Catastrophe- hillstream help

[mpeterb]

Hi everybody, I've been lurking a while and have found this forum fascinating and helpful. I thought I had a good handle on what I was doing, but maybe not. I'll explain. Bear with me I don't want to leave anything out.

I've been looking for hillstream loaches for about 2 months. My friend managed to pick one up for me while out of town, but other than that nothing. Finally I found a new store where the owner said he could procure some. Great. He got me 10, differing species, each between an inch and an inch and a half. Some were nipped, I thought they might have been housed with something inappropriate, but I figured I'd get them back on their feet. I figured I'd try to identify them later.

I put them into a 40 gallon tank I've had running for about 2 months. It has current, an airpump going into one of the powerheads, river rock and driftwood, with some java fern and moss. It has 9 glass catfish, 1 bamboo shrimp and 1 glass shrimp, all healthy, and my previously lonely loach, I'm almost certain a beaufortia-kweichowensis.

Tank readings on a dip test are nitrite 0, gh ppm 75, chlorine 0, kh ppm 80, ph 7.2, nitrate >20. Temperatures tend to be higher because the tank is high up and heat from the powerheads so I use a fan and the temperature stays around 74 degrees.

I acclimated before hand by pouring them out into a shallow bowl and letting tank water drip in. When it was almost full I siphoned 3/4 of it and repeated twice before letting them into my tank. This took a little more than an hour.

2 died either in the bag or while acclimating - I didn't notice until when I poured them in they settled like leaves. Another died only minutes later, I noticed him twitching side to side and then he just settled down, very quickly. I've found three others besides. It's only been about 12 hours.

I'm really disheartened - I've been excited to have hillies for months, and now that I've gotten some I dread looking in the tank, lest I find more dead. I've only been keeping fish around two years but I have never had fish die like this on me. Certainly not so fast.

What did I do - What can I do to prevent a recurrence? Any help would be much appreciated.

[Emma Turner]

Hi mpeterb, and welcome to LOL.

Sorry to hear about your hillstream losses.

Do you know how long the store had had these fish in for? (i.e. were they quarantined before sale?). You might want to ring them or actually go in there yourself to see if they are having any problems with their stock.

Also, could you carry out an ammonia test to make sure it is on zero. I see everything else has been tested, but just wanted to make sure that no ammonia is present.

Personally I think that an hour is a little long to be acclimatising fish that require high O2 levels. I wouldn't be happy to do this for more than 30 mins myself, unless there were some means of oxygenating the water, for example, by running a powerhead/air pump in the bucket they were in.

Others will probably chip in with their ideas, in the meantime, fingers crossed that all the others make it.

Best wishes,

Emma

[Jim Powers]

Welcome to LOL.
Sorry to hear about your hillstreams.
Unfortunately, something like you experienced is not too unusual.
Sometimes hillstreams are deprived of oxygen during shipment and then die soon after reaching the store. I have seen this several times, seemingly healthy fish dropping dead over a period of a few hours to a few days.
I would do as Emma suggested and check the ammonia level. I would also check with the store to see if they have had losses. I wouldn't be suprised if they have.
Hopefully, the rest will survive and you can find more, healthy fish.
Good luck!!

[Martin Thoene]

Hi mpeterb and welcome to LOL.

Obviously your lurking taught you that the best way for us to answer a question is to be given lots of information. Your post is excellent and it's really difficult to determine how you could have done any better in acclimating these fish to your tank. That procedure was very good, certainly far more thorough than what I normally do.

The only thing I can guess at is that there might have been some huge disparity in water parameters between the shop water and your aquarium.
I guess you never tested the shop water eh?

These fish can be very sensitive but generally robust ones will acclimate easily. The somewhat chewed on appearance you describe might point to rough handling or attack by something nasty as you suggest. It is possible the fish were already stressed and this was a kind of "last straw" thing for them.

I am always in two minds with buying Hillstreams. One part of me wants to wait and let them settle down after import, the other part wants to get them home where I can ensure the best of conditions for them. A prolonged stay in an unsuitable dealer's tank can do long-term damage that irreparably damages the fish.

Fingers crossed that the survivors settle in ok and live long lives. Once settled into aquarium life they are easy to keep given the right conditions and maintenance.

Martin.

[mpeterb]

Thank you everyone, for your fast responses and sympathies.

The fish were all for me - the store doesn't stock them - He had just picked them up at his dealers for me. I'm aware that this was hasty of me, but I was excited just to have them - I never imagined I could have a 60% loss of them.

As I write this I have 16 more minutes to wait for results on my ammonia test, which I will then post - If it isn't zero I suck.

Thanks again

Matt B

[mpeterb]

Ammonia is at zero. So, that's something...


And no, I didn't test the water they came in.

As far as oxygen, I thought that if the oxygen in the tank was high (from the airline in the powerhead and the surface movement) that the water I acclimated with would still have a high oxygen content. Is that wrong?

[mikev]

Hi mpeterb,

Sorry for your problem. It is unfortunately not uncommon.

It would somewhat help if you mention the type of hillstreams you got. The thing is that their hardiness greatly varies with the species. For instance, I had two confuzonas that failed to survive a two-hour trip from the vendor -- they are VERY O2-deprivation sensitive. Otoh, if the fish you lost are Beaufortia's, you got something else going on there.

Something else may be a prior O2-deprivation or a disease, in both cases, acclimation may lead to rapid death. Sometimes the original cause is even not possible to determine.

Now, one word of advice: don't mix hillstreams obtained from different vendors. One at a time. The probability of hillstreams carrying a nasty disease is very high, when you mix without quarantining (or quarantine together), you spread the disease and quite likely doom them all. This happens all too often.

The better approach is to build up slowly, one group at a time....

[Martin Thoene]

I PM'd mpeterb and asked a couple of Q's.

The fish came from a supplier, via a dealer and straight to him without the bag being opened. Who knows how long they were in the bag?

The disadvantages of a long drip acclimation are as follows:

The fish is not removed quickly enough from the fouled shipping water.

The ammonia in the shipping bag may be rendered toxic if the tank water being added is pH 7.0 or greater. (7.2 in this case)

Bad things happen when you open the shipping bag, CO2 escapes, causing a rise in pH, which in turn makes ammonia much more toxic.

So it's possible that time duration in the bag resulting in Ammonia build-up (not tested) and Oxygen drop (weakening the fish) was the problem.
In theory, properly packaged fish shipped relatively locally like this should not be a problem. Was O2 put into the bag at source I wonder? If it was just air then......

When I successfully bought my Hillies over from England in my carry-on luggage they only had air in the bags, no O2. But I put in zeolite granules to absorb any Ammonia and didn't feed for 48 hours prior. Packaging is the key.

So it seems highly possible here that a combination of a normally good acclimation method and (possibly) poorly packaged fish proved a deadly combination.

A great pity.

Martin.

[mpeterb]

The total tally was 7 dead in about 20 hours.

The owner of the store was really cool about it though.

So, I'll have replacements next week. He was even open to the idea of seeing to it they had an airline and were kept cooler on the ride back. I'll see.

I'll remember to test the water they come in next week.

[Martin Thoene]

Well that's good they're taking responsibility. Fingers crossed for next time. I would keep the acclimation period shorter if the bag and tank parameters are relatively close, but remember pH is a logarithmic scale.

Martin.

[Emma Turner]

I would also recommend adding a tiny amount of Ammo-lock (or similar) to the water you use for the 'first mix' added to the bag/bucket when acclimatising them.

Good luck,

Emma

[mpeterb]

The store owner said that the bag had been filled with O2 - I have no particular reason to doubt him, but he could be wrong or being lied to.

I'll keep everything here in mind for the next batch.

My thanks to all of you,

Matt B