2 Zebras Dead Today

[jaclynl]

Hello All,

I have had 4 Zebra Danios since February. Today I found two of them dead. No signs of illness.

Tankmates:
6 Bronze Cories
5 Serpae Tetras
1 Pygmy Cory

Water Stats:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: 40ppm

Today is the day for my water change so I did a 30% change just now.

I also added more fish today (I can home with them and then found the dead ones). I added:
6 Pygmy Cories
3 Serpae Tetras

30 gallon tank, Temp 76-78

Do you think it's just a coincidence that 2 died on the same day??

Thanks,
Jaclyn

 

[Bobtastic]

I just did a quick google and found a web site with some ppls comments about Serpae Tetras being aggressive and actually killing their tank mates.
[URL="http/www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_serpae.php"]http/www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_serpae.php[/URL] - There are 4 pages of comments (page no. at the bottom), not all of them say that they are aggressive, but there are certainly a few.

 

[jaclynl]

I just did a quick google and found a web site with some ppls comments about Serpae Tetras being aggressive and actually killing their tank mates.
<a href="http/www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_serpae.php" target="_blank">http/www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_serpae.php</a> - There are 4 pages of comments (page no. at the bottom), not all of them say that they are aggressive, but there are certainly a few.

Thank you. I have noticed them nipping the fins of my Cories which is why I bought more. Hopefully the larger group will reduce the aggression. I've never seen them go after the Zebras though, probably because the Zebras are quite a bit faster.

Certainly a possibility though.

 

[waterdrop]

Had you gotten down to just the two? I've noticed that zebras, like a lot of small fish, do seem to die off a little more quickly when their shoal number gets below the minimum, which must be in the 4,5,6 range for danios. So it could just be the slightly higher stress level that they've been living at because they were down at a 2 level. I agree though that Serpae are extremely aggressive and unpredictable fish, I experienced that a number of times in my tanks over the years, so that's also a possibility.

~~waterdrop~~