# Swordtails dying in only a day



## MonopolyBag (Jan 11, 2008)

So there is an aquarium I take care of in a doctors office. It is not planted, but I don't think there was another thread for fish not in a planted tank.

They had some larger fish in there that needed to come out so I decided to add sword tails. I quarantined the fish for a long time prior to adding them. The tank is a 45g with a fluval 306, it was cycled by use of additives, and it has three fake pieces of decoration in there that are fake rocks with centers that the fish can swim in. Both sides of the tank are open.

I added the healthy for a month sword tails, and the next day two died and two looked stressed out.

I talked to someone at the local fish store who does no quite a bit of info on FW and they said that live bearers recently have not been as hardy as they should be. More susceptible to problems and dying.

I am wondering if the sword tails just are not take the stress of a new tank in a busy doctors office well? They do not look sick, they are fine a half hour before I put them in the tank in the quarantine tank.

Now a month before this, I tried the sword tails with the same problems, except the tank was already cycled left over from the larger fish. I had one die in first week, then on the third week they started getting dropsy. I hoped the tank was just dirty or whatever from the too big of fish so I emptied everything, new water, and medicated the tank. Then I cycled it with additives and tried that.

No ammonia either time, the first time nitrates was a little high. Second time nitrates are fine.

I had more females per male, tried 11 the first time. All the sword tails were kept together prior to this tank with no aggression so that is not it, unless the environment changed their temperament. But they do looked stressed. Two breathing hard (never did that in quarantine) and the others swimming around fast and darting a bit that made me think they were stressed.

They came from a tank with bare bottom and limited hiding and things to swim around but no one was ever staring at the fish for 9 hours a day and constant foot traffic. I only go near the tanks a few times a day for short times.

I am going to try serpae tetras now and see if they do better. I have 15 of them that are in quarantine that are doing fine. I am hoping that they will be able to acclimate to the busier environment with more ease.

The only thing I do notice is the tank has some white worms in it. Not a lot as the tank is fairly clean but if you stir up the substrate a bit, you may see a few swimming around.

I am curious if anyone has noticed the recent thing with live bearers not being as hardy and catching disease/dying in tanks more easily recently? Do people think the large group of serpaes may fare better?


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## Silvering (Jun 10, 2011)

It sounds like a problem with the tank at the office rather than the fish, at least to me. Healthy for a month and then instant problems - probably a water quality issue. Can you give us any more info? Perhaps there's something leaching from the substrate that's causing problems. Definitely don't add any more fish right now.


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## MonopolyBag (Jan 11, 2008)

Substrate is fish sand.

The water is the same water I use in the quarantine tank.

What other info do you want? I can't think of anything else.

I will test pH, nitrate, and ammonia again tomorrow.


My thought though is that the tank is "new" and the fish being placed in a new environment, higher stress, and a new tank, they just can not take it. My quarantine tanks are very very established.


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## Silvering (Jun 10, 2011)

"Fish sand" - inert substrate, then? 

If it is stress from being in a busy location, some hiding spots on either end of the tank (since you said the sides were open) might help. 

You should also be testing nitrite.


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## totziens (Jun 28, 2008)

"live bearers recently have not been as hardy as they should be. More susceptible to problems and dying." - This statement is true. I got the same information years ago from a friend who ran his own LFS and imported/exported fishes. He mentioned a lot of farms did not take care of cheap livebearers very well in the first place. So the quality was very poor. Disease is very common.

It's best to purchase livebearers from hobbyists or home breeders. If you really need to purchase them from the LFS which got their supply from farms, I suggest that you quarantine them for at least 1 month (more than 1 month is safer) and be fully prepared for high mortality rate.

Tetras should be better based on my personal experience. That's why I stick to tetras. However, please be aware that Serpae tetras are nippy. I won't recommend you to mix them with other species to save you some trouble except for bottom dwellers such as otos or cories. Having a large group of serpae tetras is a good decision provided your tank is large enough - less likely that the weakest will be bullied till stress up and die.


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## john borr (Sep 18, 2010)

Hi there I have never kept swordtails so hopefully my comments will be corrected if needed by others who have. Swordtails are livebearers and most livebearers do better in water that is a little harder and also, a little higher in ph than neutral. So if you are able to test ph, KH and GH that might be helpful. Best of luck, John


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## Newt (Apr 1, 2004)

Testing for Nitrite is more important than Nitrate unless its very high.


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## singolz (Oct 27, 2011)

john borr said:


> Hi there I have never kept swordtails so hopefully my comments will be corrected if needed by others who have. Swordtails are livebearers and most livebearers do better in water that is a little harder and also, a little higher in ph than neutral. So if you are able to test ph, KH and GH that might be helpful. Best of luck, John


while that sounds accurate, they are farm raised to they are a bit more hardy to small fluctuations in water. 
also, while there are obvious reasons fr quarantining fish it's a bit contradicting. fish get stressed when you move them around, with quarantining you move them twice, so what could seem like a healthy fish could be a sick one with the end result. secondly, say hypothetically the fish did have a disease that didn't appear in quarantine, but did when you moved it into the main tank, that fish still carries the disease to the main tank regardless of the quarantine.
from my experience quarantine has never caught anything before adding the fish to the main tank. 
but you should definitely go through the motions with testing the water for problems. it definitely does sound like a problem with the tank itself.
best of luck
cheers


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## totziens (Jun 28, 2008)

Quarantine - I skip it sometimes as well. It depends on the source and the type of fishes. I usually don't quarantine otos, tetras and rasboras because I am quite comfortable that the sources that I got them are relatively reliable in terms of quality. Even though otos' quality are a bit doubtful sometimes, but I also believe quarantine them in anywhere without algae and unestablished will pose more harm. As for livebearers case, I don't trust any sources at all after years of bad experience (unless given by my friends) because regardless which LFS I get them, the mortality rate is extremely high. So, I always quarantine them. I have encountered 80 - 100% death during quarantine period of swordtails, guppies, mollies and platies. The few sole survivors usually will last till offsprings are produced. Usually the offsprings will live for a long period if everything goes well. The problem was so severe that I gave up on mollies and fancy guppies. I was lucky to get some swordtails survive the way I describe above. Now I have several generations of them after 4-5 years. My platies came from a friend, so health was not a problem at all - I also have several generations of them after 3-4 years. I had hard time with platies from LFS prior to that. I got healthy endlers from another friend. They're so easy to care. Unfortunately, mysterious disease wiped up 2 tanks of my endlers within days after several years. I also found out the area I stay has soft water but my hometown has hard water - that solves the mystery on why I could easily keep livebearers in my hometown when I was a little boy but it's so troublesome in the area where I live.

In this hobby, there are a lot of contradicting information. Use what works for you but don't hesitate to change for alternative solution if one solution fails. Sometimes what works for one person may not work for another person because there are many factors that can cause your tank to be different from mine.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Dropsy can be from kidney failure. Dropsy does not happen in more than one fish at a time unless there are water quality issues. Do several 50% water changes over a week. I bet nitrites or ammonia are to blame. It may be that the big fish from before did not have problems from the water quality issues because they had slowly acclimatized to the problems, whereas the new fish have no chance to acclimatize at all and are going into shock.

I usually never quarantine my fish. I find that putting them into a bare tank stresses them out much more then going into a planted tank with lots of hiding spaces, frequent waterchanges and a far bigger and more established bioload. If you think about it planted tanks have no nitrite or ammonia gauranteed so what better place to help them recover from grungy pet stores? In fact, after adding hundreds of new fish to my tanks over the last decade or so I have lost only a handful of fish.


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## backflipfrontflip (Jun 17, 2011)

I also do not quarantine my fish. I have not been keeping fish for long but kind of agree on the established tank theory. I'm sure there are many experienced fish keepers that will advise opposite and from experience but so far so good.

Clean water will cure almost anything given time and it can be hard to get really great water in an unestablished tank, even if you seed it from an established filter.

JMO


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## singolz (Oct 27, 2011)

backflipfrontflip said:


> I also do not quarantine my fish. I have not been keeping fish for long but kind of agree on the established tank theory. I'm sure there are many experienced fish keepers that will advise opposite and from experience but so far so good.
> 
> Clean water will cure almost anything given time and it can be hard to get really great water in an unestablished tank, even if you seed it from an established filter.
> 
> JMO


my point exactly.


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