Cardinal casualties !

I would welcome any suggestions as to what is happening here? I have a temporary 250 lt tank set up to house my fish and a large volume of plants, while the main tank has been under repair and being cycled. The FX5 was moved to this tank so it is very well filtered, water specs - temp 25/26, PH 6.5 to 7, GH 6, but difficult to test accurately on this dam Serra test kit, KH 2 and hardly any nitrate or ammonia when tested. There is high density of plants, but still plenty of swimming space. There is no substrate in the tank, many of the plants are floating and the large swords are in plastic pots with Flourite and pfp. The tank has been running for a month now with the same fish without problems. A week ago I lost one of the larger cardinals, and over the past few days another fifteen or so have perished. The other fish, a shoal of rummy nose, many corries, bristle nose and harlequins seem to be fine. I did a 35% water change on Friday, on Saturday there were no deaths but today another five or six. The cardinals seem fine one moment then start swimming oddly and within an hour or two are dead. Many of them seem to have swollen stomachs when they die. I am wondering if the frozen food could have gone off or perhaps the flake food, which has been open for six months or so ? I would be keen on any advice asp, as have another twenty or so cardinals left.

 

Now that you mention it. I also do not trust the frozen foods. Whenever I have problems, it is shortly after I gave the fish a treat on this. Can it be? Or just coincidence?

 

I normally just let it defrost in a glass of tank water, till the block is all dissolved. Yesterday I forgot it in the glass and it was standing overnight. I threw it in this morning. No problems yet. Now, I am wondering. I read that frozen food, if not thawed, produce swim bladder problems. Can it be that we give it before it is thawed properly? Or too often?

 

Hi @Trevor Pleco

ah Sorry mate! Sounds like you have a tad of a problem. What would you estimate the age of these guys? And if you say "hardly any nitrite/ammonia" do you mean zero, or some. . ?

Could be an intestinal issue, parasitic, but its strange that only the Cardinals are affected. My guess would be water. You say swollen stomach, but if a couple of hours dead it would be normal, gas etc. What do they look like RIGHT after death? Still swollen?

Marco

 

How old are the cardinals? Are they new purchase, or have you had them for a while?

 

Many thanks for your input. Just an up date, no deaths this morning. Water looking brilliantly clear and good, but it has always looked fine, in the canister I have been using Purigen. Zeocarb, Clearmax and the bulk being Biomax. Put in new Purigen and Clearmax with the recent water change.

Tom. K –I’m usually pretty thorough with the defrosting and often sieve the food first through a fine net , but yep I take your point on the defrosting. In general these foods still worry me and how old they actually are or if they have always maintained a frozen state in transit..

One rummy nose also died yesterday, but up to then it was only the cardinals, I appreciate these would be the most sensitive fish.

Marco - there is no ammonia, No2 is zero and No3 is approx 15. In the beginning it was mainly the mature cardinals dieing, fish over a year old and max size up to 30mm. They seemed to have a swollen stomach before dieing but this increases once dead. Just prior to deaths they were in pristine condition displaying breeding behaviour. As I mentioned the cardinal shoal would seem absolutely fine one moment and a couple of hours later two or three are dead...

Post Mortem options - 1) the new batch of frozen food is off, stopped feeding this immediately 2) there was possibly a build up of ammonia/nitrate in the tank triggered by quite a large amount of left over baby marrow debris, which had collected under wood and places hidden from my twice a week siphons or 3) I mentioned the swords in containers, which for me is a very practical and convenient way to grow them, but I question if they could have formed dangerous anaerobic bacteria pockets ? To prevent this scenario the pots have been drilled all over the place so there are roots sticking out.

 

The majority, 35, were purchaced over a year ago, but I purchaced another three two weeks ago along with the Harlequin shoal of eight fish. The reason I bought just three fish was that they were left over in the LPS show tank when it was taken down and were not recent imports which I try an avoid and they looked in perfect conditon.

 

hi trevor, the one thing that i did notice is that you are running your tank at 25/26degC, from what i know about both cardinals and rummy noses (of which my knowledge isnt much ) both of these fish require warmer temperatures, the rummy noses can even handle temps of 33degC. so if you take into account that we've just gone into winter, and the fact that you are probably monitoring your temperature during the daylight hours, its is possible that the temperature is dropping to even lower than 25deg in the middle of the night, and this could cause the fish's immune systems to be dropping and making them prone to illness or just plain dying of the cold.

 

Here is something interesting told to me once. Not sure how true it is and if proven
but there seems to be a pattern.
2 Years back I also had neons dying for no reason I could find.
This one guy told me that its a bad idea to buy or move neons during
the winter. He says its something about the cold air when netted that kills
them eventually.

Now go check in the past and even now how many dying neons threads
there are and it always seem to be around when the cold comes.
Most of the time a bad batch of inbred neons get blamed or something.

Anyway just thought it interesting.
Not sure who have a school of neons that can with the next cold move
them to 2 tanks exposing one tanks fish to air and the other not??

 

Hmm... I think we may have an answer to this problem already... just need one answer: The three you purchased, were they put into QT and cleaned up before being introduced to the existing tank mates??

Reason I ask is because 90%, if not 99% of our Cardinals are wild caught, and not tank bread, and thus come with a huge amount of pathogens, bacteria and parasited. Your existing 30 odd would be fine if you bought them all together, however the introduction of the 3 new ones introduces new parasites, pathogens etc that you may find your current cardinals are not immune to, and hence have been infected.
If I recall, @Marco mentioned once a few threads ago about Cardinals and how to clean them up (or any fish for that matter) to introduce them to Discus.

 

@Vis, interesting. I moved my 10 yesterday. Will keep it in mind. But then again, there is so many other variables. My main concern is new tank, pH creeping up and ammonia spiking. Deadly combination.

I suppose if it is the cold net, there is nothing one can do about it?

 

@Zoom, will this not have been the same as QT?

 

Yea, thanks Zoom could well be. Unfortunately I had no further place left to quarantine after the recent leaking tank dramas, so they were not quarantined. I did not actually need the cardinals, just felt sorry for them, actually two not three. As I mentioned they were not recent imports and had been in the LPS show tank for some time which was being taken down, they were in perfect condition, but of course they could still have carried something and the timing would make sense. That's the last time I'm being nice!

How long would you suggest guaranteeing and do folks also quarantine plants, yikes ?


Ps: I understand much more cardinals are now wild bred in the Rio Negro area as opposed to wild caught..

 

You not making any sense Tom

 

You answered youself there. Just because they have been in "QT" in the LPS for many weeks / months, does not mean they are not carrying something. They are possibly carrying something that THEY are immune to, but your existing aren't.

I believe Marco did a very good write up on QT. I don't think the cardinals is as much of a QT as it is in actual fact a clean up. Because they are in the wild, even wild bred (which happens in big outside ponds / dams and not in tanks). I know that people always want to mix cardinals with Discus because it's one of the few tetras that can take the temps that discus require... but there is a very strict clean up procedure that needs to be done when buying cardinals.

 

While we are on the subject of cardinals, just to say I was initially opposed to keeping cardinals with the idea of them being wild caught, hence my aversion to the marine hobby, however my attitude changed when I began to find out more about Project Piaba (slogan: "Buy a Fish, Save a Tree") and its merits. For those interested Google Project Piaba and Cardinals.

Just wish I new where our cardinals were imported from..

Thanks Ashley, will try and look up Marco's QT post ...

 

My point is, if that does not help, how is the QT in your home going to be different? They will still carry it, as they are immune.

 

link as discussed, interesting read -

http://projectpiaba.wordpress.com/the-fishery/

 

as i said in previous post, you not realy qt them, you cleaning them up. Marco did a nice write up on cleaning them up. You use different medication to kll all the nasties, not just qt them to check them out. This is especially essential with fish that are wild caught, like cardinals. You use a qt tank, but you actually medicating them to clean them up.

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@Zoom

Why did you not say so in the first place?

hehe