Lost Fish

[baldeagle]

have recently been experiancing high levels of Nitrite (covered on another thread Nitrite V Chlorine)and lost a couple of fish to this, however i cant find one of them, and worrying about what affect this will have on my tank.

I have a Cherax Sp in the tank and have read somewhere that he will eat dead fish, So should i stop worrying about it so much and let the crayfish deal with the missing fish? or should i keep diiging around disturbing the tank?

thanks

 

[waterdrop]

Dead fish are just organic matter like plant debris or fish waste. The heterotrophic bacteria will break them down into ammonia eventually and if there are other fish they will pick at the carcass. In a small tank it can cause significant spikes so it is usually worth it to try and find it but often this is impossible because the it's been eaten or sucked up by the filter or a combination of both. More frequent and good gravel-clean-water-changes are the answer.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[baldeagle]

Thanks,

i'll stop digging around like a lunatic in the tank then

 

[OldMan47]

Generic advice.
If you see something in a tank that you don't like, be it chemistry, fish actions or almost anything else, leave the panic behind and do a large water change. It is a cure-all that actually does a lot of good in most cases and does no harm the rest of the time. It will cure everything from minor oxygen issues to ammonia poisoning to nitrite poisoning to cloudy water to fish gasping at the surface to fish seeming unwilling to breed and any number of other issues.