Dwarf Angels

[rabidric]

Hi All

A quick bit about the tank. It's the bigger Orca, with extra flow by adding powerheads and a pump in the filter box, with loads of live rock, live sand from another tank and it's been running for a couple of months. We have a variety of very small fish, chromis, clown goby, jawfish, maroon clown with anemone, scarlet hawk and a fuzzy dwarf lion with a number of soft corals. None of these are more than about an inch and a half, most about half to three quarters, and are all doing well. The anemone wandered around the tank with the clown fish pushing it about until they took hold of the entrance to a cave, well gap in the rock but we can dream, which may be relevant to the question later. We put a flame angel in which fed ok but died after 3 weeks with no obvious signs of a problem other than one day for a couple of hours it looked like it had ich. It fed well but just got more and more listless until it died. In our fish book it says that this can happen to flames so we guessed we were just unlucky. We took it back to the shop and they said it was probably the healthiest angel they'd seen apart from the fact it was dead! At the weekend we happened upon the smallest coral beauty ever and decided to try again. It fed well and swam actively about the tank. Yesterday it had a few white dots for an hour or so and this morning it was dead. Is there something that attacks just angels, were we just unlucky again, is the anemone stinging them? If it's an illness or parasite why are none of the other fish affected.
I haven't checked PH or some of the other stuff, got to go to work, but ammonia and nitrite were both zero.

Any ideas or were we just unlucky.

 

[Lynden]

It may be shipping stress, or since you mention tinyness, starvation. Very small grazing fish are generally not recommended buys, since it is often difficult to feed them enough; i.e., four or five times a day. Tiny fish are also more susceptible to various threats, such as ich and shipping stress, that wouldn't kill a larger fish.

So, to be honest, it probably isn't your fault that the fishes died, but it may be wise to get slightly larger ones next time.

P.S.
Feeding and seemingly healthy appearance, then decline and death, can also be a sign of cyanide poisoning. The symptoms are usually quite striking, and include heightened colouration, listlessness, and "gasping". Read into this, and perhaps question the store owner on the practices used to capture the fish, and examine other angels that arrive; leave them at the store for a few weeks before taking them home if possible.

 

[rabidric]

Lynden
Thanks for taking the time. There seem to be hundreds of little creatures in the tank, some that look like minute starfish, small tubeworms and stuff that's fairly shapeless and hard to spot which both fish were happily pecking at whilst they were in there and they ate cyclop eeze with the rest so I wouldn't have thought starvation was an issue. Specially in the second one who was only in the tank for 4 days. I wouldn't know about the poisoning idea but I'll do a bit of research. I have a friend of a friend who works in lab and they are going to do a post mortem on the second fish to see if they can spot anything. You mentioned bright colouration would be a sign though and both fish were very bright in our tank, which we put down to better or different lighting but maybe it was a sign, although where cyanide would have come from is a mystery.

Thanks again and we'll wait a good while before getting another angel. See what the lab says.

Thanks again

 

[rabidric]

Something that has just occurred to me is whether the cyanide idea could be linked to an outbreak of cyano in one corner of the tank. If the angels are grazing in this patch would that kill them? Or is the name nothing to do with it containing cyanide or a compound of?

Just a thought.

R

 

[littleme1969]

The Cyanide mentioned above is actually used to catch the fish It takes a time to poison the fish fully so its hard to tell if its been used for capture or not. Even the shop owner who buys the fish in would not have a clue especially if he had a good turn over of fish.
Just because the fish ate does not mean that it did not starve to death. There is a point of no return for all animals and throw in shipping stress too and that can be enough to tip the balance and cause the death of the fish.
I would also take a look at the PH of your tank and that of where the fish came from. If its very similar its not an issue, but if there is a huge differance then this could be a factor. If you have a large change in PH its always best to spend extra time aclmatising the fish to give it time to get used to the water change. Some fish seem more hardy than others when it comes to things like this and it may be that the angels are particulaly suseptable to this issue.

 

[rabidric]

THEY USE CYANIDE TO CATCH THEM!!!!! That's bl..dy horrible. I thought netting them was a bad enough idea without resorting to poison. No wonder the poor little devils get stressed. There was me thinking I'd poisoned them too. Maybe Lynden's right then and I should stick to bigger fish. I feel even worse now.

Thanks anyway

 

[Lynden]

Responsible collectors use simple netting, and no cyanide.

Cyanobacteria does indeed have a poison, though it is not cyanide. If an animal not adapted to digest cyanobacteria ends up ingesting large quantities, it can prove fatal, but that is unlikely to be the case here.