Re: apisto life spans

[Fredrik.Ljungberg@saab.se]

On Jan 22,  9:48am, EXT AVS; Lisa Wrischnik wrote:
> Hi all,
> I would like to know what people consider to be the sure signs of old
> age in their fish.  I just lost one of my original Taeniacara candidi males
> (at about 2 yrs of age), who over the course of a couple of months began to
> lose his color,to eat less, andn then to develop a spine bend. The other
> fish in this
> tank are all fine.  Anyway, I was wondering if fish that die of "old age"
> really just become too stressed to fend off common diseases and so die, or
> if they
> succumb to diseases of old age (a cancer, for example).  Any ideas - or do
> I really just have some awful disease lurking around in this tank?
>
> As a corollary, what kinds of life spans have you all seen for your dwarfs?
> (I couldn't access the archives today to see if this has been extensively
> covered already, so apologies if it has). I think I manage to kill off most
> of mine before they get the chance to go gently into that good night.
>
> Lisa

If it's any comfort my T.candidi male went the same way (losing colour,
spine bending) so I don't think it's a disease. I have 10 youngsters now
8 months old (and they have spawned for the first time), I'll know their
age when they die.

In nature many dwarfs seem to be seasonal (1 yr life span) so there it's
very likely that they die from stress or external pressure. In a well
maintained tank you can keep them for 2-5 yrs depending on species... who
knows what happens when a species lives 5 times longer than in nature?

//Fredrik

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Fredrik.Ljungberg@saab.se
Saab Ab 
Flutter and Loads Department
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