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Cacatuoides male and female both died overnight

pistolpete

New Member
Messages
4
I got a pair of cacatuoides from my LFS about a month ago and they seemed to be doing great up until a couple of days ago. The male was always out and about in the tank but the female always stayed pretty well hidden under the main driftwood structure, I assumed normal. I finally hadn't seen her for a 2 days but I noticed my male had been spending all his time on the bottom with a bloated belly and stringy feces. Yesterday I find the female on the bottom struggling to stay upright with very deep breathes if you will. I moved her into my QT tank and treated with seachem kanaplex which I had used in the past for some bacterial infections on rams and corys. She seemed ok in the QT tank at least moving around on the bottom, she had good color to her still and no bloating or sunken belly. My male on the other hand stayed in the main tank as he was in a space I couldn't get to easily but he was upright and moving slightly. This morning I find them both dead. Female still looked like she had good color but the male was bloated and white as could be except for his fins. My water parameters were at zeros across the board in the QT and main tank, just did my weekly water change on Friday, both tanks stay around 74 degrees. My ph is 7.3, been trying to lower is slowly since I added them with peat moss in my fluval HOB filter, plenty of really healthy plants. The other tetras, corys and plecos in my tank are all fine swimming and eating as usual. Not thrilled to lose my two centerpiece fish in the same night. Any ideas what went wrong?
 

Mike Wise

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
11,202
Location
Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Sorry to read of your losses. It happens with fish sometimes. They probably came in with some disease/parasitic infection that finally caused their death. This is why I quarantine all my fish for 4 - 6 weeks in a quiet quarantine tank before putting the in a community tank where they could infect others.
 

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