What's the most common cause of fish death?
- Thread starter GentleGiantsCichlidKeeper
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If you want to be technical then almost literally everything that happens is user error.
Parameters not good? Not enough water changes. Fish doesn’t grow to normal size in wild? Haven’t figured it out yet but I think it’s not a big enough tank. Fish jumped out of tank? I’m looking at the bichir keepers mainly no offense, people didn’t plan ahead enough. Fish killing other fish? Person put the wrong fish together, didn’t have enough space, or something else, I’m looking at the cichlid keepers, no offense though.
Almost everything can be attributed to be the fish keepers fault and can be argued successfully.
Yes. That is the point. We can and should take the blame when most stuff goes wrong. I don't think every little thing should be our fault but honestly I think things like ick, and other parasites wiping out our fish populations is our fault. It's a closed system how'd that parasite get there? (Just one example)
Fish almost never die from over-eating, at least not abruptly. They might possibly become obese over time and suffer other health issues as a result...just as people do...but what typically kills them is not over-eating but rather over-feeding. This is, of course, yet another operator-error situation. Too much food is dumped into the tank, much remains uneaten, rots and poisons the tank with ammonia and other products of decomposition. Usually, a quick and massive water change can correct the situation...but this isn't done (another operator error) and it's passed off as "just one of those things..."
I love that you are of a similar mindset.
I’d say most things that happen are our fault but not everything. Sometimes a fish that is peaceful as a species as a whole is just insanely aggressive which you couldn’t have known about and as a result it kills another fish when almost any other of the same species wouldn’t.
I am guilty of this for multiple reasons, mainly due to nocturnal catfish feedings where I put the food in before bed and it’s still there in the morning when I have to rush off to go to work/school so it sits there rotting for hours and hours.
The funny thing is that it’s only a problem due to tank size, if we dumped 100 pounds of tilapia in say a lake it wouldn’t do anything as it’s such a large body of water while our tanks, even the largest, pale in comparison and as a result they can only sustain a mere fraction of what the lake could sustain.
Not to mention our tanks don't typically have the "clean up crew" a lake would to help dispose of the uneaten food. Things like skuds, insect larva, worms, and other microscopic organisms.
This actually just reminded me of a post I read years ago that still makes me mad to this day. This fish keeper would let his fish die from diseases whenever they caught them and his reasoning for doing so is because that’s how it happens in the wild. He actually had a well thought out post but god his whole post infuriated me and still to this day. I have never said someone shouldn’t be allowed to keep fish but it changed when I read that post. Idiotic man.
While I’m on the topic of diseases I read another post by someone else that didn’t quarantine and whenever diseases, mainly ick, the old fish never got infected. If I remember correctly he said that due to the disease never actually dying out the older inhabitants were resistant to it and it was only caused by stress which caused a weakened immune system and so as long as the older inhabitants didn’t get stressed they weren’t as risk for getting it even though they were around infected fish.
Just an interesting story or two I wanted to share comrades.
Well those lakes are entire ecosystems and on a large scale at that. We can make our tanks functional ecosystems if we use big enough tanks however in order to have an ecosystem that is able to support the fish we keep we average monster fish keepers can’t afford a tank big enough.
I feel as though a 180/360 would be the smallest to be able to support a fully or almost fully functional eco system on a very small scale.
I've actually heard that argument a lot about stuff like that being ''natural''. To be honest, it's the fishkeeper trying to soothe their conscience about the situation of a fish dying from something they could have prevented earlier.
Forgive me if I’m pushing the limits on what’s acceptable with my following post.
When you become so evolved that you discern “right” from “wrong” and have ways to stop bad things from happening you are faced with a dilemma that is should you interfere with things going on surrounding you? You may not have a dog in the race but you see something bad happening and you have the ability to stop it, should you let the world do what it wants or do you change what’s going to happen and prevent it from doing so? Humans are an interesting species as a result of our ability to think the way we do
Anyway to get back onto topic, how many cases has anybody here heard of a fish dying from stress as a main factor where stress was shown to be the main factor? For me I’ve only heard of one or two that both came from
thebiggerthebetter
I believe after a catfish was stressed because of a move and several months later something happened to it and it ended up dying because of the stress from several months ago.
For stress, aggression from other fish would be a main subject.Forgive me if I’m pushing the limits on what’s acceptable with my following post.
When you become so evolved that you discern “right” from “wrong” and have ways to stop bad things from happening you are faced with a dilemma that is should you interfere with things going on surrounding you? You may not have a dog in the race but you see something bad happening and you have the ability to stop it, should you let the world do what it wants or do you change what’s going to happen and prevent it from doing so? Humans are an interesting species as a result of our ability to think the way we do
Anyway to get back onto topic, how many cases has anybody here heard of a fish dying from stress as a main factor where stress was shown to be the main factor? For me I’ve only heard of one or two that both came from
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