Dead Dwarf Gourami :(

[EX1EY]

Its a sad day

I've had my gouramis a week and the male died this morning. Its been doing fine all week, feeding ok, swimming around fine. Chasing the female about a bit.

Out of nowhere i came down this morning and started feeding my fish, I couldnt see the male gourami, so i checked next to my filter and he was hiding there between the filter and the glass. Both gouramis do this every so often so i thought nothing more of it at the time. Came to the tank about an hour later and he was still there but i could tell he was dead!

What has gone wrong all of a sudden?! I introduced 3 male guppied into the tank two days ago who are all doing fine, my 8 cardinals are doing fine and the female gourami is okay too??

I did a 25% water change on saturday when i added the guppies, i added some floating plants from the LFS aswell a largish ferny type plant, and aswell as the flake ive fed them a bit of mixed frozen food, again bought at the LFS.

Any ideas what i should do? Ive got a lonely gourami here aswell will she be ok without a male?

 

[three-fingers]

She will be fine without a male, I often find the females are far hardier than the males in dwarfs .

Get your water tested, and do a couple of water changes over the next day just to be sure, but it's probably just DGIV - dwarf gourami iridovirus - which sadly seems to affect all the dwarf gouramis from supplier in my area . The magazine Practical Fishkeeping did an article on in a couple of years ago, seems a large percentage of fish farms in the far east are infected with it, so it's basically luck as to if your gouramis will live for months, or years. However, females seem to fair much better than males IME, so just keep the water very clean and keep an eye on her for health issues .

 

[XeroTolerance]

Sorry for your loss.

 

[thereverendturtle]

Your tank is still cycling, adding the guppies was a bad idea. You probably have just hit the ammonia spike and the nitrite spike will hit in the next few days. More than likely you will lose more fish. Sorry, but your lfs gave you really bad advice.

 

[EX1EY]

Your tank is still cycling, adding the guppies was a bad idea. You probably have just hit the ammonia spike and the nitrite spike will hit in the next few days. More than likely you will lose more fish. Sorry, but your lfs gave you really bad advice.

But there were no signs of any discomfort/abnormal behaviour prior to the death. So I dont understand. Would a fish just perish all of a sudden due to ammonia?

Im propper gutted, i really liked that fish and im scared to buy another incase the same things ahppens!

 

[three-fingers]

Would a fish just perish all of a sudden due to ammonia?

Um, yes, put simply - depending on the sensitivity of the species. Dwarf gouramis aren't very good ones to start with in a freshly cycled tank.

Especially considering everything I mentioned in my last post, the fish was probably already weaker than the others.

 

[This Old Spouse]

Your tank is still cycling, adding the guppies was a bad idea. You probably have just hit the ammonia spike and the nitrite spike will hit in the next few days. More than likely you will lose more fish. Sorry, but your lfs gave you really bad advice.

Your tank is still cycling, adding the guppies was a bad idea. You probably have just hit the ammonia spike and the nitrite spike will hit in the next few days. More than likely you will lose more fish. Sorry, but your lfs gave you really bad advice.

But there were no signs of any discomfort/abnormal behaviour prior to the death. So I dont understand. Would a fish just perish all of a sudden due to ammonia?

Im propper gutted, i really liked that fish and im scared to buy another incase the same things ahppens!

Is this from a different post??

 

[EX1EY]

Your tank is still cycling, adding the guppies was a bad idea. You probably have just hit the ammonia spike and the nitrite spike will hit in the next few days. More than likely you will lose more fish. Sorry, but your lfs gave you really bad advice.

Your tank is still cycling, adding the guppies was a bad idea. You probably have just hit the ammonia spike and the nitrite spike will hit in the next few days. More than likely you will lose more fish. Sorry, but your lfs gave you really bad advice.

But there were no signs of any discomfort/abnormal behaviour prior to the death. So I dont understand. Would a fish just perish all of a sudden due to ammonia?

Im propper gutted, i really liked that fish and im scared to buy another incase the same things ahppens!

Is this from a different post??

Yeah, I went to the LFS to get ornaments and what not. Ending up coming away with 2 dwarf gouramis and 8 cardinal tetra as the guy at the LFS said 'you cant cycle your tank without fish'. He said all this fishless cycling stuff is 'just polluting the tank'

I've noticed im getting very bad advice from all the LFS i visit. Went to a closer to home one when i got the guppies, asked the guy about putting other gouramis in the same tank as my Dwarfs and he said it would be fine and 'bring out there colours more'. He also told me a could have a siames fighting fish in with gouramis, contrary to everything ive read on the internet.

Fish keeping seems to be very difficult...the 'experts' dont even seem to know what they're on about!

 

[three-fingers]

Unfortunately that seems to be the case . You occasionally get lucky and get an LFS worker who is in the hobby themselves, but even then they usually have very limited experience.

It's an easy hobby, as long as you do extensive Internet research on each spices of animal or plant you intend purchase. Never take LFS advice seriously until you have confirmed it from multiple different sources fist . Don't worry, this is the first lesson most of us on here learnt about fish-keeping, I learnt myself the hard way .


People on here enjoy spending their time helping others with their hobby, people at LFS have thier wages to think about - so they are more likely just to say what they think you want to hear.

As you are in a fish-in cycle, my advice would be to do 50% water changes daily for at least a few weeks, this should help prevent any further deaths until your aquarium finishes cycling.

 

[This Old Spouse]

+1

I've learned more on this forum than anywhere else I could imagine. I started out with a 55g, filled it with water and fish and off I went.

Fishkeeping isn't really all that difficult, once you sort out what really needs to be done. With an established tank it nearly takes care of itself. The problem is sorting out all the bad information from the good. But stick with us and don't pay much attention to the LFS staff and you should be fine. Their motivation is to sell you stuff. Ours is to help you have a healthy tank!

 

[XeroTolerance]

The problem is sorting out all the bad information from the good. But stick with us and don't pay much attention to the LFS staff and you should be fine. Their motivation is to sell you stuff. Ours is to help you have a healthy tank!

Thats probably the most important thing Ive learned.