Absolute DISASTER with neons

also i have been doing a little reading and it seems most of the fish from south America are shipped with a little salt added to help them on the plane
any way to test the shipping water to find out if this is so ?
 
not at this point. Its been a week. All the otos and hatchets are still holding strong. I lost maybe 3 more neons overnight.


Regardless, I have learned alot of valuable lessons from this experience.

1. Don't be a sucker and take in thousands of fish you are not prepared for
2. Keep them in species tanks for qt, it reduces teh stress for the fish and myself
3. For every fish I bring in in the future, I will do a minimum of two week qt before I get people excited about them
4. Transhipping is a risky business and its not always rewarding
5. Sometimes things happen that you cannot control, lol, and it sucks

It seems that things are stabilizing, but time will tell
 
Hi,

very fast before I catch my plane to SA:

I am (almost) sure the Neons were not from the wild, as hardly anyone imports wilds anymore, for a few decades already, as millions are bred worldwide and much cheaper and better then the wild ones. Simply as the latter are grown up in neutral water and not in acid water.
For this reason I do not believe that it has anything to do with the water parametres.
And especially not if the Neons started to die only days later (the patogenes will need 4-7 days to develope) - so if you Neons started to die after this period, the problem was, or better came, with the mixed fishes together (rarely with the gravel, but naturally also that is possible - a quarantine tank shoul always be a bare tank with nothing in it, only a filter and one should never mix fishes from different sources - only after the quarantine period).

I hope this helps in the future,

see you all after December 15th,

always

Heiko Bleher
www.aquapress-bleher.com
www.aqua-aquapress.com
 
Update, Rach. How are the remaining Neons doing? Otos and Hatchets still OK?
I'm hoping things have settled down for you.
 
Heiko Bleher said:
Hi,

very fast before I catch my plane to SA:

I am (almost) sure the Neons were not from the wild, as hardly anyone imports wilds anymore, for a few decades already, as millions are bred worldwide and much cheaper and better then the wild ones. Simply as the latter are grown up in neutral water and not in acid water.
For this reason I do not believe that it has anything to do with the water parametres.
And especially not if the Neons started to die only days later (the patogenes will need 4-7 days to develope) - so if you Neons started to die after this period, the problem was, or better came, with the mixed fishes together (rarely with the gravel, but naturally also that is possible - a quarantine tank shoul always be a bare tank with nothing in it, only a filter and one should never mix fishes from different sources - only after the quarantine period).

I hope this helps in the future,

see you all after December 15th,

always

Heiko Bleher
www.aquapress-bleher.com
www.aqua-aquapress.com
Click to expand...

Thank you for posting this information about the Neons and about how to QT fish. Very good bits of information to have especially when trying to keep such seemingly fragile fish.

Q
 
Heiko Bleher said:
Hi,

thid is Heiko Bleher and if I have understood correctly the Neons were freshly imported and you placed them into the community tank? If that is/was the case, then it is only very normal that thiose fishes began to die like flies.

A stressed, freshly imported fish, should NEVER be placed in a community tank, ONLy into a separate quarantaine tank where there is no other fish. And stay there under observation for at least 14, better 21 days. In a separate tank they do not have to fight the bacterias and parasites the other fishes in your community tank have and live with very well. The "newcombers" have no resistance against those (they need to first grow onto them, in your water, which in any case is always different from the water they originally come from).

No medication or treatment whatsoever will help now (nor before), and only the strongest of all of those will survive eventually. Only those which have a very strong immun system and can resist.

Please remember this once and for all times. NEVER place new fishes to your old(er) fishes, have new ones ALWAYS quarantained separately and you will never have this problem again (unless you get them sick and for that watch always you source).

From one who works with fishe over a half a century...

Heiko Bleher
www.aquapress-bleher.com
Click to expand...

first very sorry to hear of these fish dropping for you like this

secondly I would have to totally agree with the above poster
 
Yes, they all came from the same source, same shipment into a tank with only filters and some algae covered gravel (to help the otos which can be fragile).

Still all the otos and hatchets are fine. Most of the neons are dead.

Here is a picture of the tank to get an idea of how bare it is:
dead neons and fts 004.jpg

An idea of how the neons looked as they died, this is just one small fraction of the losses:
dead neons and fts 001.jpg


Very few if any of the dead fish had anything seemingly wrong with them.

dead neons and fts 004.jpg dead neons and fts 001.jpg
 
how terrible. so sorry you lost so many, but glad the otos and hatchets are doing well.
 
omg, Rachel, I can not imagine what you had to be going through to watch all of those fish die. I know we are the same in big soft hearts when it comes to our critters. That had to be heartbreaking.
 
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