# Help! Endlers are dying



## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

I need some advice, I bought 6 endlers (4 females and 2 males) and two Leopard Danios from my local fish shop on Saturday. The males died within hours of getting home and one female died overnight on Sunday and I found another one dead this morning! I don't think its the shops fault, I've been buying from them for over a year and this is the first problem, they are one of the best in the UK and have been voted best in Scotland for the last 5-6 years! The only thing I could think of is that the drive home stressed them out, its about 30-40 mins to my house from the shop.

I did a water quality check, I have pH 7, no ammonia, no nitrite and 15mg/L nitrate as soon as the first male died and did a 10% water change. The tank is an established fully planted 60L tank and already has two Dwarf Gouramis, two Honey Gouramis, two Corys, a Leopard Danio and 5 Neon Tetras in it. The tank is kept at 24C. I've been feeding the fish flake with some crush flake for the endlers and the odd bit of blood worm. I've ordered some Daphina for the Endlers but its not arrived yet.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what the possible problem could be? I really don't want to lose any more of these wonderful little fish! I'm hoping that I may still get some endler fry (if I can keep the females alive) as the females were kept in a tank with males before I bought them. How soon should it become apparent if the females are pregnant and what are the signs?

Daniel


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## BSaint (Jun 8, 2005)

The females are very similar to guppies in regards to breeding they get rather plump and the black spot on the back gets bigger and darker cant think of the technical name right now sorry. When i got mine I had a similar experience but they slowly died off but i was able to save one female and two males which has since breed. Good luck and hope you get some babies


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## turbosaurus (Nov 19, 2005)

An hour or less in the car is not your problem. Barring any drastic temperature drop- they can stay that way for hours, sometimes even days. That is not what is causing your deaths. 

Lay off on the water changes. Your water is perfect if the test kits are right, and you're just making the fish more stressed by playing around in there. 

I would bump up my temp to 28C or higher (I live in the US so check the temperature conversion, should be over 82F). A lot of parasites will die in temps that high if thats whats causing your problem. If not your fish won't mind. It should actually increase their metabolism which will help them fight infection by bacteria or parasite. 

I wish I had something else to give you, but maybe process of elimination will help.


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

One female was dead by the time I got home and the other died in front of my eyes a couple hours later. I did a nother test and the water still seems fine, the nitrate has dropped due to the water change to 10mg/l. I did treat the fish in that tank for fin rot a couple months back using a medication from my local fish store. Could that have anything to do with it?

I'd really like to keep Endlers but I want to make sure I know what killed these ones first. The temperature change you mention is interesting (82f is 27.78C), I'll check with the shop today and see what their normal tank temps are. Could the temperature fluctuation in the bags on the way home have done anything?


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## Bert H (Dec 15, 2003)

Endler's are quite hardy, imo. My guess is there was a problem from the beginning, as evidenced by the fact you said one died on the way home. I have shipped these fish via the mail overnight with no losses, the trip in your car should not have been a problem.


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

Bert H said:


> Endler's are quite hardy, imo. My guess is there was a problem from the beginning, as evidenced by the fact you said one died on the way home. I have shipped these fish via the mail overnight with no losses, the trip in your car should not have been a problem.


Oops I meant one died quickly (within a hour or two) after getting home not on the way home.


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## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

Hmmm, maybe I missed it, but what is your acclimation process? 

In any established tank, when adding new fish and plants, I HIGHLY recommend the use of a quarantine tank. It doesn't matter how well trusted the source is, or how expensive the fish are. 

A quarantine tank doesn't have to be a big display tank with co2 and powerful lighting. Simple sponge filters in a 5 or 10 (depening on the fish and quantity being QT'), a small heater, and very basic lighting is fine. Maybe throw in some java moss and plant trimmings...


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

I don't have a quarantine tank or space to leave one running all the time. I acclimatise the fish by floating them in the tank (lights off) in their bags for about 20-30 mins to let the temperature equalise. I then start adding small amounts of the tank water to the bags for another 10-15 mins after that if the fish don't seemed stressed I release them into the tank.

I don't have a quarantine tank but to be honest I had thought of trying to squeeze and endler only tank in somewhere in my house.


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## Wasserpest (Jun 12, 2003)

Seems like you did everything right...

Is there a possibility that they got attacked by the other fish (gouramies)?


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

Wasserpest said:


> Seems like you did everything right...


Thats the frustrating thing, something must be wrong for the Endlers to die. Hopefully the shop water tests might show something up.


Wasserpest said:


> Is there a possibility that they got attacked by the other fish (gouramies)?


I did wonder about that, the biggest fish in the tank is the male dwarf gourami who did follow the male endlers about for a while, trying to work out if they were lunch or not. But after he decided they wernt they seemed to get left alone.


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## Dwarfpufferfish (May 29, 2004)

Just my 2 cents:

Often times Endlers that are found at local fish shops are not true endlers. They are either wild type guppies with similar markings, or they are guppy/endler hybrids. The problem with this is that most of these type fish are treated like feeder fish. Packed into shipping bags at about 20X the safe population and into tanks at about 100X safe population. My guess would be that the fish you bought were handled in this manner and the stress of the move was the last thing they could take!

If you have pics of your endlers, I can easily tell if they are endlers or hybrids/guppies!


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

Dwarfpufferfish said:


> If you have pics of your endlers, I can easily tell if they are endlers or hybrids/guppies!


I'm afraid I did not keep the bodies but from seeing pictures on this Endler site I think I had true endlers. If Endlers died in the tank are guppies likely to suffer a similar fate? I'd quite like to have some live bearers but I don't have space for the bigger ones. I suppose I might end up having a speices tank...


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

Wasserpest said:


> Is there a possibility that they got attacked by the other fish (gouramies)?


Came home to find the female dwarf gourami dead in the tank and being pecked at by the male and I realised there is one other thing that changed the day I added the Endlers. I handed in my Chinese Algae Eater for rehoming at the fish store, as it was being too agressive (chasing other fish esp gouramis), territorial and digging up all the plants. The fish next in line to the Algae Eater in terms of aggresion is the male Dwarf Gourami which tended to chase all the other Gouramis (there are two pairs a dwarf pair and a pair of honey gouramis) even the female Dwarf Gourami. Could the male Dwarf Gourami be the source of all the deaths?

I've done another water test and still nothing unusal, the female Dwarf Gourami had been in the tank for months.


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

After thinking about recent events a bit I think I'm going to hand in the male Dwarf Gourami for rehoming, I may replace him with another female Honey Gourami in an attempt to prevent the male Honey Gourami hassling the exisiting female too much. I've made another thread about adding another female Honey Gouramis here as its a different issue.


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## deleted_user_4 (Mar 8, 2006)

If it's not the current inhabitants of your tank, maybe go back to the fish store and ask them to do a quick dip test on the tank where the Endlers came from. It may have some pretty poor conditions in there. 

There may be nothing wrong with your water, but the shock of going from "dirty" water to "clean" water may be enough to stress the fish. Drastic pH changes will have drastic effects too.

Many of the LFS in California (Southern California especially) have very high pH water... something on the order of 8.2 - 8.8 pH, even for freshwater tanks. My friend with African Cichlids that prefer 8.6+ pH water, just uses some AquaSafe on his tap water, and that's it. That's how bad the pH is around here.

It's because most of our water comes through aquaducts from far-off locations in Northern California, and it picks up all kinds of minerals from the channels and piping, making the water brick-hard as well, and with the extremely high bio-load of the entire store, they can't use RO water or distilled water to do all their water changes, so they'll just throw in some conditioner and go. 

When I get new fish, I always ask them to do a dip test on the water inside the bag. The pH is always sky-high, and sometimes if I catch them towards the end of their water-change cycle, the nitrates are pretty high too. I adjust my acclimation schedule accordingly.

Most of the time, I take over an hour to acclimate fish that I get, with small quantities of tank water, simply because the pH is so drastically different (my tanks are around 7.0 pH because I use RO water). From what I understand, I'm pushing it already. I've been told that I'm really supposed to allow 12 hours for every 0.5 pH change. 

Holy Crap. Sorry for the long post. I'm just curious to see what is the reason. I like solving mysteries.


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

addicted2sp33d said:


> Holy Crap. Sorry for the long post. I'm just curious to see what is the reason. I like solving mysteries.


No problem any advice is welcome  The pH of the tap water here is generally 7, I don't think its the tank water at the shop as their facility seems very well maintained with two or there large custom filters processing a group of tanks each as well as UV sterilisation etc.

I'm going past the fish shop tomorrow so will drop in with a water sample from the tank and see if they can detect anything I can't.

Good news though someone in my local aquarist society has offered to give me some Endlers to get me started again once I've got the tank sorted out


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

Some more news, I tested a sample from my tank with a friends test kit and it came out fine, I also dropped by the fish store and had them test it and it came out fine too. So I’ve handed in the male Dwarf Gourami for rehoming and I’ve been amazed by the transformation in the two Honey Gourmais that are in the tank. They are no longer hiding all the time, the male especially used to spend all his time hiding under the filter. They have even been interacting with each other, I’ve seen them rubbing their sides on each other a couple of times now as well as them both chasing the others tail, no sign of a bubble nest yet though (I take it that behaviour is a prelude to mating?).

Fingers crossed for adding some Endlers on Thursday now.


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## danielb (Mar 21, 2006)

A quick update, the three endlers I got as a replacment for the first batch are now about a dozen adults and at least a dozen fry!!!


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