I am very sad.
- Thread starter jackiomy
- Start date
if that was the case, there would have been an ammonia spike of sorts, which there was none.
great stock..... 300 with not a single death with a xp3 and hot mag on their tank.... my guess is they were week from shipping.... i dont feed the day before shipping plus time in transient with stress. funny things happen when you ship out fish.
could be
i would test it again. if any more dont make it let me know. ill replace the ones at my cost if you want. just pm me.
I am not saying anything negative about you or the fish. I know how stressfull it is on the fish to be shipped and I kinda figured that I would loose some. It isn't your fault, it happens sometimes. I am just sad because they are such beautiful little fish. There are 6 left and they look great this morning. Had a good breakfast and are happily schooling with the guppies.
This time of year, although its expensive, express shipping is best. The fluctuation of temps and time in the box even when well packaged and heat packs are used can be difficult. I hope the rest pull through fine and do well for you. I have 35 from mg and just adore them.
lol i know i had 14 in my 120 and said i needed more. one of the reasons i got more in. they just look so amazing. i have lost fish before..... we all have it sucks..... my offer still stands if you want to replace them.
Nitrate, even within normally safe levels, is IME associated with what I call "small fish dieoff" - where up to 50% of a shoal of new small fish die within a short time of being added to the tank.
Another cause is acclimation. Bear with me. To explain, a bag of ten ember tetras has probably built up some ammonia in transit. Now, this isn't harmful because the organic processes will have depressed the pH. But then you drip acclimate, which means that you start putting your water - which may have a higher pH - into their water. This turns the ammonia to the toxic un-ionised form and the fish suffer ammonia poisoning.
Drip acclimation is great when you know the parameters in your tank are different from those in the bag. When the difference isn't great, I'd concentrate on getting the fish out of the shipping water and into the tank as fast as possible.
Not saying this did happen, but it's a possibility. Unless you know your water is much harder or much softer than the water the fish come from, then equalise temperatures and get the fish out of the bags. Drip acclimate only when you need to for reasons of osmotic difference. Don't worry about pH either; if the hardness (and generally therefore the TDS) of the water in the bag is close to that of the tank, a fish can swim straight from pH 6.5 to pH 7.5 and not notice. A bigger change might make it feel a bit groggy (especially if it's going from alkaline to acid) for a bit but will probably do less long term harm than ammonia.
Edit - just realised the fish came via mail order. I'd be willing to stick a fiver on ammonia in that case - they've been in those bags peeing out NH3 for hours.
Another cause is acclimation. Bear with me. To explain, a bag of ten ember tetras has probably built up some ammonia in transit. Now, this isn't harmful because the organic processes will have depressed the pH. But then you drip acclimate, which means that you start putting your water - which may have a higher pH - into their water. This turns the ammonia to the toxic un-ionised form and the fish suffer ammonia poisoning.
Drip acclimation is great when you know the parameters in your tank are different from those in the bag. When the difference isn't great, I'd concentrate on getting the fish out of the shipping water and into the tank as fast as possible.
Not saying this did happen, but it's a possibility. Unless you know your water is much harder or much softer than the water the fish come from, then equalise temperatures and get the fish out of the bags. Drip acclimate only when you need to for reasons of osmotic difference. Don't worry about pH either; if the hardness (and generally therefore the TDS) of the water in the bag is close to that of the tank, a fish can swim straight from pH 6.5 to pH 7.5 and not notice. A bigger change might make it feel a bit groggy (especially if it's going from alkaline to acid) for a bit but will probably do less long term harm than ammonia.
Edit - just realised the fish came via mail order. I'd be willing to stick a fiver on ammonia in that case - they've been in those bags peeing out NH3 for hours.
Well, I sorta had a fish die-off but it wasn't of the small fish kind.
I bought 10 (or 11...couldn't count the spastic little guys) embers from MG. I live locally to MG but I still drip acclimated them, added them to tank, everything good that day and the next.
On the second after adding them, I found that 3 of my balloon red-eye tetras croaked and one unaccounted for. I have RCS and assassin snails so I guess the MIA one was dead and the scavengers got it fast.
All the embers were accounted for (unless I really had 11, then I am missing one).
If it had been caused by the ammonia spike of a dead and decaying fish, then it would have driven my shrimp crazy. But they were acting normal and no shrimp deaths. MTS would have climbed to the water line but they didn't.
As of now, I have attributed the deaths to CO2. I am using DIY and diffusing it with a powerhead, so it's quite efficient. I guess there wasn't much gassing off the night before so they perished.
Well, what I am trying to say? There's a lot of factors that can be the reason for fish dying. It's part of the hobby; we're trying to recreate and maintain a stable, healthy environment for them to live and thrive. Sometimes, they just croak. Sometimes (but not a lot I hope), it's something that we do.
I bought 10 (or 11...couldn't count the spastic little guys) embers from MG. I live locally to MG but I still drip acclimated them, added them to tank, everything good that day and the next.
On the second after adding them, I found that 3 of my balloon red-eye tetras croaked and one unaccounted for. I have RCS and assassin snails so I guess the MIA one was dead and the scavengers got it fast.
All the embers were accounted for (unless I really had 11, then I am missing one).
If it had been caused by the ammonia spike of a dead and decaying fish, then it would have driven my shrimp crazy. But they were acting normal and no shrimp deaths. MTS would have climbed to the water line but they didn't.
As of now, I have attributed the deaths to CO2. I am using DIY and diffusing it with a powerhead, so it's quite efficient. I guess there wasn't much gassing off the night before so they perished.
Well, what I am trying to say? There's a lot of factors that can be the reason for fish dying. It's part of the hobby; we're trying to recreate and maintain a stable, healthy environment for them to live and thrive. Sometimes, they just croak. Sometimes (but not a lot I hope), it's something that we do.
