditions but falter quickly in acidic conditions.

 

[KenyanSandBoa]

What is the tank' pH, temp, etc. Are you running the tank with crushed coral, aragonite, or block limestone (holey rock)?
Fronts can tolerate neutral to high alkaline conditions but falter quickly in acidic conditions.

I have gravel in this tank. We have hard water with high pH right out of the tap so the pH is at 7.4 without me doing anything to it. The store I bought them from had a pH of 7.2. My tank temp is at 79 degrees.

I never let any of the Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate levels get anywhere near toxic. I keep up with regular water changes. I just did a water change on Sunday and I haven't tested yet this week. I'll test it tonight and let you know.

 

[jordanlewis100]

i just wonder if it could be the ph 'cause i had fronts at ph 8.2 and they had no problems whatsoever,if not it could be a disease peculiar to these fish or your batch,also i've heard that bloodworms are bad for rift's so just a few ideas good luck

 

[Oddball]

jordanlewis100 may have a viable point. Bloodworms are not a good thing to feed to tangs. It may be causing a bacterial infection to progress in the fronts or, they're experiencing allergic reactions to the proteins specific to the bloodworms (much as alot of people are allergic to simply handling bloodworms).