Really sad news, I found my copperband dead this morning. This fish was eating vigorously and swimming out in the open, he would even come up to the glass to take a look at me whenever I was around. By all I could tell this was a perfectly healthy fish. Yesterday afternoon he was not looking great though. When I got home from work he was breathing fast hanging around the bottom (he was also twitched a fin once or twice) and I could not get him to eat brine or mysid (which he was chowing down until then). I quickly tested the water and found nothing out of the normal.
PH: a lil low around 7.9-8.0
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite:0ppm
Nitrate: about 10-15ppm
Temp:81 deg F (never really deviates from this)
Salinity: 1.025
There was a good amount of
detritus collecting at the bottom of the quarantine tank, so even though the parameters looked ok I decided to do a water change in case something got into the tank that I wasnt measuring. I did a fairly large water change (about 50%). I used water from my
DT for the water change. I went to the local Petco to get some bloodworms which I had seen him eating at the
LFS. I couldnt get him to even look at those either. My royal gramma acted exactly like this the day before he came down with ich, so I decided to dose the
QT with
copper as I had done for the gramma. I dosed the
copper and tested the level to be sure I was around 2ppm. I woke up today to find him dead. No spots, fungus, raised scales or anything like that. He did look thin though, but this fish had been eating well. I'm REALLY down about this and hope to at least learn something. What could I have done differently? Can anyone give possibilities to what might have caused his death given the symptoms I observed. What really surprised me is how quickly he went from looking great to dead. I try to care for my fish to the best of my abilities and something like this really bums me out.
