Bengaii Cardinal fish died

[Cthulukelele]

I do like blennys and gobies but my cleaner shrimp is a dick and I just have that one piece of rock in my tank so I worry that it would be stressed all the time

Is it a skunk cleaner shrimp? If so if it's "being a dick" it may just be trying to clean the fish. They're pretty aggressive about it and it can look like bullying when in fact it's a salon visit

 

[spamvicious]

Is it a skunk cleaner shrimp? If so if it's "being a dick" it may just be trying to clean the fish. They're pretty aggressive about it and it can look like bullying when in fact it's a salon visit

Yeah it doesn’t want to clean it just harasses/pushes in front of everything for food including all my corals.

 

[spamvicious]

There has been an influx of these especially imports coming in - in bad shape as they do not ship well in addition to overbreeding in which there has been ban proposals on them.
These fish it frozen only and if it was thin, likely already starving.
Acclimation is very important for them also

This is a couple of weeks ago. Fat and healthy and eating well.

 

[vetteguy53081]

This is a couple of weeks ago. Fat and healthy and eating well.

Here , looks great. I wonder as they do, if it crashed into glass> In addition, when you found it dead, was mouth open or closed?

 

[spamvicious]

Here , looks great. I wonder as they do, if it crashed into glass> In addition, when you found it dead, was mouth open or closed?

Hard to remember I think partially open

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I’ve had a cardinal in my Fluval evo for a month. This morning I found it dead stuck to the wavemaker. It was the only fish in the tank so it wasn’t getting bullied, it was also perfectly fine yesterday eating as normal.

I didn’t think to take a picture before disposing of it but it didn’t have any marks or discolouration and no weight loss.

I have a cleaner shrimp, snails and corals in my tank and all are doing well still. So I’m stumped as to what happened.

I’m working on lowering my phosphates and nitrates.

Without solid symptoms to work from, there is really no way to determine cause of death.

Do you know if the cardinal came from overseas or was it domestically raised? If the former, many of those fish succumb to an iridovirus that has about an 80% mortality rate.

Here is a write-up I did on that:

Banggai Cardinalfish Iridovirus (BCIV)
This fish was originally discovered in 1933 but then lost to science for about 60 years, when the Banggai cardinalfish (Pterapogon kauderni) was “rediscovered” and began entering the tropical fish trade. Aquarists noted how hardy the species was and that they were very easy to reproduce in captivity. A decade later, the price for wild-caught Banggai cardinalfish had decreased fivefold, but the animals were now considered very delicate, with high losses seen in newly acquired wild fish.

What was the cause of this sudden change in the apparent health of this species in captivity? Poor handling, collection with cyanide (unlikely), and bacterial disease were all suggested as possible reasons for this change. A researcher then published a study showing that the presence of an iridovirus was associated with episodes of mass mortality in newly imported cardinalfish (Weber et al. 2009). A similar virus has since been isolated from the common batfish, Platax orbicularis (Sriwanayos et al. 2013), but a corresponding high mortality in aquarium fish of that species has not been noted, perhaps because many fewer batfish are imported for the pet trade than the ever-popular Banggai cardinalfish.

Since there is no cure for this viral disease, captive-raised fish that were never exposed to wild stock, or fish that have subsequently developed immunity by surviving an infection would be the best choices for aquarists. Avoid inexpensive wild-caught Banggai Cardinalfish. Not only do they have a poor survival record, but they’re also being collected at such a high rate that wild populations are locally threatened with extinction.