# Random fish deaths



## Sidius (Mar 25, 2012)

Hey Everyone,

I've been having some issues over the last several months.. Some of my african cichlids are dying randomly. A fish will die and then everything is fine for anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months and then another fish will show signs of stress/sickness and then die within a day or two. It's not due to aggression, even though I know Africans are notorious for stressing each other out with bullying. There's never any bullying/chasing more than the odd quick chase and never any damage. The fish that are dying have no damage done to them and seem to be left alone. The only thing that I can think of would be Malawi bloat and I have seen signs of it in the dead fish but it seems so random and some times months between deaths. Stress induced bloat, from something that I'm not seeing? Aside from the sick fish every so often... all other fish are very healthy, eating like pigs and very active.

Anyways, for the people that are curious, here's my water parameters...

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 40ppm (this is a bit high but I do have a heavily stocked tank with some big fish)
PH - 7.6 (I keep it at this level for plants and I've never had a problem in the past)

If anyone can think of anything, I'm happy to research it or try it because I'm tired of fish dying on me every month or so. I mean I understand that fish will die and it's fairly normal in the African world to lose a fish every so often but this seems more frequent than it should be.


----------



## Sidius (Mar 25, 2012)

I'm debating a few rounds of prazipro in case I have a parasite that's making it's way through my tank.. I've never used it before but from what I've read, it should be pretty harmless to my fish to try.


----------



## charles (Apr 21, 2010)

Or maybe try to keep nitrate below 20ppm. If you have plants, and your nitrate still at 40ppm or over, it is very high.


----------



## kim86 (Sep 5, 2012)

Prazipro won't do any harm. I would just do some good gravel siphoning afterwards as in my experience, the fish have massive poops after treatment, which definitely helps expell anything internally.


----------



## Sidius (Mar 25, 2012)

I don't have many plants.. not enough to use up much of the nitrates at least. I have a few jungle vals, one anubias and a small amazon sword, that's all. 40ppm is high and definitely higher than I would like, but I don't know if I would say very high. I'll do a couple extra water changes over the next week to bring it down for sure but can 40ppm nitrates cause deaths like this? My understanding was that nitrates don't become a problem until it gets to the 80ppm+ range. If so, I guess it's entirely possible.


----------

