Found dead; trapped by hair algae?

[Rube_Goldfish]

I just found one of my cardinal tetras dead, upside down.  I netted him out immediately, checked the other fish in the tank (four more cardinals and two honey gouramis), who all seem fine and are acting normally, then checked my parameters with a Sera test strip, which doesn't test for ammonia, but which found the following: nitrite 0 ppm, nitrate about 25 ppm, pH about 7.6, dGH about 6, dKH between 10-15, chlorine 0.  Those parameters are pretty stable, comparing them to my notes.*  Plus, like I said, everyone else seems fine.

I then thought about how the dead tetra was upside down, stuck in a sort of net of hair algae, between my HOB prefilter sponge and a "broken vases" decoration I have in there.  There is about a 1/2 inch gap between the sponge and the vases.

So my question is: could the tetra have gotten caught in the 'net' of algae, unable to escape?  Could that have been the cause of death?  All five tetras seemed fine yesterday, and the body didn't have any visible problems; even the colors hadn't really faded much.

My other question: I netted the tetra out and put him in a plastic cup that I use for all kinds of things.  Other than thoroughly rinse and thoroughly dry both net and cup, are there any special cleaning precautions I should take, in case there was some sort of pathogen or something on the net or cup?  I'll need to use both again at some point.

Thank you in advance.

*My water out of the tap is about 8.2 pH (after 24 hours off-gassing), 1-3 dGH (water softener installed), 8-10 dKH.  At the suggestion of my LFS, which supplies free RO water, I have begun doing water changes using a 1:1 blend of RO and tap, with Seachem Equilibrium mixed in to bring it up to about 6 dGH.  That was on Saturday (19 March); it was about a 15-20% water change.  I had expected/hoped that the eventual change in parameters would be slow and beneficial.

[Fish Folk]

Really sorry for your loss. No matter the species, losing a fish is awful.

This is not an easy one to diagnose. Can a tetra get stuck and die? Possibly. Could something else have happened? Of course. Might something have been building up / sneaking up with this one that was just hard to see? Sure. Unless you’ve kept a larger number of Cardinals for a lengthy, attentive period of time, it can be hard to assess their condition and avoid possible pitfalls. At least you don’t _seem_ to have parasites, Ich, etc.

As for the cup and net, hot water rinse  and drying out is fine. Some folks do a light medicated application. You can review that here…

 

[lefty o]

could just be a sick fish, old, something internally wrong with it. unlikely it got stuck in hair algae if it was healthy. as for the net/cup[ a good hot water rinse, and allow to dry as mentioned in the post above.

[Rube_Goldfish]

Thanks.  It's a bummer, but I guess I'll just keep an close eye on the remaining fish (let's be honest, I was going to do that anyway!) and unless something else pops up, chalk it up to Just One of Those Things.  And redouble my campaign to clean up the hair algae.  Amano shrimp eat hair algae, right?

[lefty o]

amano's will eat some hair algae.

[Odd Duck]

On 3/23/2022 at 9:28 AM, Rube_Goldfish said:

Thanks.  It's a bummer, but I guess I'll just keep an close eye on the remaining fish (let's be honest, I was going to do that anyway!) and unless something else pops up, chalk it up to Just One of Those Things.  And redouble my campaign to clean up the hair algae.  Amano shrimp eat hair algae, right?

Sorry for your loss, but it’s more likely the fish passed, then got caught in the algae.

Yes, Amanos will eat hair algae, but they eat it better when it’s short and even better after peroxide treatment.  Use a small brush (tooth brush works) and twirl it in any loose hair algae to collect and remove as much as you can.  Then use up to 3 mls per gallon of standard 3% peroxide.  Turn off all filters so the water is calm.  Squirt the peroxide directly over the algae you want to kill.  It’s heavier than water so it will fall down onto the algae.  Try not to pour it over any livestock.  Leave the filters off for 10 minutes to let it work, then just turn them back on.  I use a syringe connected to a short piece of rigid airline by a short piece of soft airline to drizzle it over the algae.  Pics below of the syringe set up.  It also lets me measure the peroxide at the same time.

You will still need to correct the conditions that let the algae grow or it will keep coming back.  More frequent or larger water changes, increase water circulation, decrease light, decrease food, better balance to plant nutrients, etc, are all steps that can help.