Hey Guys,

We had 9 white cloud mountain minnow we bought about a month ago from Animates. We already had 4 goldfish that were very happy and healthy.

Well, since we had these darn WCMM they have been nothing but trouble and we don't know what we're doing wrong! One died a few days ago for no apparent reason - just got slower and slower and slower and then died. Now, two more are looking liike they'll go the same way! Our goldfish are perfectly happy, so I don't know what's wrong! Temp can get up to around 20 degrees at times, but is that a problem? Could they just be old?

We have an established tank with a trickle filter. We had to treat the tank for fungal infection as single piece of food was left inside a rick, which grew fungus, and when we disturbed it, it spread in the water - we used Wunder Tonic which cleared it up. That was a week ago and is the only unusual thing I can think of that might have caused this??????!!

I am threatening to take them all back to Animates!!

i bought 6 from there a while ago and after 2 wks only had 2 left.

Really?!

How did they die? Any other symptoms apart from just becoming lethargic and depressed and then dying??

Which Animates? The one in Kaiwharawhara near Spotlight?

melling.

there were no symptoms, just death.

i bought another 3 from another pet shop and had i given to me. these 6 went outside this time last year.

march this year i pulled 60 out

Oh, so did you put them outside to keep them cooler? Perhaps it was too warm for them in my tank? It's unheated, but still gets quite warm - often it feels much warmer than the room temp in there.

I am just totally out of ideas and I've sworn off ever buying them again!

they were outside over summer and at one time the water temp was 28 degrees. they were in a bathtub with no filter or heater, just rainfall and the occasional top up from the tap.

Oh ok so it obviously wasn't the temperature - geez, maybe I'll just write that one off as a failed venture and stick to goldfish from now on...

I never had luck with the WCMM from Animates either (in Chch). I bought probably 9 in total and only one has survived. However, of the ones I bought from Wok, only two of them died in the same way and the rest are still healthy now months later and did breed in my tank (except I killed the fry =( ...) so I guess it's just the ones at Animates that suck.

I kept them coldwater with goldfish over winter and they were fine and now they go up to 25-26 degrees some days and are still fine.

i will be breeding them again this summer. if you would like to try again at a later time, i will be selling the fry next year around march

Oh thanks heaps, but I think hubby is too traumatised from these deaths to have another go!

If he ever changes his mind I say go with a private breeder. I noticed that the ones from Animates are so pale and washed out. The ones I have are a nice dark silver with very bright red and yellow in the fins.

It's funny you should say that because ours looked pale when we got them too, and after a few days in our tank their fins started turning bright red and yellow and their bodies looked darker etc. We thought they must've liked our water conditions, but they're dying off, so obviously not. Bit of a mystery.

What did you use to treat the fungus? I trested some of mine with wunder tonic...I found I couldn't get up to the full recommended dose because they became stressed. Maybe they didn't like the meds and are gradully succumbing to some trouble from that?

Yep, we used Wunder Tonic too.

We added the whole entire recommended dose as instructed by the pet store. They told us to do a 25% water change after 7 days, but we actually put our carbon back in the filter after only 3 days, so effectively I guess that would've removed the Wunder Tonic aye? (We did the water change as advised as well though).

Perhaps it was that, because they only stared suffering AFTER we treated.

Could be, I put 2 WCMM's into a bucket with an airstone and dosed the full dose as a test. They ended up dying so when I dosed the tank I used less and was very careful to watch them and stopped as soon as they seemed stressed.

So maybe don't despair too much.. it's a bit of a learning curve but they're such nice little fish (possibly underrated!) it would be a shame for you to be put off compltely

I've kept them for a few months before selling them all.

I had 4 die off due to a fungal infection, where they had the white stuff growing on their bodies, but treated quickly and no more deaths.

Otherwise they've been great.

I would say look at them carefully in the shop before buying them, all mine were bright coloured from the shop.

Thanks for that jn. Yes, it is a learning curve having a new species and someone wise on this site said to me "If you have livestock, you'll have dead stock"! I guess you have to be prepared for that.

I suspect you may have been right about the Wunder Tonic but I'm afraid it's a bit late for them - 2 more died yesterday and the rest look like they're going to as well.

We have them in our 'hospital' tank and they stay close to the bottom and keep rather still and seem to be shivering a lot. OH well, we'll just see what happens and if they die I think we've done everything we can.

Sorry I can't help, but warm temperature was mentioned earlier, just wanted to add that (due to moving), I had moved my WCMM in to a tropical tank, they were colourful and happy at 26C.