Urgent Help Needed- Dieing Ps Demasoni

[harris_hpe]

Hi there,

I have had my 3 foot tank setup for quite a few months now with no apparent issues. I did a fishless cycle before adding fish which included the week of checking ammonia and nitite daily with a result of 0 on both witin or before 10 hours. I added 5 Labidochromis sp. "Hongi" as a tester to see whether everything was ok and after approx 1 month I added 15 Ps. Demasoni. Both species seemed to get along just fine with no abnormal behaviour. I did notice however, that come feeding time the Hongi were there waiting everytime you even walked across the room but some of the Demasoni would hide everytime you went near or upto the tank and very rarely did I see all the Dems feed at once.

Also I noticed that the dems were not as aggresive as I expected, quite calm in fact but would have spurts of aggression after I had turned the lights out.

Now, i was away with work at the weekend and left my flatmate to feed the fish and when I came back on the sunday she informed me that a couple of the fish had died. I found four of them, one looked normal and the other 3 almost unrecogniseable as fish. I checked the water immediately and found that everything was normal but I did a 40% water change anyway, just to make sure.

I have just now got home from work to find another fish death and there are definately more missing (but I cant see them without removing all my rockwork) and the rest of the Dems seem very inactive and didnt eat when I fed them, however they look completely normal and healthy. I havnt noticed any change in the Hongi's behaviour, and I even think that one of them is holding.

Can anybody suggest where it has all gone so wrong?

Sorry for the long winded post

Harris

 

[wolfwolf]

you should post in the fish emergency section. You might get more responses.


With that many fish being sick and the existing tankmates being fine I would think thst you bought sick fish... where did they come from?

Why were the three fish unrecognizable? Were the eaten? deformed? Need more info.

What are you water stats? "normal" does not really help. Do you add buffers and/or cichlid salt?

 

[harris_hpe]

Water stats are

Amm-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate-25
PH-8.5

I have only seen one acting strange, the rest must have died during the day when I am not at home. The strange one looked like it was struggling for breath and didnt really look like it was in control of itself. its colouring had changed but I wouldnt have said paler.

i have an air pump so the water should be well aerated.

The rest of the fish in there at the moment look really healthy and happy and are very active