Cause of death?

[Mystroe_TheMyst]

I recently place a new thred and it got no replies, thanks alot guys for nothing. My firemouth is now dead, it was in a 3ft tanks, tankmates with a 4-5" gold severum...the firemouth was about 1.5" and they got along fine they where together in that tank for about 1.5months...

when i found my firemouth it was white (as dead fish are) had no signs of attacks and had very very yellow-orange gill area....

what could be the problem? My water conditions are right and It got plenty of places to hide, heat was at 26'C and filtration was optimal

[vilhelm]

nearly imposseble to give you right answer,..your water parameters were ok? have you check ph,ammonia and so on?
how often do you change water? and how much? i change 40% a week.And the severum came from southamerica the fire mouth is not,they have different lowest level of ph,what a severum can stand,the firemouth can not.

[dbcb314]

I really doubt ph killed a firemouth. A lot of fish can stand pretty much any ph. It has to be something else. what i do not know, but it is not the ph.

[vilhelm]

totally wrong dbcb314, for ex. a fish oxygen suply have a cause of ph, or you cant have for ex rift valley ciklids in ph 6,they will die sooner or later. a fish gills have clear red coulor not orange,perhaps that cause fire mouth death(oxygen).then when you bye new fish be sure you add them carfully to the tank,for ex your ph level are 6,5 and the lfs water have ph 8,if just drop in the fish,he will die,for sure.

[Cloud-9]

Well, first of all, let me apologize for not responding to your post. I'm surprised that I failed to respond to a Firemouth post. I have kept them for many years. There are certain post that I do not open, primarily the ones dealing with Africans. I just have very little experience with those.

The majority of my fish loses over the years were due to cichlid aggression. Sometimes, the cause is easy to determine. I had a Firemouth in the same tank as an Orange Pike. One day, I walked in and the FM was missing his tail and some meat on the back-end. The cause was obvious then. But most recently, my Jewel got killed by a bigger FM and a Jack Dempsey. The fins looked fine, not holes on the body, intact tail, etc. The bigger fishes just chased and harrassed the fish before I could make arrangements. All I'm saying is that just because you don't see injury doesn't mean it didn't die violently. None of my dead FMs maintained the red coloration around the throat and belly areas. So perhaps the yellow that you're seeing is that the fading of the dead fish. It's really hard to determine the cause of death, but don't rule out violence.

[Mystroe_TheMyst]

Apology accepted, I was just a little angry i guess when I didn't get any response and then a few days later he died....but i'm sure it wasn't the fading signs cause it was really orange in colour almost like when a female convict gets her yellow colouration...and if it was ph and i figure it wasn't....then come would the FM be able to live in such water for over a month? So far i'm thinking Cloud is right....i've never had troubles with my water quality. I change the water probably about every 2wks Max. somtimes 1wk...but i do clean the fliter often even up to twice a week, cause i figure there is only 5 fish in it so it wouldn't have a mass accumulation of left over food or ammonia. My severum eats everything i put in there...hardly leaves food for the bronze cats...even if he misses the food he then searches for a further 10-20mins for more! what a pig....

thanks again guys....please help me chose another fish aswell but this would be a future fish...not actually planning to get one straight away...

thanks again

[1 fish 2 fish]

Was the gill area that color before it died? The the red throat-belly area could have just faded after it died.

[Mystroe_TheMyst]

yeah it was....if you had visited or read my other thread "Yellow under belly of firemouth" about 3 maybe four pages back, it was turning that colour and got really intense...and then it died and its belly colouration had gone, but its gills were still that intense colour....