Well after about 6 weeks of having my new tank setup I've lost a fish. Noticed a neon dead in the tank this evening and it looked pretty recent - maybe in the last hour or 2.

Just wondering what process (if any) you go through when you have a loss to work out possible causes?

I've done a quick check of Ph, amonia, nitrate, nitrite, temp etc and all seems fine. Did a 10% water change on weds (2 days ago) and do them weekly.

At the moment I have 9 neons, 2 bristlenose and 2 silver hatchets. Everyone seems to get on ok and the dead neon didnt seem to have any external damage.

well it's normal, fish die sometimes without a reason, if it's just this one I wouldn't be too worried, but if more die in the following days/weeks I would look for further problems.

This one could have died of anything, heart-attacks...strokes...

sad to hear of yr loss JK sounds like youve done most of the process neons are funny lil fish and you can lose some they even have neon disease which seems almost soley related to just them hence the name when you say ph is good and nitrate etc would be handy to let us know what good is ...only reason can be that a good ph is anywhere between 6.8 and 7.4 but neons prefer around 6.8 ..Also a Ph fluctuation or temp change can have effects and wont be picked up by yr readings unless you do that reading at very water change

HTH

Yeah not too phased by it as its only 1 poxy neon but just wondering what checks people do go through.

Have kept fish for about 15 years now but since ive only got back into it recently I'm keen to learn a bit more again.

In terms of my readings, temp is 27, ph 6.8, amonia, nitrate, nitrites all 0. I take readings once a week prior to doing water changes and dont see alot of changes to the above.

when i had neons I bought a dozen of them, they must have been a bad or weak batch as they only lasted a month before they all died. I had no other loses at all so was clearly the neons.

I find that most of the fish that I get from LFS are weak and don't last long, excluding locally breed ones sold to the LFS.

Sorry about your loss JK

I haven't had neons on ages. But the ones you get here, didn't last all that long.

Checking water parameters is about all I ever checked. Be interested to see what other say.

And sometimes, they are no "apparent" reasons for the death

Caper

neons are notorious for dying off - seems they are breed in such large numbers that they are less robust these days...

You could move to cardinals if you are looking for a tougher yet similar (better IMHO!) fish - you'd just need to wait until the tank has been runnning a few months.

Others on here will have a better idea, but I think the temperature might be a bit higher than ideal for neons. My mate kept his at 22 degrees and they still did well - cardinals handle higher temps than neons from what I understand. Good luck with the rest of the fish!!

They should be fine at 27 degrees - It might have just been a weak individual - they aren't the most robost of tetras. I wouln't be too concerned about it unless you get more dying off

Well funny you should say that.....

wife just rang me at work and said one of the other neons looks a bit 'fuzzy' and swimming funny and also a slight whitish tinge on one of the hatchets fins.....arghhhh

sounds like either whitespot or some fin fungus but keeen to hear others ideas.

Did a 15% water change on the weekend and all levels seem ok, ph was a bit high at 7.0 but all others coming up at 0 (ie nitrate, nitrite, amonia). Temp still at 27

Hmmmm... we have stressor of some kind. Unfortunately there are many things that can stress fish that don't show up in regular test kits (could be cigarette smoke, cleaning products, fly spray, air freshener - even moisturiser off someone's hands - they are all potentially toxic).

Fortunately the 'cure' is usually the same - big water changes with good quality water (by which I mean clean, aged, correct pH etc and heated to tank temperature before you drop it in) - do an 80-90% water change to flush out whatever might be in there and see what develops. If it gets worse, treat with Furan 2 - read the safety instructions first.

Cheers - will check it all out tonight when i get home.

I think i used to use Meth blue many years ago. Is that still an option?

Not a great one - quite a bit of collateral damage to the bio-filter, but it can still be useful. Malachite Green has kind of replaced it, but Furan 2 is possibly more effective.

malachite green you say? might check that one out

Well, don't forget I'm attempting to diagnose a condition on fish in a tank I haven't seen! I'd recommend you try and work out what is causing the stress and do a big water change first before you give any treatment, otherwise my recommendation is Furan2 (which I suspect contains Malachite Green amongst other things)

Yeah totally understand mate....I haven't even seen it either.

Going to head home shortly and scope it out. Will get some water ready for a change to age overnight and take it from there.

Did a quick search around and also saw melafix which i hadnt heard of before either.

I've not had particularly good results with Melafix / Tea Tree oil - and be aware that it kills some fish outright (all pencil fish) - and it stinks! :lol: Bung up some pics if you can.

hard to get a decent pic but heres one of the hatchets

Should be able to see the white tinges around the fins

does look a bit like finrot, as conch as said waterchanges and furan-2 (i;ve had good success with this, melafix i've found to be crap). If your tank is large you would be best to fish in a hospital tank as furan-2 is expensive to use in large quantities.

I don't think temp would be an issue for the neons either, you hear on forums all the time about neons not tolerating high water temps but i've never had a problem, i've neons and cardinals in my discus tank which runs at 29 degrees

Hmmmm just got home from antenatal and the hatchets not looking too hot. Was having a wee lie down when we got it but seems to be up and around (just) at the moment

And woke this morning to find both hatchets dead on the bottom as well as one of the neons

Bristlenose appears fine, other neons looks ok but i dont think 100%

Did another check of temp - 27, ph 6.9-7, amonia, nitrates and nitrites all 0 or very close to it

Hmmmmm :-?

As stated furan can be expensive. Wunder tonic is a lot cheaper and you are best to treat the whole tank or you put the cured fish back into an infected tank. Hatchets and neons can be a bit tricky to keep and wunder tonic is a broad spectrum treatment that contains a number of ingredients all good at treating different things

The problem with 'broad spectrum' treatments like 'Wonder Tonic' and 'Melafix' is that they don't target anything in particular rather than treating an actual cause and if you know how drugs work, that isn't a good thing. All drugs work by interupting chemical pathways (they do things like preventing sodium crossing cellular membranes) and they do so in the host as well as the pathogen, .i.e. IN YOUR FISH AS WELL.

Drugs don't kill pathogens, they only weaken them, hopefully enough for the host's (fish's) own immune system to finish them off. Usually the host is bigger and stronger than the organism attacking it so can withstand the detrimental effects of the drug in the short term. The problem with broad spectrum drugs is that they weaken your already sick fish in ways that are of no help in curing the problem.

The fish above clearly has (had - R.I.P) a bacterial infection, so using something like Furan2 that weakens bacteria is better than some cocktail of poisons that have a questionable effect. I would go as far as to say that products like that don't belong in any knowledgable fish-keepers medicine cabinet, because there are better treatments available for every condition they claim to treat.

Bacterial infection eh.

Ok well I guess now my aim is to sort out why it had it and try and get the tank back into a state that's not going to cause this.

Should I be looking to continue with big water changes or is there some other plan of attack?

Just came back to me now but notice they were off there food the other day and a couple of uneaten bits that made it to the bottom seemed to get a fluffy type look to them pretty quickly (less than 24 hours). I removed these bits when i changed some water but doesnt seem right for that to happen so quickly.