Double check me please

So yesterday, Saturday 4/7, I picked up two new platties and added them by themselves to the 40 gallon tank along with a bottle of safe start.

Today one of them is dead. All seemed OK this morning and I didn't notice him doing anything that seemed odd. Given I've only had him since yesterday that is, of course, relative. Just didn't notice anything that struck me as a red flag. He hung out, nibbled at the sand occasionally, but that's it. Thinking about it he didn't seem extremely lively but figured it was just due to the new tank. Neither has eaten much at feeding time, but I chalked that up to the stress of being moved to a new tank and figured it would resolve in a day or two. I went to my Uncles for about five hours and came home and he was just sitting dead on the bottom of the tank.

Looking him over, there doesn't seem to be anything obvious that I am seeing on him. Again, have another and he seems fine as do the bunch of MTS in there, and they've been in there for a few days longer then the platties.

Pics, one in the bag when he was acclimating and one taken post swimming off into the sunset. On the one where he is dead the white is just a reflection, there were no white spots on him.




I'm leaning towards just bad luck, but being as it's the first fish I've lost just wanted to double check if there was anything about him I might be missing. Thoughts?

 

Aww I'm sorry for the loss

I agree it sounds like bad luck. I'm assuming that the tank was new with the TSS and and fish on 4/7? Or was this a running tank with already present ammonia (looking in your aquarium information). If it was .50 ammonia when you added the fish and TSS, that could have been what did it if the fish wasn't use to any ammonia. Again, assuming this not suggesting that's the case. Either way, good luck with the TSS. I love that stuff!

 

No not new. I had it set up and running for about a week with some food to build up a little ammonia. Tried an experiment with another member sending me cycled media along with the MTS in there now. The media doesn't seem to have made the trip to well and didn't work on cycling the tank so formulated a plan B. Did a water change, treated the water with AquaSafe instead of my usual Prime, and added the safestart and the two platties.

I was thinking the ammonia was a possibility as well, but given the water change getting it down to a lower level, the snails seem to be doing fine, and reaching levels higher then that when I cycled my ten gallon with safestart I figured it wasn't likely high enough to do him in...certainly not that quickly or without noticing some warning. Maybe just that combined with the stress of moving to a new tank?

 

It sounds like bad luck to me. I have established tanks and I bought 11 ottos to split up between a couple of my algae ridden tanks. I lost 1 of the 11. That is a little bit less than 10% loss on the fish. I think that otto had bad luck and your platy was probably weak already by some unknown factor. :;hurryb

 

While the odds are the fish are already weakened, I'd closely monitor the remaining platy for even the slightest change.

Another factor may have been acclimation. Without knowing exactly how the fish was acclimated, there is the possibility that the water chemistry was very different between the store water and your tank.

 

Yeah I've been keeping an eye and peeking over at him. Seems fine, not lethargic or darting around everywhere, not favoring one particular level of the tank, etc.

Did a 15 minute bag soak and then added some water to the bag, waited ten minutes added some more, waited ten more minutes netted them from the bag and into the tank.

 

Do you live in the same community and have the same water sourse as the fish store?

 

Thanks all.

Given the other fish is still doing OK and shows no sign of any issues I think we'll chalk it up to bad luck luck, stuff happens.

Acclimating his replacement now.