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Holiday Disaster

mhancock

Fishaholic
Joined
Feb 27, 2012
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Location
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This is the second time I have been away and come back to a fish disaster with someone else looking after my fish, and was only away for 5 days. The first this was on THIS THREAD and the fish have since had to be euthanised.

This time I was only away for 5 days, and came back to a dead algae eater (sorry don't know what it is called), a dead glass catfish with milky flesh as you would expect no eyes and most of the insides also eaten, and a dead male dwarf gourami who had a hole in his side and his body hollowed out.

I'd not been aware of anything wrong before leaving other than an aggressive male krib. He had been territorial when he had fry, however kept being aggressive long after the fry had gone (particularly during feeding), and even after I had separated him from the female by putting her in the other tank.

The first thing I did was test the water, as I would have changed the water at the weekend, but both nitrates and nitrites at zero. The tank is heavily planted but I was surprised to see nitrates at zero, and believe the test kit is fine (liquid) as my smaller tank did test positive for nitrate today which I would expect as there is much less plants in there.

I have done a big water change and will do a few more large ones in the next few days just to make sure - if nothing else, I have had 3 dead fish in there and want to make sure that nothing bad is floating around in the water.

So now I am sadly off to the LFS to take back the kribs, very disappointed as they are such amazingly pretty fish.

Any thoughts as to what the problem may be much appreciated.

I would like to replace the male dwarf gourami but do not know if it was iridovirus. If I had been around then I may have recognised the symptons, but I wasn't. I am guessing that the hole in his side was caused by the problem rather than by other fish after he died, as if it had been caused by fish then his eyes would also have been gone.

Sorry this is such a depressing thread, I would much rather be writing something cheery.

Any thoughts???

Tank - 225l
Ammonia zero
pH 7
Nitrate zero
Nitrite zero
External filter with ceramic media, balls and fibre discharging through hood filtration (lots of filtering)
Angels, glass cats, khuli loaches, cardinals, harlequins, glowlights, swordtails and presumably one remaining algae eater which I cannot see anywhere and hope is ok.....
Heavy planting
 
I would not be buying any new fish to add to this tank until you have monitored it for at least the next two weeks, as you have no idea what caused the deaths while you were away.

There seems to be a lot of fishkeepers, inlcuding on this forum, that buy Kribs without considering the size of tank they need and the sort of tankmates they need. Typically, they cannot be put in anything like the same league as peaceful African Butterfly Cichlids; Keyholes; Laetacara spp.; Apistogramma spp.; Ram cichlids and alike. Just like the Steatocranus (Lionhead Cichlids) I keep and breed, tankmates need to be robust fish that are of a similar size and can take some aggression (in your case I would consider the Angelfish and Swordtails as suitable, but those little tetra and loaches have no chance).
 
I would not be buying any new fish to add to this tank until you have monitored it for at least the next two weeks, as you have no idea what caused the deaths while you were away.

There seems to be a lot of fishkeepers, inlcuding on this forum, that buy Kribs without considering the size of tank they need and the sort of tankmates they need. Typically, they cannot be put in anything like the same league as peaceful African Butterfly Cichlids; Keyholes; Laetacara spp.; Apistogramma spp.; Ram cichlids and alike. Just like the Steatocranus (Lionhead Cichlids) I keep and breed, tankmates need to be robust fish that are of a similar size and can take some aggression (in your case I would consider the Angelfish and Swordtails as suitable, but those little tetra and loaches have no chance).

I'm sure you are correct, however I did specifically ask the compatibility question when I bought the kribs in the first place and trusted the advice given, shame it was wrong.....
 

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