# Dead Neon Tetra w/ bloody belly



## kicksilver (Aug 9, 2012)

Today I found a dead neon caught in my anarachis, with his belly bloodied up. Does this mean that another fish was eating him? How likely is it that my tank will become infected with Neon disease? Are there any steps I should take to protect the health of my other fish?

Just FYI, I have had my shoal of 12 neons (previously 13) for just over a month now, and when I purchased them they were all about 1/2 an inch long. They are in a densely planted community tank of 30 gallons with 3 corydoras, and a dwarf gourami. Up until now they have shown no signs of illness, and the others all look perfectly fine.


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## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

Fish eat fish.I'll guess your dwarf gourami has no hesitation in eating anything.
Just because you have neons and one dies doesn't mean that neon tetra disease is the cause or others will get it.There really is not alot to be done if NTD is the case anyway as it often shows no symptoms till too late and is very diffacult to treat if at all.
There could easily be any other issue at hand here or just death from semi"natural" cause as noens are sensative.Have you checked your water parameters lately?How often do you change water and how much?


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## kicksilver (Aug 9, 2012)

I haven't checked parameters for a while, but I change it weekly at around 25%. My Tetras were bred here in Florida, and I've read that we have pretty decent neon stocks. I think the one that died was the little guy that often strayed from the group to hide in the plants.

I just ran tests, and everything is looking good apart from my PH being at 7.8.


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## WheeledGoat (Jan 29, 2013)

Glad to hear your water parameters are wnl, always good to check when in doubt.

From my perspective, I don't give a second thought to a dead neon. Ironically, I just had a dead neon tetra floating in my tank last night (pulled it out and trashed it along with some errant plant bits from the tank so as not to upset the kids). I didn't even check my water parameters, I just peeked at all the inhabitants to make sure there were no visible signs of infection or anything.

Now if more start turning belly up, I'll get a little more concerned... 

(and no, I'm not some heartless fishkeeper - I think I slightly irritated my LFS recently by taking back my last of 4 leperonis... I had those guys for YEARS and have been waiting for the last dude to go belly up, but he just wouldn't die! And I wanted to go a different direction with my tank... more smaller fish... so I took the single, lone, healthy fish in to them. They mighta killed him in the back for all I know, cause I didn't see any on display to put him with... but it's off of my conscience!)


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## Jim Albright (Jan 22, 2013)

My guess is not NTD, especially if your water parameters are good. Recently, my neighbor had NTD and it pretty much wiped out the tank before we knew what hit us. But my neighbor had poor water quality and didnt know what he was doing til I went over there. Good Luck


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