How cruel life can be

[Jellyanne]

For some reason my second daughter's fish are the only one dying...
I started my tank with 3 white cloud minnow. After that each of my daughter got a male guppy. Of course one died after a few days. I then bought another one from a different petstore and he lived a few weeks until he got sick... She then decided that she would try something different.

So we got a dwarf mexican lobster who got named La muerte... she hid and died within a few days. I brought her back to the store and got a replacement without my daughter's knowing of it. A little more than 2 weeks later, La muerte II suddenly passed. She was up an running this morning

I have no clue what went wrong and I cannot believe that out of the fish, the snails and the shrimp, only HERS dies...

I feel at lost, I don't know what to do next, if I should try another Crayfish like she wants or convince her on a never dying plastic fish!

[George2]

Hi Jellyanne,

   Just out of curiosity, how big is your aquarium? How long has it been up and running for? What is/was the total number of fish, crayfish, etc. in it? What is the temperature of the water. I'm wondering if it has not been fully cycled.
Do you have a test kit to measure your water parameters? If so, what are the levels of the following:
ammonia
nitrite
pH
nitrate

By the way, a few years ago I had a couple dwarf mexican crayfish and they did not live very long either. They only lived for a few months. I never did figure out what the problem was.


Thanks,
George

[Jellyanne]

Hi Jellyanne,

   Just out of curiosity, how big is your aquarium? How long has it been up and running for? What is/was the total number of fish, crayfish, etc. in it? What is the temperature of the water. I'm wondering if it has not been fully cycled.
Do you have a test kit to measure your water parameters? If so, what are the levels of the following:
ammonia
nitrite
pH
nitrate

By the way, a few years ago I had a couple dwarf mexican crayfish and they did not live very long either. They only lived for a few months. I never did figure out what the problem was.


Thanks,
George

Hi!

Thanks George for trying to figure this out with me

It's a 10 gallon, crowded with 15 neo shrimps, 3 white cloud minnows and 2 guppys. oh and 2 nerite snails and a few little pond snails.
It's been set up for 3 months, it did not have everything at the beginning.
The water is at 78
And yes I do test my water, last test was on the 12th of november
Ammonia was 0, nitrite 0, ph 6.8 and nitrate 3
I will re test today to see if anything changed yesterday.

All I can think of is that we have construction workers on thursday changing a window in that room and temp might have dropped a little + noises and banging from their work = too stressful?
Or it died of hunger... she would eat a bit of the sinking pellets then would fight the guppies for it and then leave it there and go elsewhere...

Jellyanne

[George2]

Hi!

Thanks George for trying to figure this out with me

It's a 10 gallon, crowded with 15 neo shrimps, 3 white cloud minnows and 2 guppys. oh and 2 nerite snails and a few little pond snails.
It's been set up for 3 months, it did not have everything at the beginning.
The water is at 78
And yes I do test my water, last test was on the 12th of november
Ammonia was 0, nitrite 0, ph 6.8 and nitrate 3
I will re test today to see if anything changed yesterday.

All I can think of is that we have construction workers on thursday changing a window in that room and temp might have dropped a little + noises and banging from their work = too stressful?
Or it died of hunger... she would eat a bit of the sinking pellets then would fight the guppies for it and then leave it there and go elsewhere...

Jellyanne

From what I can tell, everything seems ok. When you introduce the fish/crayfish to your tank, are you making sure they are gradually acclimatized to your water conditions before they are released into the tank? That's the only thing I can think of.

[Jellyanne]

Yes, I drip acclimate to triple the amount of water, for somewhere near 3 hours.

But I will wait until my 24 gallon is setup completely before trying crayfish again. Nothing else died and I've been testing my water a little more. Nitrates were high before the water change, so I will do them more often while there is still fish living in there as they pollute more.

So until then I might get her a nice purple or yellow snail.

[sas]

Really tough when we lose livestock.
Make sure your water is pristine before you introduce crayfish and snails.
These guys are very sensitive and need fully cycled tanks.
You can liken these guys to the canaries in the mines. The first hint of a
buildup in toxins and they'll be the first to go, especially since they inhabit the
bottom portion of tanks.
Snails are known to make a mass move up the tank walls when water parameters are off.

[Holly]

I have a cray or two you can have when you are ready if you want. They look like this.

If your shrimp are fine I don't see why a cray wouldn't be. Maybe the ones you got weren't healthy to begin with.

[Jellyanne]

Thanks Holly, but I won't be ready for crayfish before christmas.
Are they brazos?

I will set-up a tank just for "predators" and shrimp culls. This is where the crays will go. And I will wait for the tank to be a few months old and stable before trying the crays again.

I have only seen the snails go to the top in mass in the tiny bucket I set the extra pond snails I had.

But I am afraid my cray might have been hungry since the guppies kept stealing her food
I hate feeling like I have done something wrong, sigh at least everyone else is healthy!

[Holly]

I bought them as blues, I don't know what species they are.