I have a 20 gallon tank, fully cycled for at least 4 months, with (currently) 5 rasboras, 5 gold white cloud minnows, and 2 oto cats. Chemistry is nominal (0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, about 20 nitrate, ph 7.8), and taken right before water change on Tuesday. In the process of the water change/vacuuming, I discovered that the largest of my 2 remaining skunk cories had died. I also discovered the corpse of a minnow, one that had died previously, but which I could've sworn I had taken out (maybe I accidentally dropped him in again, who knows). Wed morning I saw the remaining skunk cory swimming around when I fed the fish. My mom saw the cory that day too. However, Wed night I couldn't find him anywhere after a semi-thorough search. No corpse (I'm assuming he died) as far as I could find. It's not a huge tank - 3 fake logs, of which 2 are hollow, and 4 fake plants.
Not wanting to leave a body decaying, I decided to do another water change/vacuum last night and do a thorough search. I took out the hollow logs, looked in them with a flashlight, shook them, thrashed them in the water - no body. He wasn't stuck in the plants, not hidden behind the filter intake or heater, and unless he somehow got minced, he didn't get sucked through the vertical slits in the filter intakes (I have two). So now my question is, where is he? He can't have vanished. I moved all the fake stuff around so I could vacuum/stir the gravel, in case he somehow got buried (maybe the other fish had a funeral), but nothing. There's no possibility he decayed that quickly. Unless the oto cats became carnivorous and ate him whole? If so, the bigger cory that died the day previous should've enticed them more and shown some sort of mangling. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
On a related question, I seem to have bad luck with cories. I've lost 5 panda cories (though they're harder to keep I've heard), and now 3 skunk cories, which were supposed to be hardier. Maybe I should periodically dose with some sort of generic treatment? I don't know why they died, though two showed some signs of frayed fins, but which didn't look like fin rot from pictures I've seen on the web. So now I'm looking for fish that won't grow too big (maybe 3 inch max), that are hardy and go with higher ph, preferably bottom feeders, and get along with the rest of my fish. Colorful would be nice too. Any suggestions are welcome.
Not wanting to leave a body decaying, I decided to do another water change/vacuum last night and do a thorough search. I took out the hollow logs, looked in them with a flashlight, shook them, thrashed them in the water - no body. He wasn't stuck in the plants, not hidden behind the filter intake or heater, and unless he somehow got minced, he didn't get sucked through the vertical slits in the filter intakes (I have two). So now my question is, where is he? He can't have vanished. I moved all the fake stuff around so I could vacuum/stir the gravel, in case he somehow got buried (maybe the other fish had a funeral), but nothing. There's no possibility he decayed that quickly. Unless the oto cats became carnivorous and ate him whole? If so, the bigger cory that died the day previous should've enticed them more and shown some sort of mangling. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
On a related question, I seem to have bad luck with cories. I've lost 5 panda cories (though they're harder to keep I've heard), and now 3 skunk cories, which were supposed to be hardier. Maybe I should periodically dose with some sort of generic treatment? I don't know why they died, though two showed some signs of frayed fins, but which didn't look like fin rot from pictures I've seen on the web. So now I'm looking for fish that won't grow too big (maybe 3 inch max), that are hardy and go with higher ph, preferably bottom feeders, and get along with the rest of my fish. Colorful would be nice too. Any suggestions are welcome.
