Cardinals

[Tatya]

Hi Guys,

I got 15 Cardinals on Friday for my fishless cycled tank. (240L, 120 x 40 x 50 cms). Its a Rio 240, with the Juwel heater for the tank and the filter pump one higher than with the tank (1000l l/hr).

I'm now down to nine. Would it just be the move that's killing them? (assuming they're dying I've only seen one body - but when I moved the wood I couldn't see any of the others)

The water has been constantly at:
NH3 0, NO2 0, NO3 12.5, pH 7.3, GH 5, KH 3.

The one that I saw the body of we also saw before he died. He was drifting in the water and flicking about a bit as if trying to regain control of his fins. But an hour before he'd been fine.

The water is pH adjusted with peat in the filter (its pH 7.9 out of the tap) but has been constant. The only other addition to the water is Tetra Aquasafe.

I haven't lost any more since giving them a 15 % water change yesterday. But as I said it seems to come on suddenly, so there may be problems waiting for me when I get home.

Any ideas? I'm all out of them!

 

[Alien Anna]

Tatya,
I'm sure your water is fine, but what about the shop you bought them from? What is their pH, KH etc.? If they were wild caught (which most cardinals are), they could also have been suffering from transport stress.

It is possible they were caught from acid, soft water streams on Monday, dumped into holding boxes (with little aeration and no filtration) for 27 hours while they were flown to their new home, transfered to an alkaline, hard water display tank on Wednesday, netted and bagged-up on Thursday and put into your acid, soft water tank. Not surprisingly, by the following Thursday, some have succumbed.

Cardinals are very prone to pH shock and also to chilling (which can happen when they are transported). Or they may have been sickening for something when you bought them. If the shop has a refund policy (which good shops should have), you should take a corpse and a sample of your tank water (to prove that you haven't got ammonia or nitrite in your tank) and get replacement stock.

In future, try to time it so that the cardinals you buy have been in the LFS for at least a week (the longer the better, actually). Before you buy them, ask for a sample of the LFS water and compare it to the tank you want to put them in. If it is radically different, you may have to set up a temporary quarantine tank for them to stay in until you have managed to drop the pH (by swapping out water from your main tank).

Cardinals are tough and easy to keep once they are settled in, but getting them settled in can be a difficult process. I hope the remaining stock is OK from now on. Good luck.

 

[Tatya]

They were bought from UDA, who keep all fish in quarantine for a week (I think) before being put up for sale. Their water has a pH of 7.0. Not ideal for the swap to mine but I wouldn't have thought that a change of only 0.3 could kill off a third of the fish (even though it should really only be 0.2 a day). I'm not sure about UDA's GH and KH - they only display the pH. I could ask next time I'm in.

These Cardinals were the last ones left of the batch which had been in their (sale) tanks for over a week. So I guess they'd be fairly stressed from the whole "everyone else getting caught" syndrome, before they even hit the being bagged themselves problem.

I can pretty much guarantee that its not the LFS that is at fault in this case. (not often you catch someone defending an LFS is it )

Any ways as you say its probably the settling them in thats the problem.

(And I haven't even got the Otos yet )