Re: Ramirezi died

[IDMiamiBob <IDMiamiBob@aol.com>]

In a message dated 98-01-09 03:16:46 EST, you write:

<< This morning all my Ramirezi died within 5 minutes. They fell into spasms,
> their bodies bent, and started swimming spirals through the tank for a
> couple of secondes, then sank to the bottom, upside down.
> Any insights?
> 	Martin >>

I saw this once, but not with cichlids.  I went fishing and had some minnows
left over.  I decided to save them for the next trip.  I bagged them and sat
them in a 30 gallon tank to normalize their temperature, while I moved the
tanks inhabitants to another tank.  When I opened the bag and started mixing
water, everything went fine.  But whe I emptied the bag into the tank, the
spirals you mention started almost immediately.  Being new to the hobby, I
didn't have the knowledge to analyse it.  At this point I think it was some
difference in hardness, pH or whatever.

It is unlikely that your water conditions changed far enough, quickly enough,
to wipe out an entire group of fish in a few minutes.  Generally, within a
given species, there is a range of conditions each fish will tolerate, and
that range varies from fish to fish.  However, most rams in the hobby are
"tank raised", and it is possible, if you bought them all at the same time,
that they were siblings, and their "tolerance range" was very much the same.
The introduction of peat may have pushed the water from marginally acceptable
for the group, to unacceptable in a very short time.  Since peat generally
brings water conditions more into line with the waters of the Amazon drainage,
I would think this unlikely, even though this is what it sounds like.  My only
thoughts are that either you didn't boil the peat to kill pathogens (even
though that kind of speed in a parasite or disease is almost impossible), or
you weren't careful in selecting only Sphagnum moss, and went with something
else.  Some peats are very high in organics that will react very quickly, or
contain minerals, like magnesium, that will push hardness even higher in the
short term.

As you mentioned in a responding post that hardness was 13DH, you were pretty
close to the upper tolerance for these particular fish in that regard.  I
suspect that when you return home and check your hardness, it will have gone
even higher, or your ammonia levels will be very high.

This only conjecture, and by no means solid science.  Just my humble opinion.

Bob Dixon