34 replies to this topic

[FrontyKwal]

Went to feed my p bass just before and found 4 dead, the other 6 look like they are not doing well either. Nothing has changed recently with anything whatsoever so these deaths are a complete mystery to me, the L333 plecs look like they are doing fine. P bass have not been eating as much as they usually do since yesterday but still eating, 4 of them were acting weird yesterday swimming on angles and laying side ways on the floor but when I put my hand in the tub they would swim around like normal. Chucked some chopped prawns in today and the remaining 6 ate about 2 pieces each, they usually eat about 5-6 pieces every other day. They have been in this tub for about 5 weeks because their previous tank had broke

Type of fish: Peacock Bass
Symptoms: 4 dead, other 6 looking pale and not eating
Other tank mates: x3 L333 Pleco's
Tank size / capacity: 120 litre tub
Type of Food fed: Frozen brine shrimp, chopped up prawns in tiny pieces
Feeding frequency/amount: 1 block of frozen brine shrimp in the morning and they smash that no problem and I feed them as much chopped prawns as they can eat in 1-2 minutes until they reject it I never leave food laying on the bottom on the tub
Substrate: Bare bottom
Type of filtration: x2 xinyou xy-380 sponge filters
Frequency of filter cleans: Cleaned about a month ago
Frequency and % volume of water changes: About 30% everyday to clean up their waste
Last water change: Yesterday
PH: 7.8
KH:
GH:
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Phosphate:
Water temp: 28
Medications used recently to date: Nothing
Any recent changes..new fish/filters/power outages etc etc: Nope

Please no stupid and useless comments Im not really in the mood for you lot that love to have little arguments and give cheek on here...

Cheers

[noonoo]

How big are they??
Have you had a close look to see if they have white spot??

[FrontyKwal]

Measured them when I took the corpses out the tank and they are 8 cm exactly. No white spot at all, 2 of the corpses were really pale like a yellowish grey colour and the black markings they usually have on them were not visible while the other 2 corpses were still green with the black markings. They were all alive this morning so they would of died between 10:00 - 3:00 today if that helps

[Westie]

I remember reading somewhere on this forum about high mortality rates with juvie p bass. that might be the case? sorry to hear you lost some of them bro

[FrontyKwal]

Cheers Jason yeah I remember reading that aswell and its the only thing that comes to my mind. It doesnt look like the remaining 6 will make it either they have been staying to the ground and not moving much, alot of heavy breathing. Have no idea what is happening it just came out of the blue, very depressing

[Bowdy]

Is the tub still outside bro.

[FrontyKwal]

Yeah still outside man, been keeping my eye on temperature and it has not gotten higher than 30.5 over the past week. Iv moved them inside my house now in a 48x14x20 and they seem to be doing better swimming around normally and not as pale as they were but still not eating much

[waxy]

Id say it was teperature unless you are 100% certain the max temp was 30.5?
Its pretty hard to keep a tub of such small volume down to 30.5 in the weather we have had.
Especially if you have moved them inside now and they are doing fine.
I dont know about Pbass but I think hypans can handle a bit higher temps.

[FrontyKwal]

Iv got heaps of polystyrene boxes at my house so I grabbed all the lids and wrapped my tub with it to block it against sunlight plus its semi undercover so it never gets direct sunlight onto it, Iv been checking temperature every few hours over the last week and Im positive it has not gotten higher than 30.5 I'll upload a photo of what Im talking about tomorrow as what Iv explained sounds a bit retarded until you see what I mean haha

The temperature my heater is set to is 28 but it has never actually been on 28 since today cos it has been cooling down. Before I do my daily water changes temp varies between 29-30.5 for the past 2 weeks but after the water change it drops to about 27.5 and I do water changes around 4:00 everyday so I imagine it just heats back up to 28 and stays around there overnight and starts to get warmer the next day, the tank inside my house's temp is 28.6 at the moment so theres not much of a temp difference when I chucked them in there

[theonetruepath]

Add an air stone if you haven't already.

In hot weather Oxygen levels drop quite sharply.

[FrontyKwal]

I have moved them into a tank inside my house but cheers for the tip anyways. Not home at the moment now but I will update on them tomorrow when Im home fingers crossed they will still be there

[FrontyKwal]

Only 5 left now

Water parameters are the same as the tub outside and temp is 28.2. They all seem to be hiding, 3 of them are hiding behind the heater huddled up next to each other, another hanging around the spray bar and the other just laying in the bottom corner and Iv noticed they are all tilting on a 45 degree angle :S When I flick the light on sometimes the dart around really fast and then just go back to hiding again its very odd behaviour Iv never seen any of my fish act like this before. Still not eating either and looking pretty thin

[ice]

I think you should take a water sample to your LFS for a test, I also reckon you should increase your aeration to help with temperature related oxygen depletion. Are you treating the water as you change it with any product??

Also, are you using a hose to change the water? If so make sure you run it for a good few minutes to get rid of the hot contaminated water out of it. Some new rubber hoses leach nasty stuff into the water inside them if allowed to sit in there for a while, hot or not.

-Dave

Edited by ice, 03 January 2013 - 04:29 PM.

[FrontyKwal]

The tank they are in now inside my house has a big air disc in their so that should help with that but I might even add another one if you think it could help more ?

Everytime I did a water change I would fill up a 12 litre bucket 3 times so I'd be taking out 36 litres and I use API stress coat and API tap water conditioner when filling the buckets back up putting in the said amount, and I was using water from a hose outside but I did always let the water run for atleast a minute beacuse I read that on another topic on this forum

[ice]

Not sure that you need both stress coat ad water conditioner. I just use prime, best stuff ever! I don't know what else to tell you mate, unless there is something we're not seeing or they have some sort of disease.. More aeration will never hurt though!

[FrontyKwal]

Iv also got prime at home I might just start using that its a hell of a lot cheaper than using stress coat and tap water conditioner. I use both because I was using hose water I thought there might be more harmful stuff coming out so used the extra tap water conditioner because stress coat also detoxifies and yeah I use the stress coat for the slime coat cos you can never be too careful with these exspensive buggers haha but yeah might chuck on that extra air disc. Will let you know how things go over the next few days. Im beginning to think they have a disease I dont think Im doing anything wrong with caring for them

[bigjohnnofish]

may have to try feeding some live foods if you're not already doing this... a mate of mine got some pbass (assuming from same batch you have) and he feeds them gambezes by the hundreds from his dam... and they are all 8-10cm and look smashing... has around ten of them also.... also feeds bloodworm and other frozen foods too... feeds them 4-5 times a day....

obviously something has gone a miss... has to be something your missing.... is your ph constant coming in from tap water? and as dave suggested i would be using prime myself... you can overdose with it and theres no problem... even assists in neutralizing ammonia in case you get a spike.....

[FrontyKwal]

Hey Johnno I was going to start feeding them live food but Iv heard from alot of people p bass juvies are hard to ween off live foods and I was going to start using pellets this week, it wouldnt as bad of a problem if I had a free never ending source of live food like your friend but going out and buying it every few days will hurt my wallet in the long run

I stopped feeding my bass bloodworms a few weeks ago because they loved it too much and whenever I put something else in they would refuse it and since bloodworms is pretty much useless to feed fish with I stopped. I put a cube of bloodworms in today though about an hour ago and they didnt even notice it, they use to attack it soon as it hit the water splashing around and all, now the cube has sunk to the bottom of the tank so guess Im gonna have to get it out now

And as for ph coming from tap water Im not entirely sure as I havnt tested straight from the tap, I use to test the bass tub every sunday and the ph didnt change much it always be 7.8 or 7.9 it never really got to the exact colour of 8.0 on the api test kit

[Buccal]

My thoughts.
Originally, they may have been effected by oxygen deprivation.
The urgent emergency changing things around on them has stressed them mentally and physical water conditions has changed to abruptly.
When juvenile pbass get sick, they are very hard to turn around.

Completely different tangent:
Google (thiaminase poisoning in aquarium fish feeding on prawns).
This will be a new thing for all to learn.
Im completely against any feeding of prawn to any aquarium fish.
Thiamine, vitamin B1, is essential for a healthy metabolism.
Thiaminase is a un-needed vitamin which blocks out the uptake of thiamine.
Thiaminase is found in a range of aquatic life.
Thiaminase intensifies in volume after the freezing process.
Thiaminase disappears after cooking, is why it doesn't effect us.
Prawns are excessively high in thiaminase.
Thiaminase is partially or completely cancelled out by vegetable matter.
Fish in wild do die from thiaminase poisoning occasionally.
In wild vegetable gut loaded prey help to cancel out poisoning of predators.
In aquaria well balanced pellets like hikari and spectrum have a lot of good vegetable matter that will cancel out thiaminase to fish that are fed prawns.
But exclusively feeding prawns may outway the pellets canceling out thiaminase.
Brine shrimp frozen is a useless food once pbass is past 6cm, the fish will slow in growth and waiste if fed exclusely.
Always get your fish onto 80% pellet even if starving is the way or combining the pellet then reducing the mix till all pellets.
Stuff like prawns should only be fed once a week at most as a treat.
The best best best best best treat is Atlantic salmon from super market.
Atlantic salmon has no thiaminase and is high in astaxanthin a pure form of anti-oxidant.
But still the salmon as a treat as it can be fattening.
Have a bit of a think and good luck dude even if you have to start again.

[FrontyKwal]

Thanks for that Buccal it was very handy information to know, they definitely wont be getting prawns anymore after reading that. What do you recommend doing or trying to feed them should I get some atlantic salmon ? They are already not fond of eating so it would be really hard trying to get them onto pellets but I will still give it a shot. Iv bought some Hikari Sinking Carnivore pellets but not home right now so I will break them into smaller pieces and put them in the tank later on