Firemouth Death This Weekend

[skiltrip]

so my 37g lost one of my favorite inhabitants this weekend. my firemouth. i've had him about 3 years, in fact the whole tanks been stable the last 2 years or so. no new additions, no changes. water's fine. i am suspicious of fighting, maybe it only happened when the lights were out.

i have one redtail shark who's tailfin is pretty tore up, and my synocats top fin seems to have been chewed down to a little spike. my firemouth never showed any signs of damage, just found him sunday morning laying dead in a back planted corner. no damage at all. he wasn't that old, but i just don't know. he did always spat with the synocat, but the firemouth seemed to harass the syno more than the other way around.

the curious thing is, my yellow lab (who is very little, half the size at least the firemouth was) is untouched. he's pristine, very beautiful. he's also very peaceful (as far as i've seen). kinda just keeps to himself and loves to eat. he never even acknowledge the firemouth, they just left each other alone

regardless of blame, i took the opportunity to do a tank scrubbin, rearranged my deco, added better aeration, and did a good vacuum job. then my whisper60 powerfilter died. sigh... luckily i have a spare whisper20 to run till i get the new one (got an aquaclear50 to run along side the whisper20).

at some point i have to figure out if i want to reconfigure my stock and all that. just wanted to share.

any suggestions on another tankmate or two? currently i have the synocat, redtail shark, yellow lab, and one gibby pleco (that i might give back to the store, he doesn't do nearly good enough job cleaning up to justify the amount of waste he produces.)

 

[skiltrip]

bump & sigh

 

[fish_mania]

Sadly my firemouth died as well over the weekend he was the biggest one in the tank but i think his death was due to bullying.

 

[skiltrip]

Sadly my firemouth died as well over the weekend he was the biggest one in the tank but i think his death was due to bullying.

I'm sorry for your loss too. Part of me wants to just start over with my tank and just put community fish in there. Bigger fish and cichlids are very cool to watch, but I don't take violence-related casualties very well. Oh well.

What else do you have that tank? who do you think was bullying your firemouth?

 

[guppymonkey]

Well if you have a YELLOW LAB in the tank thats the culprit. Never mix african cichlids with other fish, it hardly ever works out well. I am of course talking about rift lake cichlids not the river species like kribensis. Even some of the more mild species like the yellow labs are usually too territorial for most tanks, even good size tanks like 37 gallons. I wouldn't be surprised if over time it kills everything in the tank. Thats fairly common behavior for territorial fish like african cichlids.

 

[skiltrip]

Well if you have a YELLOW LAB in the tank thats the culprit. Never mix african cichlids with other fish, it hardly ever works out well. I am of course talking about rift lake cichlids not the river species like kribensis. Even some of the more mild species like the yellow labs are usually too territorial for most tanks, even good size tanks like 37 gallons. I wouldn't be surprised if over time it kills everything in the tank. Thats fairly common behavior for territorial fish like african cichlids.

i hear ya. most likely right. they were good together for a year and a half, or more. but i guess as they mature and their personalities come out it doesn't matter if they "grew up together" fish aren't like dogs and cats. lot simpler and more instinctual.

live and learn i guess. assuming my yellow lab is the soon all by itself with just the synocat and pleco. both of them can hold their own i think... what else can i put in the 37g, couple more africans? or will it just be a killing match all over again?

 

[fish_mania]

Sadly my firemouth died as well over the weekend he was the biggest one in the tank but i think his death was due to bullying.

I'm sorry for your loss too. Part of me wants to just start over with my tank and just put community fish in there. Bigger fish and cichlids are very cool to watch, but I don't take violence-related casualties very well. Oh well.

What else do you have that tank? who do you think was bullying your firemouth?

I have another firemouth and 2 salvinis all smaller than him i think the firemouth and 1 of the salvinis was bullying him.

 

[skiltrip]

I miss having Guppies when i was a kid... Never any epic battles. No drama. B)

And there's something way more unsettling about large corpses, rather than tiny ones. sigh.

I thought it was interesting that for over 2 years, i had a firemouth, yellow lab, redtail shark, and a synocat together and there was no trouble whatsoever. I think my firemouth always kinda kept the peace in my tank. He was a presence. Looked tougher than he was I suppose. Kinda like the Godfather, ya know? He represented something. But if you actually went one on one with the Godfather, you could easily take him out, he's an old man. I think that's what happened. At night , while the lights were out, somebody took him down. He was definitely whacked. double-sigh. His name happened to be Fredo. the mob connections are all too evident.

 

[Scott MacAdam]

sorry for your loss, i also have a firemouth in a tank with 2 yello labs, but the thing is they don't bug him at all, he is the one to lay down the law when it comes to bullying, but then again this rarely happens anyway