Pictus Problems

[john4077]

I have a 55 gallon tank. In it I have two black convicts, three tiger barbs and an angel. On two seperate occasions I have had two pictus cats that have died. I cannot understand why. I had just tested the water and the ph level was at 7.0, ammonia level was 0.0, nitrite level was at 0.0 but the nitrate level was really high at 80. My water temperature holds steady at 80 degrees. I have had the other fish for a long time and they are all doing well. Could the high nitrate level be the culprit for the demise of my catfish. Both times I have had the cats they were doing fine the night before, I get up in the morning and its lying on the bottom. A week later the next cat dies the same way. I love those type of cats but do not wish to get anymore until I figure out whats going on. I would appreciate any help or advice on this matter. Thanks

 

[keeper-of-fish]

well it sounds like you know your stuff so i dunno mabe they dont get enuff food down to em or mabe something kills em at night
i dont think the nitrate would do much mabe
nitrite on the other hand... lol

 

[CFC]

I doubt the nitrate would be the problem, nitrate generally doesn't become dangerous to fish until it reaches levels of over 100ppm, what test kit did you use? Some test kits can be wildly inaccurate and give much higher or lower readings than the actual level. If it were nitrate poisoning i would expect to see some curling of the whisksers and loss of colour and activity prior to death.

A more likely culprit IMO would be the convict cichlids, these aggressive little terrors rarely make a good choice for community tanks and are especially not good tankmates for South American catfish, the cats activity drives the convicts nuts and causes them to attack, the propblem is magnified if the convicts are a male/female pair.

Do you have any live plants in the tank? If so this could be a another suspect, pictus cats have a high oxygen requirement and if there are live plants present that along with the high nitrates could be causing a low oxygen enviroment once the lights go out.

 

[digital_run]

I'd definately agree with CFC and say it was probably your convicts at work...i briefly kept my a male convict with my 5 pictus and there was no way they would be alive today if i had of kept that set-up...The convicts would literally terrorize the pictus which had no real defence against a nasty convict. Sorry to hear about you loosing your pims.

 

[HotStuffGal]

Hey I'm Scarlett

I Have 1 Pictus who his an, always eating-hyperactive-great fish. I am sorry about you loss though and I am just wondering (Since it sounds like you know exactly what your doing) That maybe they were just sick.

Like when you buy a fish at your LFS and it dies the next day for no reason...That kind of thing.

I Hope you have better luck next time though!

 

[john4077]

Thanks to everyone who has responded. I have been keeping aquariums since I was in high school, but due to military service,college and a number of other reasons I had to stop. I got back into it about a year ago and things have really changed. There is a lot more info on the fish as well as the aquarium itself, not to mention more resources such as the internet and forums like this one. I have done a lot of research in the last year but find that with anything else there is always more to learn. I look forward to reading all of your posts in the future and hopefully helping some of you out as well.

I was just wondering if there are any type of catfish that would be safe to put with the convicts. Thanks again.