What's the most common cause of fish death?
- Thread starter GentleGiantsCichlidKeeper
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I would say yes but i've heard incidents of fishkeepers putting what they thought was the best tank lid on their tank and the fish still somehow managing to break free. So in my opinion that's a yes and no situation because sometimes it isn't neglect but actually the opposite.
That stuff about ich or other diseases being ever present in our systems is an old wives tale. It's only ever present if you don't do something about it. Can fish be immune to it? In a way I guess, kind of the same way I may be able to fight off a virus that you couldn't. I may even be able to infect others while I'm still apparently healthy. Doesn't mean I'm not infected just means my body fights it better then yours. I hate when I read that stuff. It's proven that we can kill them and it is possible to completely eradicate them in our systems. So unless you reintroduce it it's not present. Yes stress plays a big part in our and our fishes ability to fight off disease. When I first started keeping a reef I wanted so bad to have a powder brown tang. I tried it twice and both times I lost the fish due to ich. They are renowned at their ability to catch ich and I think it adds credence to the old wives tale. It's hard once ich has gotten into a reef to get rid of it without killing all the corals. But fish that are healthy and thriving in the reef seem unaffected by it, nope they still have it. Maybe they don't completely get blown out in it but maybe you missed one of the fish with a cyst. The fish are healthy and their immune systems are handling it. You add a stressed fish with a weakened immune system and bam he's covered in it. Take him out treat him get him healthy and reintroduce bam again ich. Until one of two things happens the fish dies or gets used to what's going on and no longer becomes stressed and then becomes very healthy and "fights" it off. It's still there though. Only way to combat this is nuke the tank killing all inverts (corals are inverts btw if you didn't know) or leaving the tank fallow (fishless) for an extended amount of time. That's where qt and meds come in to play. Qt fish, corals, plants anything that could carry a cyst. I did finally get to keep my dream tang and he was a jerk!
Most of my fish deaths would usually be my fault or they die because they max out their life. Once I had a beautiful pair of spike tail paradise fish, they had babies and lived as a colony. Since I had larger fish that would eat the babies, I put them in a breeder box, but these fish wanted to test their lives and jump out of the breeder box and almost get eaten by the larger fish. Luckily I saved 1 baby, and put the baby and the parents in their own tank. But they seemed to give up on life and started jumping out the tank one by one, to be found dried on my floor.
Idk lol, but the jump would have been atleast 3 inches, crazy little fish.
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