# Male German Blue Ram died in less then a week.



## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

I recently got a male German Blue Ram from Menagerie on Saturday, everything looked fine, he was eating, swimming, you name it. That was until this morning when I woke up to feed the fish and I found him on the bottom of the tank, nearly all white, eyes clouded over and dead  

I recently did a water change on Sunday (as I always do) and before then I checked my water specs they were as follows

Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 10
PH = 7.6

Now I will say that my Nitrates have not been that high before as they were sitting around the 0-5 mark for the longest time. I did however change my chemical media to Seachem Purigen rather then carbon, don't know if that made any difference.

My current stock is as follows

1 Siamese Algae Eater
1 female German blue ram
3 guppies
3 glass catfish
8 black neon tetras
12 cardinal tetras

The tank is 35 gal. Heavily planted I would think.
Any ideas of what may have happened? Or what it could have been? Just want to keep an eye on things and hope that I don't loose half my stock.


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## gratefulgrapefruit (Mar 25, 2010)

Do you dose anything? I've read that sometimes certain things can make purigen become toxic.

From the Seachem website:

"Only certain slime coat products will cause Purigen® to become toxic; the products that do this are amine based. Prime® and Safe™ are not amine based and so will not cause this problem. If you're curious, what happens is that the amine compounds can strongly bind to the resin, then when they (the amines) come into contact with any chlorine they will form chloramines which are highly toxic. We offer a stress coat product, StressGuard™, which is not amine based and so can be used in conjunction with Purigen.™"
-_http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Purigen.html_

but then I imagine that your very sensitive cardinals would be affected too... hmm!


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

gratefulgrapefruit said:


> Do you dose anything? I've read that sometimes certain things can make purigen become toxic.
> 
> From the Seachem website:
> 
> ...


I use Nutrafin AquaPlus for water conditioner, which is not amine based, Seachem Florish Excel and Kent's Plant Pro for ferts. Other then that nothing.
I did notice that his color was not showing through, and he looked more like a tiger shark, so I just thought that he needed to get use to the tank.


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## GuppiesAndBetta (Jul 27, 2009)

What was your temperature (this is very important for German Blue Rams) and did you acclimate properly?


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## Tropicana (Feb 15, 2009)

It sounds like he was stressed and died probably from that. German blue rams are very susceptible to stressing out. Possibly another fish in the aquarium was causing it. Many people lose rams from SDS.(sudden Death syndrome) Or what i like to think is stress. And of course stress is caused By many things.


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

GuppiesAndBetta said:


> What was your temperature (this is very important for German Blue Rams) and did you acclimate properly?


Temp is at 78-79. I acclimated him over an hour period, adding and removing a little bit of water at a time.


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

Tropicana said:


> It sounds like he was stressed and died probably from that. German blue rams are very susceptible to stressing out. Possibly another fish in the aquarium was causing it. Many people lose rams from SDS.(sudden Death syndrome) Or what i like to think is stress. And of course stress is caused By many things.


The female I have was chasing him around, although it seemed as though he found "his spot" in the tank, which is the same place I found him.


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

destructo said:


> Temp is at 78-79. I acclimated him over an hour period, adding and removing a little bit of water at a time.


I wouldn't risk below 82 for ramirezi.
I would acclimate it as a 'very sensitive' fish-- about 3 hours, making sure you keep the oxygen and temperature levels acceptable.


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## bettaforu (Sep 6, 2009)

I have a friend in the US that just lost 17 crayfish babies, 15 dark blue orange eyed tiger shrimps (very expensive shrimps) and 10 snowballs all in one day after he changed the water out and put PURIGEN in the new water!

I have heard several people have had problems with bad bacteria (?) in the Purigen, that causes the water to become toxic to the fish/shrimps/crays.

He immediately changed the water again this time without using the Purigen and now the remaining fish/inverts are doing OK...at least for now!


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

AquariAM said:


> I wouldn't risk below 82 for ramirezi.
> I would acclimate it as a 'very sensitive' fish-- about 3 hours, making sure you keep the oxygen and temperature levels acceptable.


Why keep the temperature so high? The only thing I can see that doing is cutting off a year of his life =D

3 hours to acclimitize? You are nuts. Assuming you don't play around with water parameters, they should be similar to those at Menagerie. Float the bag until the temperature equalizes, then dump 'er in. Probably 15 minutes?

My suggestion is talking to the staff at Menagerie and letting them know what happened.


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

bettaforu said:


> I have a friend in the US that just lost 17 crayfish babies, 15 dark blue orange eyed tiger shrimps (very expensive shrimps) and 10 snowballs all in one day after he changed the water out and put PURIGEN in the new water!
> 
> I have heard several people have had problems with bad bacteria (?) in the Purigen, that causes the water to become toxic to the fish/shrimps/crays.
> 
> He immediately changed the water again this time without using the Purigen and now the remaining fish/inverts are doing OK...at least for now!


Wow I just lost 5 cardinals and 3 black neons all in one day and I just added Purigen about a week or 2 ago.


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

Chris S said:


> Why keep the temperature so high? The only thing I can see that doing is cutting off a year of his life =D
> 
> 3 hours to acclimitize? You are nuts. Assuming you don't play around with water parameters, they should be similar to those at Menagerie. Float the bag until the temperature equalizes, then dump 'er in. Probably 15 minutes?
> 
> My suggestion is talking to the staff at Menagerie and letting them know what happened.


I did and I will be getting a new one in a couple of weeks


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## Julian (Jun 29, 2008)

Hi, so what temp is best then. I have my tank at 82f as well
thanks


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## Guest (May 5, 2010)

The Purigen connection is seeming to be a likely scenario. It has me worried that it caused the death of a couple of marine fish that had no visible signs and died inexplicably in coincidence of Purigen use. 

3 hour drip!!!!.... totally unnecessary, probably detrimental. If your water conditions are that different that you think a 3 hour drip will help them then you should amend the water before adding them because a drip won't help them.


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

h_s said:


> The Purigen connection is seeming to be a likely scenario. It has me worried that it caused the death of a couple of marine fish that had no visible signs and died inexplicably in coincidence of Purigen use.
> 
> 3 hour drip!!!!.... totally unnecessary, probably detrimental. If your water conditions are that different that you think a 3 hour drip will help them then you should amend the water before adding them because a drip won't help them.


Im glad I didn't kill anything in the week and a half I gave purigen a whirl back in 2007 

I always figured it was best to acclimate really sensitive fish really slowly-- even if the difference was 0.5pH and one or two degrees of hardness.

With most fish I float for a few minutes to even temperature then mix their water and my water in the bag for about 15 minutes max and then release. I always have an airstone in the bag. With really fragile stuff I very slowly add my water to the bag, pouring out excess until I'm about 90/10 my water then release, but for anything longer than a 40 minute float I've made little fake sponge filters with a piece of seeded aquaclear sponge from my filter and the airstone... The bags in the tank so the temp is equalized..

I knew it was overkill but I never thought it was detrimental. Thanks for telling me


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## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

I don't think I'd spend my money on purigen or any other magic chemicals.

Other than therapeutic salt baths (when you see the need) and ich medications, most aquariums could go forever without any additives.

I have had good luck keeping my german electric blue rams without attempting to lower the toronto pH, or reduce toronto hardness.
No spawning YET. But my male is looking super healthy and brilliant.

I use active carbon, weekly 60% water changes, and NO chemicals other than the seachem prime antichlorinator.

Your one loss (for which I am sorry), could have been a weak or diseased fish, or he could have stressed out (as the others said) and died. I have lost a lot of fish right after aquiring them.

I do think drip is much better than float-the-bag acclimatization as you do need to minimize osmotic shock, not just equalize temperatures. The baggy method doesn't cut it. But I think 20 minutes is a reasonable time to drip, and I aim for three or four times dilution of the incoming water. Dilution is probably the wrong word, since my QT tank is probably higher in TDS than the continous-change-water that comes from the pet-store commercial system. 

You did Quarantine right?

W

P.S. I did some reading, and Purigen has lots of people who love it. It looks like a cool idea. But I don't like the problem of "what if my tank chemistry goes whacko", even without amine based additives. I am highly sceptical of any pH modifications that do not remove the carbonate hardness of your toronto tap water. Your fish won't be healthier in lower-pH unless the total dissolved salts are reduced. THe only way I know to do that, is either peat moss, or Reverse-Osmosis or Cati-Ani DI Water.


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

KhuliLoachFan said:


> Other than therapeutic salt baths (when you see the need) and ich medications, most aquariums could go forever without any additives.


I had no problems until I added Purigen, I have since removed it



KhuliLoachFan said:


> I use active carbon, weekly 60% water changes, and NO chemicals other than the seachem prime antichlorinator.


60% is quite a bit no? I usually would do about a 14 liter bucket change a week that worked out well



KhuliLoachFan said:


> I do think drip is much better than float-the-bag acclimatization as you do need to minimize osmotic shock, not just equalize temperatures. The baggy method doesn't cut it. But I think 20 minutes is a reasonable time to drip, and I aim for three or four times dilution of the incoming water. Dilution is probably the wrong word, since my QT tank is probably higher in TDS than the continous-change-water that comes from the pet-store commercial system.


I float the bag and also remove a bit of bag water and replace it with tank water, I do this every 10mins or so after the bag has been sitting in the tank for a while so the temps match. I haven't had problems with that either.



KhuliLoachFan said:


> You did Quarantine right?


No I did not, as I bought the fish from Menagerie and have not had any problems with their stock before. Plus the QT tank I have is only 3 gals, not sure if that is big enough for fish.

However I am still under the impression that it was either a flourish excel OD or the Purigen and my water conditioner that destroyed things. I read that AquaPlus was not amine based on their website, however I have now been told that it is in fact amine based, and that the info I read on their site is outdated. Thus causing a toxic environment.

I do have a few survivors and I am back to using carbon in the filter, although I will say that Purigen got the tank crystal clear. Going to take things slowly to build the tank back up and QT in the future.


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## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

I would think Even Menagerie would tell you to quarantine.

From my own casual survey of fellow fishkeepers, I observe that people who have been lax on quarantine procedures, usually become big fans of a quarantine ritual, after an incident just such as your own.

It seems that the more changes you make to an established tank at once, the more something can go wrong.

You could keep a tank "instability" score:
a. add +5 when a fish dies. (Your own value here, 5 is just a sample)
b. add +2 when adding a new fish, or moving a fish somewhere else.
c. add +5 whenever a water test exposes values outside the normal limits
d. add +5 whenever I dose with anything.

Then, subtract 5 for every week that goes by without further incident. My new incoming fish start with a mental "+5" score for unknown history if they came from a good store (like Menagerie) and a "+10" if they came from... well... that place we are not speaking about anymore... and all incoming stock requires at least a week, or two weeks , before they get moved into their (hopefully) final home. Since my existing tanks may have a nonzero score, they are not eligible to receive new fish until their score hits zero.

That's my suggestion: Treat your new incoming fish to a quarantine tank, which has no substrate, and use an established biofilter (I move a sponge from one dual-sponge-laded AquaClear 110, to another, and I have serious over-capacity on my filtration on the QT tank: an AC110 on a 20 gallon tank). Observe him for a week. Give him a week where you know how much food he got exactly, what his poop looks like (because you can see it), and be sure he is eating.

W


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

would a small 3 gal tank be enough for QT though?


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## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

I would grab a bare 10g tank as a minimum, and I would go seriously OVERBOARD on the filtration. The 3g is better than not quarantining, for a small fish like the rams, that should be fine, but I would put an AquaClear 50 on there, with fresh carbon for each new guest, and not some wimpy Aqueon or Tetra HOB filter. 

W


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