I Have A Case To Solve And Need Help Please.

[Nosnibor]

Hello all,

I'm clueless as to what happened and could do with some help.

Last Thursday I bought the following fish:
2 Bristlenose
3 Dutch Rams
2 Pearl Gouramis
2 Sunset Gouramis
10 Cardinal Tetras

They have all been very happy settling in, well the Pearls are still very shy and very watchful, they hide as soon as they see us looking over at them - PARANOID OR WHAT!

Anyway, everything has been going well until this morning, we have awoken to 2 missing Cardinals!!!! I have searched the filter just in case they managed to find a way of getting sucked up and nothing there. I have carefully looked and studied all the plants and bog wood to no avail.

If they died I could understand and feel like I have done something wrong, but they have just disappeared into thin air (or water).

The composition of the water is just fine with NH3: 0mg / NO2: 0mg / NO3: 30mg (same as the tap water), so I can't see anything wrong there.

Basically can anyone give me some ideas of what it might be. Could any of the other fish commited such a hideous crime as they are all very young fish. The only two fish that are settling in a little too well (if you know what I mean) are the male Sunset and the male (I think) Dutch Ram - I'll bring them in for questioning if that is the case

If there is anything I'm missing out on in this thread please let me know.

Cheers

Martin

 

[rsands]

the same happened to me in my first tank with neon tetra's. thin air...i then changed the substrate to sand and i have still never found it. even dismantled the whole filter

 

[Rob.S]

Could any of the other fish commited such a hideous crime as they are all very young fish. The only two fish that are settling in a little too well (if you know what I mean) are the male Sunset and the male (I think) Dutch Ram - I'll bring them in for questioning if that is the case

Hmmm....... Mr Ram, in the aquarium, with the lead pipe? . Sorry, bad joke.

I have in the past, seen a fish "not looking too well", first thing of a morning. When returning home from work, said fish is now a half chewed corpse on the bottom of the tank. I only keep Tetras. So maybe that could explain it.

 

[Nosnibor]

the same happened to me in my first tank with neon tetra's. thin air...i then changed the substrate to sand and i have still never found it. even dismantled the whole filter

Very strange. Well our lfs seems to be quite a good one really. Just spoken to the chap there where I bought the fish and he said that it looks like the died and the two Pearls had 'em for din-dins as they have not been eating much due to their shyness. He said that he would replace them too.

The only thing it could be is the Nitrate. Even though I have got it as low as I can from the tap, they have been used to just under 20ppm for the past month. So he has recommended a media that will remove the Nitrate whilst they are getting use to the water composition. I'll replace it with the Carbon that came with the filter and then when that is finished I can put the Ceramic rings in.

Weird one as I have been watching the tank a lot recently and all the Cardinals where staying together, none of them looked like they were going to croke it

Well, cheers anyway.

Martin

 

[vinylman]

This won't prove anything in your case, of course, but may give you something to think about. A couple of years ago, I had eight Cardinals in the same tank as three Blue Dwarf Gouramis (which were added after the Cardinals). All seemed fine for 3-4 weeks then apparently out of the blue (no pun intended) the Gouramis started to herd the Cardinals into a corner then take it in turns to attack them, eventually killing them all over the course of a couple of hours (a day I was on day shift at work, of course). My brother was at home at the time, and got up in time to see the last couple being killed before he had a chance to save them. Needless to say, the Gouramis went back to the shop the next chance I got.

 

[Nosnibor]

This won't prove anything in your case, of course, but may give you something to think about. A couple of years ago, I had eight Cardinals in the same tank as three Blue Dwarf Gouramis (which were added after the Cardinals). All seemed fine for 3-4 weeks then apparently out of the blue (no pun intended) the Gouramis started to herd the Cardinals into a corner then take it in turns to attack them, eventually killing them all over the course of a couple of hours (a day I was on day shift at work, of course). My brother was at home at the time, and got up in time to see the last couple being killed before he had a chance to save them. Needless to say, the Gouramis went back to the shop the next chance I got.

Wow, what a situation!

It turned out whilst watching the tank some more one of the dead missing Cardinals shot passed the front. Anyway, it turned out that there is a little niche in the back corner of my tank where the outlet tube comes out of the tank. Basically both of the Cardinals were there... dead.

I went back to the lfs and spoke to the guy there and started asking the right questions, one of the questions was about 'their' level of Nitrate in the tank that the Cardinals had been in for the past month. He checked the book and said it was between 5 and 8mg!!!! I couldn't believe it, I said that I told him when I bought the fish that my tap water Nitrate is 30mg and he could have recommended that I purchased media to help lower the Nitrate until the Cardinals were use to that level of Nitrate.

He agreed and I eventually bought ClearMax which contained 3 bags which help trap phosphate, Nitrite and Nitrate. He recommended putting in one bag to replace the existing carbon bag. I have woken this morning to find one has still died and the Nitrate level is basically still the same. After getting the instructions out and reading it more indepth, I have seen that it is 1 bag per 100 litres, so I should have put in 2...... So lesson learnt there then.

Anyway, I still don't know if it is the Nitrate that the Cardinals are getting use to or the Gouramis getting a little to rough with them. But I will replace another Carbon bag with a Clearmax bag and watch it closely.

Why the hell lfs's don't tell you what water compositions the fish has been used to when you purchase them so you can help the transition period I'll never know.

So looks like case solved

Cheers all
Martin B)

 

[lawrie]

this happened to me once, but it was a sunset platy that vanished! it was kept with non agressive tank mates (the tank mates are in my sig..125L). the fish looked healthy and i looked every whare for it.

the mistery goes on...ooooooooohhhhhhh!

 

[lilfishie]

it is possible that they died then the plecs ate them, just watch out for any chasing/nipping