What is killing my red eyed tetras?

S

swordtail

AC Members
Feb 9, 2005
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one by one my tetras are dying. They are free of any visible signs of disease. It starts with uncoordinated swimming, then swimming in spirals. At this stage they are still feeding fine or at least attempting to feed although completely uncoordinated. In the end they lie on the bottom for a week to ten days without any movement except gills and appear to expire from starvation. Some sort of paralysis? Anyone with any similare experience would be appreciated.
Phil
 
Those symptoms sound similar to that of a neuro-toxin. I had a friend who had tetras exhibit the same behaviour and couldn't figure out why as well. In the end he found out that when the bug man came to spray, the spray was getting into the tank in small amounts. Since he lived in an apartment complex, the contamination was happening once a month and was building up in the tank.

This may very well not be your problem, but when you don't know what in the world is going on, you can never discount any possibilities.
 
Thanks for the possible lead. THe fish are currently temporarily housed in two 20 gal plastic garbage cans. I wonder if something could be leaching out of the plastic?
 
i had that problem after introducing fish to my 20 gallon ... lost ALL my cardinals =(
 
y are they in a garbage can in the 1st place......
 
swordtail said:
Thanks for the possible lead. THe fish are currently temporarily housed in two 20 gal plastic garbage cans. I wonder if something could be leaching out of the plastic?
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That would be my first guess...we've had people loose fish because they used the garden hose to fill up a tank. Not all plastics are made with or composed of the same materials, so I would question anything that wasn't specifically aquarium safe.
 
Rowangel said:
we've had people loose fish because they used the garden hose to fill up a tank.
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I used a garden hose to fill my tank over the weekend and all my mollies hid for 2 days, only coming out for food, and even then quite reluctantly. That was quite unusual behavior. Water parameters were ok but I went ahead and changed 50% of the water 2 days later with a regular aquarium siphon and they all came back out. I don't know what it was but perhaps it was poisoning of some sort with the garden hose like Rowangel said..
 
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