A Cory Has Died

[Chops126]

Hi,

One of my Corys started swimming strangely the other day. It was swimming sideways, swim upwards and suddenly go limp ans sink to the bottom (sometimes staying on its side at the bottom. I observed it also swimming upwards and repeatedly sticking its head out of the water, then it'd go sink to the bottom after. It looked quite weak.

Had a hard time catching it though but when I finally did I placed it in a hospital tank and hoped that I could get it to live. Before adding any meds (after about a couple of hours) it finally died.

What could this be a symptom of? My other Corys and fish in the tank are doing fine. Is it a sickness or could it be some kind of poisoning?

Thanks,

 

[jollysue]

It may have been weak from the store. Did you have it long? It sounds like poor aeration or the Cory had trouble getting enough oxygen. I sometimes see that in my big tank. I had put a young adult fry in with the pepper crew in the large community tank. After a day or two, it started acting like that, I took it out immediately and put it back in with the fry. It turned around right away and is fine. I had another young adult acting that way in the community tank, I took it out and into hospital and it turned around. I kept it a couple weeks or more in hospital. It was doing great in a 3 usg tank by itself. I put it back in the community and it died. I think the community tank is more stressful because of the mix of fish and competition for food. Some of the fish are fish it would not naturally come into contact with.

But other that that, there really isn't enough information to do other than make speculations. If you have tested the water, make regular water changes and filter maintenence, and the tank is not too heavily stocked for your maintenence schedule, no other fish have symptoms, there were no other symptoms other than it was struggling, a diagnosis is reaching further than my grasp.

 

[Chops126]

Thanks Jollysue

I've had my Corys for over a month and they seemed ok. It might be cause of the other fish too.

I tested my water and it showed a slightly higher nitrate level. I'll be doing more frequent water changes and have added additional filtration which could help with the aeration as well. I'll be observing the tank more for any signs of other Corys being affected.

Thanks for the advice

 

[jollysue]

It can take a very long time for fish, including Corys, to adjust to changes in water chemistry, i.e. ph, temp, --well everything really. So if you had a different temp and ph from it's original tank (assuming it was tank bred) and it got moved around and into a tank with some water quality problems (high nitrate reading), it might not adjust and handle the extra stress.

There are two adjustment senarios fish make. One is a fluctuation that returns to the statis quo. The other is a permanent change that stays different. These are both stressful adjustments for tank raised fish, although wild caught fish handle fluctuations better as they commonly occur in the wild. But they may not do well with changes that stay different.