I have a 75 gallon fresh water fish tank and it seems like every swordtail fish I get ends up dying. Why?
by Aquaboy on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 | 4 Comments
My tank is cycled and all chemicals are water tests are good but my swordtail fish keep dying. The first ones lasted several months but started “bending” and then died. I bought 3 more and the one died within a few days and another within a few weeks but no symptoms of any kind of disease or anything. Now it is almost a month and the female was floating this morning. I’ve had tanks for years and never had this problem. All the other fish do good. Any ideas?
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Sounds like the fish was suffering from cammalanus, an intestinal parasite. Try cleaning all of the fish tank and equipment and restocking from another fish supplier,
if it wasnt what ther first answer , maybe where you are buying them might be the prob. if they come from careless breeders, they may just already be coming with parasite or something bad.
my advice:
do a 100% water change
rise your rocks, plants, and use those magnet things that get the gunk off the wall. if you have a scrubber, then use that to.
also, you probably do, but i hope it is a 75 gal wide, not tall, which is probably not helping if its tall.
I would keep them in a quarantine tank for a few months….
I don’t believe in “scrubbing” out the equipment and decorations will help. I have never done this. If all the other fish are healthy, then the problem is specific to a single species of fish – in your case swordtails.
Swordtails may be extra sensitive to something in your water that the other fish are not sensitive to. Water changes are called for – increase the quantity (volume) and repetition (your time schedule for changes). Double up on both for a few weeks and that should clear a possible impurity. Try RO water with a high end commercial dechlorinator.
If this fails, change suppliers. If that fails, change species.
Maybe try another fish store. The store you are getting them from now might be getting them from a poorly qualified breeder. The “bending” you mentioned could be a result of poor genetics. It could also be a result of injury, but it doesn’t seem likely that all of the fish would get injured in the same way. Another cause of bending MIGHT be fish tuberculosis, but if all of the other fish are fine, I doubt that is the case either…Finally, vitamin C deficiency in fish can result in spinal deformities. Make sure you are feeding a varied diet–again, if the other fish do not seem to be having problems, diet is probably not the issue. Again, I would say it is most likely a problem with the breeder.