How Emotions Can Change In The Blink Of An Eye

[N0body Of The Goat]

About 30 minutes ago, while beginning a search in ernest for the "missing sixth Yellowtail," I opened up the front lid section to be greeted by a beautiful Damsel(?) Fly looking at me! No idea how it got in there, presumeably as larvae and had survived in the tank without being spotted by the Opsarius, who are supposed to be very keen flying insect spotters, like our native Trout. Hoping to safely catch him/her in a bit (once it has stopped raining) and release it into the wild!!

Moments later, I opened up the rear lid section... Floating on the water surface, upside down and mouth in the Juwel filter top water inlet grill, was a dead Yellowtail that was giving off a rather pungant smell of death

The fins were practically non-existant, it had bulging eyes and a slight indent by its right gill opening. I'm wondering if it got trapped by the filter; attacked and killed by another Yellowtail; attacked and killed by the dominant Opsarius (the submissive one regular joins the group of Yellowtails for hours at a time surfing in the current); or some other reason...

My biggest dilemma now is whether it is good practice to now do a good sized water change after finding the dead Yellowtail Congo Tetra. The school of six were only added 48 hours ago and during the first 24 hours they were hiding out in the plants, so it was hard to account for all six. Part of me thinks I should do a ~25% water change for good measure.

 

[Nick16]

a water change wont hurt mate.

sorry for your loss.

 

[rdp50734]

25% water change just in case, and don't feel bad as the stress of moving could have been the cause of death. 48 hours isn't very long so I doubt it was anything you did!

 

[luckyd]

Sorry for your loss! I can definitely identify. We joined the same emotional roller coaster a couple of nights ago when we discovered our algae eater's body dead in his cave - no idea what caused it, but it wasn't pretty. It had seemed fine that morning. Then my husband started to move aside some floating plants and found tiny platy fry inside! We suspected our platy was pregnant but didn't know she'd actually delivered yet.

Now the dilemma. It was clear we needed to do a water change but protect the babies. So we very carefully changed about 50% of the water. I'd like to do another one but I think we'll need to wait about a week to give the little guys time to grow since they blend right in with the gravel. Now our biggest challenge is keeping the adult fish from sniffing around our baby hideouts until they'll old enough to fend for themselves!