Experienced aquarists, How often does a fish dies on you?

So I've been going through quite a turmoil since the beginning of the year with my columnaris outbreak, and recently the abject failure of my quarantine tank.

It led me to wonder, do experienced fishkeeper also go through unexplained fish deaths? Or is this something that eventually goes away when you have enough experience? Can you do everything right but a fish just gets stressed and dies, or injures itself accidentally and there's nothing you can do about that?

 

I think most, if not all, of us will have had unexpected and unexplained deaths. It happens and can make you scratch your head trying to work out why when sometimes there is no obvious answer. It helps if you can provide the right conditions for your fish to be at their best, but having said that sometimes even that isn’t a guarantee that a fish won’t just die suddenly.

I had a fish die a couple of months back - no warnings, no change in behaviour or tank conditions, no signs of illness, seemingly healthy. One of those things unfortunately - you have to remember that fish aren’t immortal.

 

I'm sorry to hear about your frustration. It's difficult to generalize, but I will say it's not uncommon to lose lots of fish in the beginning, though some folks get lucky and don't go through such hard times. And I truly say those people are lucky, whether it's that they came across the right advice at the beginning or made fortunate choices. There are some lessons you may not learn until much later, and in retrospect there's no way you would have known it in the beginning.

If you're curious, diligent, and persistent, you can figure it out. There will always be times when you lose a fish due to old age or unanticipated illness. But in general, things will stabilize a lot once you've eliminated the biggest points of failure. Keep reading, keep asking questions, get to understand who's knowledgeable and who's not. And make sure you know and can replicate as closely as possible the natural conditions for your fish.

Best of luck.

 

I don't really spend much time even wondering about fish deaths that aren't fairly obvious. Plenty of other things in the world to drive me crazy instead!

Can't say deaths are super regular, but it kind of goes in cycles in my platy tank, since there are all different ages of fish. Most of the ones that have died of late we have had for a few years. Is a little sad as all the platies we have had the last 3 years were all born in that tank as well.

And as far as the people who like to say "well the life span says this...", well, many humans don't hit the average lifespan for one reason or another, either.

 

Well, even as a well experienced aquarist, fish deaths happen...

Experienced aquarists, How often does a fish dies on you?​

But as I have to take the title of this topic seriously, the answer will be : Just once!
A fish can only die once...

 

Well, even as a well experienced aquarist, fish deaths happen...

Experienced aquarists, How often does a fish dies on you?​

But as I have to take the title of this topic seriously, the answer will be : Just once!
A fish can only die once...

Shoulda known YOU would catch that if no one else did lol

 

Oh just wow thats… wow

 

I'm sorry to hear about your frustration. It's difficult to generalize, but I will say it's not uncommon to lose lots of fish in the beginning, though some folks get lucky and don't go through such hard times. And I truly say those people are lucky, whether it's that they came across the right advice at the beginning or made fortunate choices. There are some lessons you may not learn until much later, and in retrospect there's no way you would have known it in the beginning.

If you're curious, diligent, and persistent, you can figure it out. There will always be times when you lose a fish due to old age or unanticipated illness. But in general, things will stabilize a lot once you've eliminated the biggest points of failure. Keep reading, keep asking questions, get to understand who's knowledgeable and who's not. And make sure you know and can replicate as closely as possible the natural conditions for your fish.

Best of luck.

My favorite learning experience so far was... cutting plants. One day I decided to cut some way overgrown plants in my tank. Next day, BOOM, 2 dead fish, and over the next couple of days I kept losing fish.

I was completely confused. The culprit was my blue rainbow fish. Turns out he's a jerk and those plants allowed the other fish to hide from him, when I cut my plants a bit too low, suddenly they lost their hiding spaces and were at his mercy. That's the kind of thing I would have never thought of myself.

I've had fairly decent runs in my first few years, lost a lot of fish but usually I could eventually figure out the cause. This year is my first experience with an actual outbreak though and I've had terrible luck since!

 

So I've been going through quite a turmoil since the beginning of the year with my columnaris outbreak, and recently the abject failure of my quarantine tank.

It led me to wonder, do experienced fishkeeper also go through unexplained fish deaths? Or is this something that eventually goes away when you have enough experience? Can you do everything right but a fish just gets stressed and dies, or injures itself accidentally and there's nothing you can do about that?

I don't have a large sample size as fish live for a very very long time, so I don't buy very often. But out of the fish I have, I don't have random deaths occurring.

I also don't go out of my way to keep fish outside of my water parameters. I have high pH hard water where I live, and I look for these kind of fish. I wouldn't keep CPDs for example.

I think one problem is LFS aggregates fish from around the world and people just see colorful fish and buy them without considering their origins. Neon tetras vs guppies come from very different waters for example. Same with angelfish vs malawi cichlids. Goldfish, tiger barbs, I can go on and on... Some are territorial, some are not. Some are schooling, some are solitary etc etc. They're all in this one big pet store. If people provided the proper environment for the fish they buy, I think they will have tremendously more success.

 

It definitely happened a lot more when I was trying to do community tanks, ie trying to keep a lot of fish at once. All my tanks now are either single-fish, or the fish are added very slowly over time, and I haven't had deaths in a while now.

 

It definitely happened a lot more when I was trying to do community tanks, ie trying to keep a lot of fish at once. All my tanks now are either single-fish, or the fish are added very slowly over time, and I haven't had deaths in a while now.

Oh that's interesting, yes I have a community tank of Cherrybarbs, and rainbowfish.
I've had the most success with zebra danios so far, I've got 24 the moment I started my tank 4 years ago and the last one died only recently which seems pretty normal for their lifespan

 

Oh that's interesting, yes I have a community tank of Cherrybarbs, and rainbowfish.
I've had the most success with zebra danios so far, I've got 24 the moment I started my tank 4 years ago and the last one died only recently which seems pretty normal for their lifespan

Yeah, having a group of fish makes it more likely that some of them will get hurt or stressed by their tankmates, and then there's the simple fact that having more fish = more chances for one of them to get sick and spread it to the others.

 

Yes fish die . Nothing we can do about it. Lots of the fish you buy are sick already. Really have to observe the fish in the tank and pick the most aggressive and strongest looking. If too many fish in the tank look weak move on. Next you must qt. Yes I see you did. But please continue doing it. Clean out the qt tank with a bleach solution if the last fish were sick. Leave new fish for at least a month. For me this had led to my best results. Most of my fish live long lives. But diseases are out there and easily spread. Best to have them all die in your qt than spread out and kill all in your main tank.

 

Most of my fish that die are young or fairly new to the tank. My worst two were

1. Columnaris that hid in my gouramis for 4 months before making themselves known. Saved one but had to euthanize the other while waiting for meds in the mail.

2. Accidentally sucked up a baby catfish in my siphon while cleaning the fry tank. Felt horrible. It died overnight.

Some have just been a mystery, though. I've felt pretty lucky so far. My first major outbreak was with the first fish I put in my community tank, so I got a lot of experience without a lot on the line, and I only lost one fish in the process. Haven't had too much heartbreak since besides the camallanus worms.

 

I've never had a fish die more than once.

 

Fish like people can live long lives while one just like them dies early.

My ABN Beast is around 18 years old.