tranced Posted January 14, 2010 Share Posted January 14, 2010 why do these fish tend to DIE so much more than cichlids? gouramis are the worst, they have the lifespan of a WW2 fighter pilot. is it something to do with their breeding or what? any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fecat Posted January 15, 2010 Share Posted January 15, 2010 why do these fish tend to DIE so much more than cichlids? gouramis are the worst, they have the lifespan of a WW2 fighter pilot. is it something to do with their breeding or what? any ideas? how did they die? were they beaten to death, or was it due to disease, water condition, stress, incompatible tankmate, etc? without any of those we can't answer it. Personally I have kept Gouramis but they didn't live that long either. probably due to poor water condition as I used to keep them in my early years of fish keeping which I haven't had great deal of knowledge that time. the silver dollar that i bought with the gouramis are still living today. they are at least 6 years old! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citypainter Posted January 15, 2010 Share Posted January 15, 2010 Gouramis should be able to live in a dirty puddle. They can breath air staight from the atmosphere in poor water conditions in thier native environment. They tend to have a pecking order and don't usually like other gouramis. I have always found them quuite hardy when I have kept them. As for plattys, swordtails, mollies the secret is salt and lots of it. Neons like slighty acidic water, sucking catfish can live anywhere. What type of fish other than gourami's are you having problems with? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 16, 2010 Author Share Posted January 16, 2010 i dont actually keep these fish... but i work in an aquarium shop, and my observation is that they die alot more than cichlids. if a cichlid dies its usually beaten to death. gouramis seem to drop off the perch regularly with no apparent cause. i was thinking, perhaps the cichlids tended to be bred locally, so more used to our conditions and less travel etc, while the tropicals maybe were bred in asia so subjected to more stressful travel/changes of conditions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobbin4 Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 Its funny how we see things so differantly. I got some fish about 3 years ago and the bloke had about 10 pearl & gold gouramis. I didnot want them but if I wanted the other fish had to take the lot. They have lived in a 3 fter for that long and never lost one. Never look after them all that well but they have grown and seem happy. So !!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
E4G13M4N Posted January 18, 2010 Share Posted January 18, 2010 The quality of a few types of fish comming in from overseas has been dropping over the last few years, most likely to inbreeding IMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 19, 2010 Author Share Posted January 19, 2010 seems once they reach a certain size they do fine, the young gouramis are the ones that seem to drop off the perch alot... certain species, like clown barbs, and penguin tetras seem to have real problems as well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
malrift Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 The problem I feel is more to do with a mix of not being placed in suited water, placed with wrong species and stress. When you think what fish go through to be shipped from asia to here. They can quite often can go through at least six sets of tanks and I could probably say they are rarely in the same conditions as the previous one. They would all have different water quality, ph and kh. One of the reasons why we should look more into breeding them in Australia and buying more Australian bred fish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobbin4 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 Hi tranced, You work in the shop so. Ph, etc, Size of fish that die mostly. Do you test the water they come in before adding to shops tanks. Citypainter says some good points, does the shop do any of these? You say if a cichlid dies its usually beaten to death, cichlids pick on the weak and not only beaten but eaten. Gourami's dont fight much at all compared to cichlids. malrift, makes a good comment. Wrong fish put with them as they are so mild. You look in some shops and wonder if they feed them at all with sucken bellies in a lot of fish. They do have small mouths so got to feed to suit that and if in a tank with fast agro fish they get very little. Intrested in your reply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gav Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 interesting point to note is that many shops in sydney will buy a locally bred angels over an import almost any day, even though they cost substantially more. simple reason is the local stuff doesnt tend to die as easily, and long term they get better return on them. i think that possibly it has little to do with being cichlid or non cichlid and far more to do with being imported rather than local bred. above posts give a fair outline on what fish go through to be imported and that goes a long way to explaining the high death rates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rosco Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 I think that there are a few things in play here. This is what I have heard so shouldn't be taken as gospel. I have heard that neons are so cheap that come across in a box in their thousands in one bag (they actually weigh them not count them), from exporters and if 25% die then so be it. With gourami's I believe that there is a disease (I cannot remember which one) that affects them and due to in\line breeding their immunity to it is lower and they are more susceptible to it. As Brad (Malrift) mentioned, if they manage survive the massive changes in water conditions and they don't get this disease then they can live long and prosper (hmmm that is very Star Trek like). I remember keeping normal tropical's 20-25 years ago and having both pearl and gold gourami's live for years and eventually die of old age and rarely losing one fish. But these new la de dah ones seem to always drop off. My little ones have normal tropical tanks (another excuse to get more tanks in the house), I usually have 1 in 4 neon's survive longer than 4 weeks. But in saying that, the last lot of tetra's (not neons but some other things I bought), have survived about 5 months. This has surprised me beyond belief (touchwood ). cheers rosco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 20, 2010 Author Share Posted January 20, 2010 pH is generally not tested, temperature is equalised then into the tank. suprised to see this at first but i guess, would be too much screwing around. bags are sealed with metal clips etc and so many fish, so many tanks would take way too long. shop is quite old, it has many many small tanks... we have i think 5 types of gourami and each colour gets its own tank, with cichlids etc we tend to have a couple species per tank, for the most part this is ok. we get a few deaths from agression it seems. but often in single species tanks, i doubt this could be avoided alltogether. the sunken bellies, that is an interesting thing. it looks like the fish is starving and simply needs food... i have tried to feed them alot and usually they will spit the food. very very frustrating. i took some home, it has taken about a month of small feedings 5 times a day to slowly fill in the dip in the belly. So i dont think its always food related, perhaps something stress related, the julies i fed up were getting hounded a bit so stress would have been a factor. i always try and give the sunken bellies a bit extra food but they are generally sluggish at going for the food, sometimes they will bite the water AROUND the food, when they do get it in their mouth they often spit it.... i call it skinnyitis and it frustrates me i would easily believe that gourami are succeptible to a disease, genetically. i have seen this myself withclown barbs and whitespot. we wont buy them anymore cos they will die so much... we saw whitespot in the clown barb tank so we treated it with tri sulphur (shop wont use formaldahyde) anyway next day whole tank of like 25 clown barbs is dead. somehow an odessa barb got into that tank, and it never even got sick... and you can iumagine how much disease would have been in the water... same deal with penguin tetras, the penguins all die like SNAP and the emperor tetras are all still alive in same tank... we no longer stock these species unless someone breeds them locally. i definately believe local is the way to go... the shop is involed in the cichlid society here so i think alot of cichlids are sourced local, and this is what makes it seem like the cichlids are so much healthier... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobbin4 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 I'm amased,, PH etc not tested!!! All you shop tanks then would be same ph?. Dont know what that would be up there.So fish may come in at 6.8 and go into 8.5 water? The fish your talking about dont like ph that high & would die fast. How long are the bags floated? how many times do you add new water to bags? Do you add water they came in to your tanks? You say it takes to long but 50 x 5$ dead fish = at a guess 2 of your days pay? Trouble is not many tetra is breed in Aus, Along with others that are brought in as Rosco & Gav states.Your right Rosco they are handled by the 1000's. Good points with water, importer's & Sunken bellies. Sure its not wasting disease? If they willnot eat what do you feed? sounds like they dont like the food given.Have your owner asked what they have been feed before?.Looks to me like your owner is not up on how to keep fish alive and needs to do some talking to his/her suppliers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 21, 2010 Author Share Posted January 21, 2010 the owner has no idea, the fish are all handled by a manager that is quite good. but yeah theres no way you could test the ph and then add water slowly with the amount of fish we handle i think, had 12 boxes of fish come in the other day... thats about 120+ bags of fish, no way could you 'do it properly' i think, we give them 10-15 for the temp then just slit the bags, and whole contents goes into the tank. Doesnt seem to bother most fish, except the priblems ive mentioned here... best course of action is to not stock clown barbs or penguin tetras. was doing some random water testing today, and most tanks PH sits up around 7.6+, so i guess the area has fairly hard alkaline water, tap water tested over 7.8. the dwarf gourami tank which has had alot of deaths, had the lowest pH, it was like 6.8!! seemed to make no sense, as this should be better for them? so i tested nitrates, ahah... nitrates very high. 80 or so... random nitrate testing, reveals alot of high nitrates. not ridiculous but probably 40ish... i think we have to implement a way to knock out the nitrates, as part of the water change routine, we could rotate some tanks, leave them empty for a complete drain and refill to knock the nitrates out. all tanks are separate with... of all things... air driven under gravel filters. so this is not a good setup, but we do the best we can. i think i made it sound pretty bad in my original post, i was really exaggerating, we lose maybe 1 gourami every few days out of maybe 100 of them in the shop, so its not huge losses but they are consistent, no other fish dies with such regular consistancy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobbin4 Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 If you read your own post you have answered you own question's.Try rereading above posts again. Just a couple of points!!!!!! Why is D Gourami tank got those reading ??? , air driven undergraval filter's dont do the job with lg fish loads your putting in those small tanks . No time to test but your have found it & some of your many problem's.I've said the rest before as have others. Biggest problem is as you state,, Owner no Idea, Manager as well no Idea. Did you show him your Tests???. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 21, 2010 Author Share Posted January 21, 2010 i guess i will put some driftwood in the gourami tanks and see if it drops the pH a bit... 7.8 is pretty good tho i think, most stuff could adapt to that, it seems right in the middle? we keep discus there and we dont lose any of them, so it cant be that bad? If discus can live in our water, clearly gourami have probs outside our control... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobbin4 Posted January 25, 2010 Share Posted January 25, 2010 Driftwood to drop ph !!!!! You said ph 6.8 in above post, which is fine for them. Say they came from 6ph or even at other end of scale 8ph as you dont konw what the ph of the water they come in, One or 3 simple tests next shipment and you will know Ph of that water. Do the gourami, tetra, cichlid come at all the same ph etc?? Whats your tap water ph? You say most will adapt? but are you not tring to find out why the fish just drop off??We dont seem to be gettin far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 26, 2010 Author Share Posted January 26, 2010 tapwater is high 7's. most tanks are high 7's. the tank with low ph, had high nitrate. from my understanding, it will be the nitrate that has lowered the ph. this is also a sign the buffering capacity has been exceeded. by trying to lower nitrates and adding driftwood, im hoping to keep a clean, stable, lower ph for the gourami. you think this is wrong? you say im not trying to find out why the fish are dying, i disagree. this is the purpose of this whole thread. thanks to everyone for their info so far, but i dont appreciate the assumption that im an idiot and am not trying to improve the situation for these fish... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fryparty Posted January 26, 2010 Share Posted January 26, 2010 tapwater is high 7's. most tanks are high 7's. the tank with low ph, had high nitrate. from my understanding, it will be the nitrate that has lowered the ph. this is also a sign the buffering capacity has been exceeded. by trying to lower nitrates and adding driftwood, im hoping to keep a clean, stable, lower ph for the gourami. you think this is wrong? you say im not trying to find out why the fish are dying, i disagree. this is the purpose of this whole thread. thanks to everyone for their info so far, but i dont appreciate the assumption that im an idiot and am not trying to improve the situation for these fish... add duckweed as it is super for sponging up nitrates. i currently have this similar problem. ill assume your doing your water changes and possibly cutting back on food until it gets under control? going from your last post Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fryparty Posted January 26, 2010 Share Posted January 26, 2010 also about the gouramis, they tend to be much more sensitive to water parameters especially chocos. alot of people treat cichlids like glass but most are tuff as nails. ive kept both and find gouramis take alot more effort to keep happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobbin4 Posted January 26, 2010 Share Posted January 26, 2010 Ha,,,,I dont recall the word idoit,,,, that must be me your not happy with, Leave it with you ,,, As your only going to have more drop off as you say. Surley you have learnt a bit. But maybe not.????Re read to just check your thoughts ,,, Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tranced Posted January 27, 2010 Author Share Posted January 27, 2010 hmmm maybe i am an idiot cos i dont really understand what your getting at... or maybe you misunderstood me... oh well thanks for trying anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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