Help, African Butterfly Fish Has Died Rapidly....

[mdjw76]

Hi,

I introduced a ABF into my 70ltr tank this evening and within 1 hour it has died.

All the other fish are swimming around fine and I did my tests yesterday and all was ok.

I floated the bag for about 30 mins before releasing into the tank, the ABF seemed alright and swam around a bit.

After about 20 mins it starting to list to one side, then over onto its back and just "twitched" every so often.

I put it into a floating fish hatchery to monitor, but sadly, it rapidly died.

For what its worth (because there was no time for any interaction), its tankmates were:

2x Dwarf Gourami
3x Pagnasius Catfish
4x Glass Catfish

Can anyone shed light on what they think happened.

- The journey from my LFS to home was about 10 mins,
- All ABF looked healthy at the LFS, and I have bought from there before without any problems.
- ReIntroduction into the tank took longer than i had hoped because I was scared of the thing leaping out but it didnt seem stressed.

Please help

 

[DiscusAngel]

Not sure i bought two and they died i took back to the lfs they said they had a bad batch and they all died! butterflys are hard sometimes. also dont think im having a go but Pagnasius Catfish grow like 3ft i think well 2ft+ and they shouldnt really be sold in Lfs' as theres no room to keep these fish in tanks. take them back to your lfs while you can please.

 

[nmonks]

ABFs are only somewhat hardy, and do need to be looked after with a bit more love than the average community fish. They are often starved for weeks between capture and settling into their new home, because retailers especially don't tend to give them the foods they need. (In a lot of shops, it's flake or nothing )

By all means try again, but perhaps wait until some fish newly come in. Also check what the retailer is feeding them. If he/she says flake, then move on... Get some "fresh" specimens and have live foods, especially insects, to hand. Wingless fruit flies, small maggots, that sort of thing will be eagerly devoured. Frozen bloodworms are usually enjoyed, but the trick is to get them close to the eyes without freaking the ABF; they snap at things within a certain "kill zone" and ignore everything else. Lovely fish, but not for inexperienced aquarists or beginners not prepared to put in some time training them to take dead foods. They will eat flake, eventually.

Putting any large fish into a breeding trap is the kiss of death. They don't like it, being confined like that, and it certainly never helps. So don't do that next time!

You do realise Pangasius catfish get gigantic, do you? Seriously, 70 litres is about 100 times too small for them. There are at least two species in the trade, Pangasius hypophthalmus and P. sanitwongsei, and the smallest of them gets to about a metre or so under aquarium conditions. Dwarf gourami and glass cats, on the other hand, are excellent companions for ABF.

Cheers, Neale

 

[fry_lover]

LOL to Pangasius in a 70litre if this is really true

 

[mdjw76]

Dont worry about the Pangasius Catfish, they are only a temp arangement whilst a fiend (who owns a huge tank) moves home.

At the moment they are only about 2" long at most.

Thanks for the other info though.

 

[Creature Seeker]

It may help in the future to acclimatise each fish you add to your tank. When floating the bag in your tank add a medicine cap full of your tank water to the bag every ten minutes. This will help to gradually adjust the fish to your water chemistry. I find that many fish stores keep there fish ph at around 6, but mine is always around 8, so a ph drop of 2 is huge to a fish.

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