# My Frontosa Died



## morningsky (Apr 22, 2008)

My baby 2.5 inch frontosa died. I saw him last night before bed. This morning I saw a fish on it's side floating and fished him out. There was no damage to him and the only thing I noticed was that his mouth seemed locked open, could just be rigor.?? My parameters are:
150 gallon
My temp is 80. 
Nitrate 20
Nitrite 0
gh 150
kh 80
ph 7.2
I have some agression right now because it is a mixed tank. My acei are spawning and the male is hyper agressive. I know my ph is a low I will work on raising ph. I am just not sure what killed him. I feed NLS and spirulina flakes along with occasional brine shrimp or emerald entree. We do weekly water changes of 30-40% the last water change was on Wednesday and we used Prime. The only other thing I can think of is when doing the water change we noticed our cannister filter was not working and it smelled awful we rinsed it with cold water I tested the water and ammonia was .25. before the water change it was back to 0 after the water change.

well that is a lot of info, but we are really bummed. We were looking a an aquarium to keep the frontosa by themselves, but I never noticed agression toward the frontosa..the mbuna just seemed to ignore them mostly. If he was killed from aggression would he have not shown some injuries?


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## lloyd (Aug 24, 2005)

it is still possible, even though you see no obvious signs, that your frontosa was victim to aggression. some fish will ram each other with their noses, to impose their dominance, and few fish can withstand any type of direct impact.
most likely, it died of complications caused by your ammonia spike. '.25' is a significant reading, IMO. even though you recovered the tank nicely, the filter failure still had time to expose all residents, and younger fish are always more vulnerable. IMO, of course.
many creatures end life with a gasping expression, and as such, should not be used as a defining indicator as to cause of death. 
you could bring both kh and ph up with a simple inclusion of baking soda with each water change. start with a few diluted tablespoons, test a few days later to monitor change, and eventually you will have your own 'custom recipe per water change' to maintain the new constant. HTH, and sorry for your loss.


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## morningsky (Apr 22, 2008)

I appreciate your advice, both of those examples could have caused the death. I have been watching aggression closely and have traded some fish to the LFS. Since starting this hobby I have had only one other fish die, but losing a baby front stinks  We are watching water parameters closely.


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