How often do fish die in your tanks?

S

SJInverts

AC Members
May 24, 2009
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Hi Everyone,

How often do fish in your tank(s) die?

An example for me is my 30g tall which I purchased for the family in August 2008. The tank has an AquaClear 70 and an Eheim 2232 ecco rated for a 35 gallon tank. The substrate is epoxy coated gravel with plastic plants. My ph is 8.0 and the water temp. is 76F.

I have had this tank running for less than a year and in that time I have had many many fish. Not a single fish from the original purchases is alive. My oldest living fish is a dwarf pleco that was purchased around September 2008.

I have aquariums for 30+ years since I was eight years old. I know how the basic care, maintenance, feeding, cleaning, and water changes should work. I'm not a novice but I'm not an expert either.

The other fish that have been are currently in the tank are/were Angel fish, swordtails, neon tetras, cherry barbs, zebra danios, bettas, red tailed shark, rainbow sharks, cory cats, otos, gouramis, serpae tetras, etc.

Now my purpose for this post is to determine whether my fellow forum members suffer the same fish losses as I do, or whether I'm a terrible fish keeper with a (brown thumb for fish keeping)

Now when I test my water the ammonia and nitrites consistently read at 0 ppm and my nitrates are usually 5ppm or less. I do weekly 10% water changes feed the fish once a day and don't over feed.

I think I do the right things, but yet my fish are always dying. Is this the norm?

As of April of this year I'm also maintaining a 10g planted and a 5.5g planted. The only fish loss so far has been my betta in my 5.5g which died on me this past month. The betta was given to me by a friend who received it herself in July 2008.

I'm curious what other members experiences are like. I often wonder if other fish keepers have frequent losses or is it me.

Plus, if you did suffer numerous fish loss how did you correct the problem? Or do you still continue to lose fish frequently for no apparent reason.
 
ive only been keepingg fish for a year now. and so far the only fish that have died was one lyretail molly, and 6 baby neons. but the baby neons died cause my tiger barbs acted like pirhanas...

even my white skirt tetras didnt die when i was cycling my tank.


but one weird thing...even though i cycled my tank with 2 fish, i didnt wanna add my whole plan into my tank without it being cycled and risking it..but for months, i was waiting to see a peak in nitrite or ammonia..and never happened. i eventually gave up, and just tossed in the fish..all is well.
 
hmm that is quite odd.

I havent had a fish die on me in like 1 month and that was a bad stock of GBRs but before that it was several months.

If you do weekly WCs and monitor your levels like you said then everything should be fine.
Either you are getting your fish stock from a bad supplier or you have some mystery agent in your water that is causing harm.

Hope you find the answer to your question soon.
 
I'm almost worried that I'll jinx myself if I respond to this :) but I very rarely lose fish (knock on wood!)

The fish in my 55 are in my sig. I've had all those barbs and danios for over a year now. In the past year and a half or so that I've been keeping fish, I've lost two red honey gouramis and two otos. The gouramis died suddenly with no warning after living with me for almost six months, and they came from the same batch at the lfs, so I chalked it up to bad stock. The otos died shortly after I'd taken them out of quarantine. I'd heard that otos can be delicate, due to the way they're caught and shipped, so I figured they died for reasons not my fault (although, after that, I did make a resolution never to buy wild-caught fish again).
I should mention, in that same time frame I've kept at first three, and eventually seven, clown loaches in that tank, but I gave them all away healthy to their new owner.

My first response, reading your post, is that 10 percent is kinda small for a weekly water change (I do 30 to 50). But if your nitrates are around 5, then your water changes must be doing enough.

Do you quarantine all new fish? Are there any common symptoms that characterize your fish deaths? I'm just guessing, but maybe either (1) you have some sort of persistent parasite or bacteria in your tank that's gone untreated, or (2) because you're not quarantining, all the new fish you're getting are bringing in a variety of diseases, keeping the tank unhealthy.

Or, maybe, you are overstocked? How many fish do you usually have in there are one time?

Again, just guessing. I don't want to sound judgmental :) I mean, it seems like you're doing everything right. I hope you can figure it out!
 
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I've very new to fishkeeping. It hasn't even been three weeks since I started the cycle on my main tank. (Don't worry, it cycled fast with the help from established media, and I test every day after a big change, like removing the 10g filter I was borrowing from an established tank).

So far I've only lost Neon Tetras. My 10g filter had been clogged, but still outputting water for about 2 days, but one night it just stopped working completely and when I woke up and looked at my fishies, two were gasping and one of them looked like he was missing flesh around the gills. He was dead the next morning, and so was another.

I bought 5 more neon for my 20g tank, and one looked slow as I was taking him out of his bag (after acclimating of course) and died within 20 minutes. The next morning another one was dead. I bought those five the day they arrived to my lfs. I know some people like to buy the day of shippment to get the best stock, but I think that when it comes to small schooling fish that are very hard to tell apart, you are best off waiting for a few days after shippment to see which ones survive the best at your lfs.
 
Angel fish, swordtails, neon tetras, cherry barbs, zebra danios, bettas, red tailed shark, rainbow sharks, cory cats, otos, gouramis, serpae tetras, etc.
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You have a mix of fish in there- some have long lives- but many of which are naturally short lived (although not THAT short lived).

For some fish you expect some to die. Neons, Ottos... notorious for dying shortly after getting them.

I would say- that that isn't normal to have such a die-off as you've experienced though. You should be getting more than a handfull of months from each fish.

I'm only just getting back in the hobby after a number of years out of it- three month in- so far, I'm fortunately enough not to have any fish deaths.

(I've had 2 out of 22 ghost shrimp die- but I was expecting more since they are sold as feeders and notorious for dying off).


Nitrates of 5 seem pretty low... are you sure your test kit is accurate? You may want to take a sample of your water to a LFS to test (most do it for free)- see if their kits show the same as yours. If you're using test-kits they may have gone bad.

Also, a fish store may be able to check for heavy-metals that might be present in your water.


Good luck... personally, I'd hold off buying more fish until I figured out what was killing them.
 
In the past year, I lost a total of two guppies (old,) a little black moor (sick when I bought him, tried my best to save him, there is a thread about him,) and several otos. I have one oto - I bought three originally, and the other two died. Twice I bought two more, and within a couple of days they died. I still have one remaining oto, I want a buddy for him, but the big box store isn't carrying them anymore, and that means a 60 mile drive. When I go to get supplies, I will probably get more.

Kristina
 
ive had a couple of fish now for over 4 years. but since its only been about 2 years since i started up the 55 and the rest of my tanks are newer yet, most have been around for about 6 months. my 55 has fish that have been in there for a year and a half. i seem to have rotten luck finding good stock on cories and every time i bring some home, there are the inevitable losses. but the ones that remain really endure. weve also started a tank for feeders (quarantine, clean water and good food do wonders) for the occassional treat and that had high losses initially, but now the fish seem to be doing quite well and are breeding which is what we wanted. i lost some congo tetras due to the water company several months ago and i got some weak L239 plecos not even a month ago that all died (3). everyone else seems super stable
 
My experience has been similar to what several other have posted. I've lost a small percentage of cories when I got a new batch, only 1 out of 5 otos made it through , I've had bad luck with blue rams and have lost several females. I've been trying to figure out if there's something going on in this particular tank or whether it's just that my stocking choices involve species that aren't known for being hardy and it's difficult to get good stock.
 
April12 said:
My experience has been similar to what several other have posted. I've lost a small percentage of cories when I got a new batch, only 1 out of 5 otos made it through , I've had bad luck with blue rams and have lost several females. I've been trying to figure out if there's something going on in this particular tank or whether it's just that my stocking choices involve species that aren't known for being hardy and it's difficult to get good stock.
Click to expand...

sounds like where you get your stock from. this is my problem too.
 
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