# Lost a couple of fish



## *Angie* (Sep 29, 2010)

So our tank has been up and running for almost a few months now, and things have been running pretty smoothly for the most part. I've just got a couple of small concerns I thought I'd get some opinions on. 

It's a 33 gallon tank with live plants. Currently living in it are two gold gouramis, four cherry barbs, four tiny neon tetras and an algae eater. 

We used to have 5 neons, we noticed out of nowhere that one was missing. We never found a body, so I'm not sure if it died and got eaten by the other fish, or just got eaten. A couple days later we lost a cherry barb. It was swimming around like normal in the morning, and by afternoon he was dead. No sign of anything weird (spots or whatnot) on his body that we could see. 

I test the water once a week and the results are consistently zero ammonia and nitrites, and less than 5 nitrates. 

We also had two clown loaches in the tank, but they died within a couple days of each other, just a week after purchasing. I read afterwards that they prefer a lower ph, and our tank ph is pretty steady at 7.6 or so. I assumed that's why they died... would you assume the neon and tetra just died due to nothing I could have prevented anyway?


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Possibly. Without some type of sympton of an ailment, sometimes nothing you can do.


----------



## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

From what I've been led to believe, cherry barbs are semi-aggressive while tetras are tropical community fish, so the loss of the tetra might have been from harassment from the barbs - do they chase the tetras around at all? And as far as finding a body - I've kept tetras a long time and they decompose rapidly, especially if they get taken up in the filter or whatnot. Chances are it wasn't eaten. The cherry barb death might have been from something you weren't looking for like a disease, but that one escapes me as I dislike medicating fish (nearly killed my entire red cherry shrimp population with melafix once, on accident).

As for the sensitive pH fishes - planted tanks undergo a pH swing throughout the day and night as concentrations of CO2 and O2 go up and down, even more so if the alkalinity and hardness of your water are low. Try testing the pH right after the lights go on in the morning, and right before they go off at night - you should notice a difference, and that might have been what did it for those guys. Hope this helps, and I hope I've got my facts straight! Haha


----------



## WhiteGloveAquatics (Sep 3, 2009)

If you have your planted tank set up right you will have ZERO ph swings. this is only achieved with a controller though. A ph swing from Co2 via day/night shouldnt be enough to phase the fish, I know it doesnt phase my discus.

fishyfarmacy.com has one of the most extensive diagnosis charts available. All employee's of this business are Phd and marine biologists, I also dont like to medicate but if it comes down to 80 bucks for medication to save a 300 dollar fish, im spending the 80 bucks.


----------



## mfgann (Oct 21, 2010)

Were any of the fish very recently added? I recently added some neons, and had them die off one by one, each day, and then half my glofish died, along with an otocinclus. Only one fish ever showed any symptom and that was a "dead" looking patch of skin on a neon. I can only guess it may have been Neon Tetra Disease. I'm hoping to quarantine fish from now on. That was not fun.


----------

