Random fish death

maxs

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Hey guys, I was adding some copepods and live phyto this morning before my lights turned on. I noticed my purple fire fish surfing the glass a little bit which was kind of weird. Thought nothing of it, maybe he was stressed out from me adding the pods. Well I came back not even an hour later and he has passed away. Belly up on the rock work. Not too sure what happened here but the other fish are acting fine. Super sad day today. Any thoughts what could’ve caused this?
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Tahoe61

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Sorry for the loss.

Please don't over think it, you will likely never know the cause.

If you didn't notice aggression, obvious signs and symptoms of disease, and water chemistry is in order than the logical causes have been covered.

Fire fish are awesome, cool behaviors and beautiful. Fire fish in my experience are susceptible to stress, shipping and acclimation.
 
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maxs

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Sorry for the loss.

Please don't over think it, you will likely never know the cause.

If you didn't notice aggression, obvious signs and symptoms of disease, and water chemistry is in order than the logical causes have been covered.

Fire fish are awesome, cool behaviors and beautiful. Fire fish in my experience are susceptible to stress, shipping and acclimation.
Thank you so much for the reply! Everything checked out which is what really confused me. He was eating just fine and swimming like normal yesterday. The poor bugger got too stressed out I think.
 

Marine Betta

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Hey guys, I was adding some copepods and live phyto this morning before my lights turned on. I noticed my purple fire fish surfing the glass a little bit which was kind of weird. Thought nothing of it, maybe he was stressed out from me adding the pods. Well I came back not even an hour later and he has passed away. Belly up on the rock work. Not too sure what happened here but the other fish are acting fine. Super sad day today. Any thoughts what could’ve caused this?
20260308_095335_A6A5D28D-4452-43DA-A821-4244B502B6F8.png
Sorry for the loss. Was she new, and did you QT? Did you add any other new fish recently? Keep an eye on the others, but it does sound like stress. Firefish can be pretty fragile.
 
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maxs

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Thank you, and she definitely wasn’t new. I purchased her from a LFS maybe six months ago. Always a great eater and never got bullied by any other tank mates. She was honestly pretty feisty! Haven’t added any new fish also for atleast 5 months. And everyone else seems to be doing just fine.
 

Marine Betta

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Thank you, and she definitely wasn’t new. I purchased her from a LFS maybe six months ago. Always a great eater and never got bullied by any other tank mates. She was honestly pretty feisty! Haven’t added any new fish also for atleast 5 months. And everyone else seems to be doing just fine.
Yeah, I would say stress then. Besides glass surfing, was she breathing harder than usual or were there any other symptoms? I don’t see any signs of this, but there is a possibility that this The only other thing it could be is some internal infection that you would have no control over. The only other scenario I can think of is velvet. I’m not saying this to freak you out, but I would monitor the others to be safe. If they seem fine over the next several days, I would say it was stress or an internal issue of some sort.

Firefish are awesome, but I stopped buying them a while ago because they get stressed so easily.
 
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maxs

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I will keep a close eyes on the other fish for sure! No weird symptoms beforehand besides surfing the glass a little bit. Thank you so much for the help!
 

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