# AHH! Sudden Black Ghost Knife Emergency!



## blackghostbetta (Mar 16, 2011)

I have a black ghost knife fish in a 55 gallon tank (temporarily) with four angelfish. Two weeks ago I added three German Blue rams, one died right away, then this weekend I got 12 neon tetras. 

Well, tonight I noticed another of the rams died. I hadn't seen my black ghost come out of his little cave for several days, just been feeding him at the top. When I finally coaxed him out, I noticed that the very tip of his tail is red. Not a bright, bloody red, but red nonetheless. 

I kind of freaked out, spent an hour catching all the neons and putting them in an already fully stocked 20 gallon (I plan on returning them tomorrow to the LFS) and took the only living ram and put him with my betta in a twenty gallon all to themselves.

I have looked quite extensively into common black ghost diseases, and none of them said anything about a red spot on the tail. Help, anyone?


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

What is your waterchange schedule. Sounds a little like water problems.


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## blackghostbetta (Mar 16, 2011)

I clean the gravel and do 20 to 25% water changes every week. Sunday is fish tank day, I pretty much spend half my day doing this with all four of my tanks.


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

Check your water out of the tap. We have been having problems with something new added to ours and it wiped out 2 of my breeder tanks this week that I had just did a water change.  

Water problems can come from other sources besides the tank. This time of year especially.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Have you tested your water?


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## blackghostbetta (Mar 16, 2011)

yup, nothing appears to be wrong. I only have pH, ammonia, and nitrate (maybe nitrite? I always get them mixed up, but I'm pretty sure that nitrate is the more poisonous stuff, right) testers, all the same that they've been since I set up the tank (the water is kind of alkaline, but most of the places I've looked into for black ghosts say they are pretty flexible for pH?) but I don't have a clue as to the hardness.


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## blackghostbetta (Mar 16, 2011)

After doing a little bit of searching, I think I've figured out what happened. I bought some color enhancing food for my blue rams, because they weren't very colorful and I heard that this particular brand worked really well to enhance the reds and oranges of fish. After looking into it, apparently if fish that generally don't have the colors that the food claims to enhance, if they eat some anyways, they may start to develop the color. I'm hoping that this is all that happened, and now that the blue ram is happily living with my betta, I don't have to worry about that anymore.


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