Your favorite fish has died. What do you do now?

[Gumbies R Us]

Imagine you come home from a long day of work (or just from being out of your house). You go to check out your tank to make sure everything is doing alright, and your most prized fish is dead. What are you doing? Maybe your first thought is to test the water parameters to see if the parameters killed the fish. Perhaps it is to check for any signs of aggression, or maybe you begin to check all of your equipment and see if that caused it.

 

[Lavey29]

A nice send off

 

[littlefoxx]

Ugh I cried so hard when I lost my prized fish. And when I came down a few years back and found them all dead from a failure over night. I was devastated.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Ugh I cried so hard when I lost my prized fish. And when I came down a few years back and found them all dead from a failure over night. I was devastated.

My wife and I were pretty upset when we lost our clownfish! We always loved watching the pair swim around and be the show fish of our tanks so it was upsetting losing one of them

 

[Dust Bowl Corals Verified Sponsor]

 

[Crabs McJones]

Normally I'll test ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to make sure there wasn't a spike. If all checks ok I'll observe the rest of the fish for a week. If nobody else shows signs of distress or no more losses, i'll grab another fish, run it through quarantine and add it back in.

 

[DanP-SD]

Just went through this with the loss of a stunning regal angel. I didn’t test anything because I knew the cause — having witnessed my Kole tang murder the angel. Happened out of the blue (they got along fine for six months until the regal decided to occupy the tang’s usual cave; then within about 20 seconds, the tang beat the angel into submission and, from there, it lingered a half day before dying). So no need to test parameters but I knew I had a bullying problem.

With two smaller angelfish (goldflake and juvenile emperor) in the tank, I knew I had to rehome the Kole tang. That took me a couple months but I caught it a few days ago so it’s now at the LFS.

The silver lining is that, with the Kole gone (it was the biggest fish in the tank and the clear alpha), I can accommodate more fish.

 

[Bohemian Waxwing]

If you don't have a painful, emotional reaction than you shouldn't be keeping fish (or any living thing). It's our duty as their caretakers to care.

Usually I have a feeling of shame, like I should have done better, and it puts me in a bad mood for a while.

I always go back to this story I read on here about a year ago where someone asked why they keep losing Emperor Angels. Dude had tried about 30 of them, and was so upset about all the wasted money. In my opinion, that person should be keeping cars or baseball card collections, not living animals...

 

[Bohemian Waxwing]

A nice send off

This is so heartwarming!

It's so nice to see this after working in the industry and seeing so many dead fish just tossed into buckets full of other dead fish. Really warped my brain and realized how f'd up this hobby can be at it's darkest.

 

[Imrahilwjz]

Pretty much. When my 90 gallon crashed during an ice storm I couldn't get there for about 2 weeks. Melted coral and bloated fish (not many). I think we tossed them on the old compost pile

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Getting older is making me soft. I cry a bit when my fish pass away naturally, usually followed by several beers.