hey there people, i need help with a few things. I have been keeping fish for about a year or so and ive had my ups and downs(i think we all do at the start) but things were going great for about 6 months until yesterday.

Anyways i own a 250l planted tropical tank, ive been keeping angelfish, assorted catfish and a few south american cichlids, yesterday i added 3 new angelfish all still juveniles to my tank. I was very careful with transportation and acclimatising my angels, the problems not the angels my firemouth became very stressed and scared once i added the angels ( he was normally very active and boisterous) he just hid amonst the plants.

He flaired his gills a little as he must of felt threatened and retreated back to his cover. Today i woke and checked on my tank and found my firemouth with sypmtons that seemed like ammonia poisioning ( gasping for breath and rapid movements) i checked my nitrate levels and they were fine i did a water change and also added nitivec and aquatan. But he was gone.

From what i saw the new angels weren't aggressive towards him at all. He had never had problems with my older angels either. I know it must sound like a newbie water quality issue but none of my other fish are showing any syptoms. He had been perfectly fine before i added the new angels, i cant figure out if he felt thretened and was stressed even though he was a cichlid and twice the size of the angels.

The only other thing i have changed in the past week was my plant fertilizer other than that nothing. He was my pride and joy i never thought i could get so attched to a fish, it seems so quiet without him. So any help and suggestions would be much appreciated.................. Thanks

Humbled condolenses on the loss mate, i think we all know howit feels.

Like you said, it ounds like typpical degrading water quality issues, but with the readings you suggested to us, nothin sounds out of the ordinary, and you seem pretty confident! :)

Could your test kits be in-accurate or out of date? This seems simple, but can lead to skewed results.

The angels may have spooked your Firemouth, some fish just get freaked by something new, or change. And some cant hack it. Poor little fella.

The only other possible thing i can think of is, that the water introduced with the angels caused a slight spike of ammonia or nitrite in the water, which he was not accustomed too. And by the time you tested your water params, all traces were removed by your biological filtration.

thanks for the reply, when i added the angels i netted them out of the dealers bag as not to ad any of their water, and the test kits are only a few weeks old. It did look like a water quality death but none of the others have been affected so its really hard to put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was just the new angels spookin him but is that enough stress to kill him?

Sounds like that he just got really stressed which could cause the same symptoms. You could try adding another firemouth, which may not stress as bad since he is going in after the angels.

i think im gonna pass on adding more firemouths for now, they are cool fish but it was limiting my options as to what i could add to my community based tank. I decided to grab a pair of kribs and they have settled in just fine ( touch wood)

Congratulations on the pair of kribs. I hope they do well, which im sure they will! :D Godluck!