synodontis catfish sudden death :'(

Hi everyone.
We have had a synodontis catfish for most of our fish keeping life. I came downstairs this morning to see he had passed away. I am utterly devastated, he was the friendliest fish we have had in our tank and he was absolutely gorgeous, even neon looking around his edges. He was my 3 year old favourite fish and he would sit in front of the tank and just watch him and got excited whenever he saw him swimming around. I don't understand why this could have happened? He was fairly young when we first got him, and I know sometimes these things just happen but does anyone have any insight at all? In our tank we have a relatively new resident - a large african shrimp but he is a friendly giant. We have some amano/wood shrimp, and 3 platys. Everyone else seems fine, tank clean and water change 2 days ago, parameters - ammonia 0 nitrite 0. The only other new thing are some ornamental plants which again were added 2/3 weeks ago. I am devastated. Thanks.

What sort of Synodontis catfish?
Pictures of the dead and live fish?
Besides plants, what else did you add to the tank in the last 2 weeks?
Did you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?
How much water did you chnge?
Did you gravel clean the substrate when you did the water change?
When was the last time you cleaned the filter and how did you clean it?

Colin_T said:

What sort of Synodontis catfish?
Pictures of the dead and live fish?
Besides plants, what else did you add to the tank in the last 2 weeks?
Did you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?
How much water did you chnge?
Did you gravel clean the substrate when you did the water change?
When was the last time you cleaned the filter and how did you clean it?

Click to expand...

I will attach pics of him before and after death. He doesn't look any different really....nothing obvious I can see anyway. We are very sad today. There's nothing new in the tank. Cleaning routine was usual, hoover substrate, 25/30% water change, tapsafe always added to new water going in that is temperature matched, and filter cleaned recently - we squeeze the filter sponge out in some tank water and replace. *shrug* nothing out of the ordinary. X

Katerose91 said:

I will attach pics of him before and after death. He doesn't look any different really....nothing obvious I can see anyway. We are very sad today. There's nothing new in the tank. Cleaning routine was usual, hoover substrate, 25/30% water change, tapsafe always added to new water going in that is temperature matched, and filter cleaned recently - we squeeze the filter sponge out in some tank water and replace. *shrug* nothing out of the ordinary. X

Click to expand...

Forgot pics. X

Pictures of the other fish in the tank.
What is the nitrate level in the tank?
How often do you do water changes and gravel clean the substrate?
How often do you clean the filter?

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What is the GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness) and pH of your water supply?
This information can usually be obtained from your water supply company's website or by telephoning them. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the tests. And ask them what the results are in (eg: ppm, dGH, or something else).

Synodontis petricola come from Lake Tanganyika and that has very hard water with a pH above 8.0 and a GH above 350ppm. If your pH and or GH is too low, it would stress and potentially harm the fish.

That's really sad.

Looks like synodontis petricola.

I have a 31 year old syndontis ocellifer still. Kept angelicas and decorum (my favourite in the syno family but not recommended for beginners) before.

Advice from an experienced synodontis fishkeeper: get rid of the coloured gravel, get rid of unnatural ornaments. These could leach chemicals so you want to eliminate the possibility. Thin layer of coarse sand or natural gravel is enough for them. They do like hiding spaces.

And if you can afford it move to a bigger tank and large canister filters like Eheim 2260s if you can. Trickle filters are best for these fish, but that's another area of discussion.