Black Ghost Knifish Died

[wowsee]

Hi, this is my first post to this forum and I was wondering why my black ghost knife fish died. I started a tank about two month ago, and got the knife fish one month ago. It is a 55 gallon tank with one filter, a heater set to 76 degrees Fahrenheit, two tank lights with covers, and an automatic fish feeder. The inhabitants are: two male sword tails, two angelfish, one black moor goldfish, one sailfin molly, two two pea puffers, two fancy guppies, one large chinese algea eater, a black khuli loach, a neon blue gourami, one bamboo shrimp and two cory cats. The acessories are: one pumice stone with a hole inside, two pieces of driftwood, some christmas moss, a bamboo plant, an amazon sword plant, a noth american water primrose and an elodea. The substrate is medium pebbles. I feed them tropical fish flakes bloodworms. The bloodworms are fed twice a week and the flakes are fed a teaspoon twice a day. The readings are: ph=7.4, alklinity=100ppm, hardness=120ppm, Nirtite=0ppm, Nitrate=10ppm. The water has freshwater aquarium salts being used every water change. Please any help is needed!

 

[BerryAttack]

goldfish and the knife fish should not be together. the goldfish are very dirty fish and have different water preferences. remove from tank.

the pea puffers and a horrible choice for the tank... they will attack your fish. starting with the fins and then attack the fish when they cant swim.
remove the puffers for the best interest for your tank. they should be a one species tank and will need i believe brackish.. then salt? water later on in time;... i'm not an expert but thats what i hear. remove them from your tank.

stop using your aquarium salts... your fish do not need it and is horrible for the knife fish.. they do not have scales and burn them and also the cories. and... should only be used for hospital tanks when treating a fish. well thats what i do.

when older a knife fish will need a 100 gallon minimum tank size. and should be fed blood worms every day to keep them happy and healthy. i do this with mine.

a knife fish needs lots of hiding places. and dim lights because they are very sensitive to light.

cut down on your feeding majorly. remove the puffers and goldfish to another tank seperately. stop using salt.. burns the cories.


you are feeding your fish way to much. you should be only giving small pinches twice a day... and feeding the knife fish an hour after lights out so that he can eat it without it being eaten by the other fish.

 

[wowsee]

I talked to some experts at my local aquarium, i also did some research. Apparently pea puffers are a special breed of puffers that do function in only fresh water, they are really tame and are great for community tanks. As for the goldfish, won't the filter compensate for the dirtying of the water? I don't know. Thanks for the help with the salts, I assumed they were okay because they especially recommended them for any freshwater tank because they help calm fish when introduced and can rebuild the layer of slime around scaleless fish. Also, I browsed some other forums and they said it may have been because the rocky substrate and I should use sand. Is this true? thank you for your help!

 

[Naringlo]

An important question, have you cycled?

LFS's are never really good to listen to. Mine told me I could put figure 8 puffers with black ghost knife fish and all sorts. Basically wasted £80 in 2 months because they all killed each other and ammonia went sky high. When I came here, all the problems went away.

Personally (and I've been told a lot) any puffer shouldn't be mixed. Gold fish really shouldn't be put in a tropical tank because of their stomachs and eating habits, plus the mess which causes the toxic ammonia. Well I understand why people may say use sand. Larger pebbles let uneaten food through which allows the food to rot and cause your ammonia to rise and sand doesn't. You could always try smaller gravel. Hope this helps, I started exactly where you are so don't worry.

The information may seem like a lot but you'll understand why it's important :L

 

[KrystaK]

As far as your readings from your first post. I didn't notice a reading for ammonia, that's one of the most important readings that a test kit can give.
I noticed they get fed two tbs twice a day, that is far too much,

I have no experience with puffers, so I won't advice you on them.

If I may say so, as far as your stock goes, it could use some work.

Goldfish are cold water fish, around 65-70 degrees is their preferred environment and they like it to be lightly planted.
Goldfish in general are terribly dirty and though the filter may be able to compensate for him (If it's cycled, which I assume it is) his presence in your tank drastically reduces the number of other fish you can hold simply because he's so dirty. As he gets bigger he will also eat any smaller fish. Some say that gold fish should be strictly pond fish, I haven't made up my mind on that point yet.

Your other fish are tropical, preferring 70-80 or so. And for the most part, dense plants and int he case of your corys sand substrate is better.

What BerryAttack said is true, salt is okay when fish are first introduced, this is assuming of course they are scaled fish and there are no scaleless fish yet in the tank. However scaleless fish are (generally) only hindered by salt. I've used salt to try treating a sick tank before, and doing so only made my Cory;s more unhappy. I'm assuming the same would be true for a Ghost Knife.

 

[Donna_G]

Pea puffers(dwarf puffers) are 100% freshwater

 

[phoenixgsd]

agree with whats already been said, are you using a liquid based kit or strips to test the water? also both the khulis and corys should be kept in larger groups and they prefer a softer substrate like sand, im sure ive read that chinese algea eaters can be agressive so keep a eye on any agression

 

[wowsee]

I'll try to remove the goldfish into a different tank. When I begun, I cycled the tank over a week and used water conditioner as well as quick start. My test kits do not do ammonia and they are test strips, I'll try to get a liquid ammonia test kit. They now get fed about 1/2 a tsp a day. I did some more research on the pea puffers. A few puffers are primarily freshwater and pea puffers are one of those species. They are labeled as community fish because they are tame and also too small to hurt anything, I'd figure. Figure 8's are different because they are brackish and salt, and also huge fish. I've been thinking of changing to a heavily planted tank, so I will be performing a substrate change, I hope this will help with the fish who need sand. Thank you for all your help!

 

[phoenixgsd]

When I begun, I cycled the tank over a week and used water conditioner as well as quick start. My test kits do not do ammonia and they are test strips, I'll try to get a liquid ammonia test kit.

i feel that possibly here your problem lies, your tank wasnt cycled, there is no proof these quick start products work, a tank can take a couple a months to cycle and with fish its easy to make mistakes without a proper test kit, paper strips are notoriously innacurate, if a fish in cycle isnt properly monitored and maintained, the damage to fish is either fatal or irriversable causing a shorter lifespan

 

[BerryAttack]

i have pea puffers in my tanks before.. think this is a cool fish. these are very aggressive and killed off some of my fish.. because they would attack them at night to eat their fins. i would still recommend to take them out of the tank, same with the goldfish.

just watch the fish for awhile and you'll see the puffers go after other fish's fins.

and they are semi-aggressive not community fish.

 

[the_great_white]

sorry to hear about your ghost knife......i have one and its my favorite fish!

 

[wowsee]

Thanks, yeah it is a pretty cool fish. Oh I actually checked my ammonia levels, I got a reading of about 0.1 ppm. I decided to use ammonia neutralizer, hopefully that will fix the problem.

 

[Tuxyu3]

Not to butt in but I would not just hope for that to fix the problem. You should really just do large water changes as often as required instead of whacking in chemicals which may or may not work, I would be betting on the latter.