Procedure after a fish dies?

L

loughran

AC Members
Mar 19, 2005
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I've never had a fish die, but I just lost an elephant nose that I dumbly brought into the house that I believe (now) was diseased... Anyway, I am wondering how to deal with my other tanks and fish. When I brought him home, he had a horrible tail malady (total tail rot), so I placed him in the hospital tank with a Gourami. Before doing so, I had to do a 50% water change to get all meds out of the water (elephant noses are very sesnitive to medecine) and I put activated carbon in the filter for the same reason--to help get the meds out and give him cleaner water. While I did this, the E.N. was floating in his bag (top open) accliamting in another tank; when I lifted it out, I saw that somehow a small hole had been poked in the bag--so water from it unfortunately did mix with that of my established 30G (rainbowfish and loaches).

It's hard to diagnose the poor guy's malady. He seemed ok and even was curious in his new tail but his tank was bitten to a nub--I thought from a fight with another fish. Upon removal, I noticed however that he seemed to have some internal bleeding on one side (skin is all red under the surface).

Question is: should I do a massive water change or anything else in the 30G or the 5.5 gallon hospital tank? The hospital tank has one other occupant--a wounded gourami, and I have started him back on melafix as soon as I removed the dead fish and I also removed the carbon from the filter once again in order to retain the melafix. Anything else I should do?

Thanks for any ideas! I appreciate all the help I've gotten on these boards.

Trish
 
It doesn't sound like he was in there too long so that should help. I would just do a large water change and keep an eye on everyone. Hopefully you'll be alright!
 
It's hard to know really how far you should go with things. What you describe sounds like a bacterial or fungal infection which essentially any of your fish are probably subject to at any time. The bacteria and fungi are usually always in the tank, but can only attack stressed or weakened fish as a rule. so if that is the case, no decontamination would be needed. It could also have been a parsite (doesn't really fit the description) in which case there is some risk of transfer but still very minimal. With any parasite, transfer via a small leak in the LFS bag is really a small risk, but one to be considered. I would wait it out, make sue you keep the water parremiters good, and be prepared to treat some of the more common parasites we see. Aside from that I would relax and hope for the best. the odds are definately in your favor.
Dave
 
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