Kuhli loach dead, internal redness

[Mahi27]

Hi all, hoping for some input here. I came home tonight after being away a couple days to find one of my 8 kuhli loaches passed away. I scooped it out of the tank to inspect and saw what looked like internal bleeding, very intense internal redness, on one side coming down from the gills and a clutch of eggs visible through the skin. No lesions or signs of external disease or injury.

I am asking for help identifying cause of death in order to prevent any additional losses among the remaining 7 loaches.

All the loaches, including the one that passed, are around 2 inches long. The first four have been out of quarantine for about two weeks and the second batch moved out of quarantine four days ago -- the casualty is from the second group, so she had been out of quarantine for less time. I added the loaches to my cycled, planted 20gal long over the course of a couple weeks after weeklong quarantines with the quarantine trio and aquarium salt. The remaining seven are behaving as they normally do, rooting around, swimming to the top occasionally, sifting through the substrate, hanging together, and so on. They share the tank with one male honey gourami, 3-4 Amano shrimp, and one mystery snail. Water parameters as of ten minutes ago:

Ph 6.5

Ammonia <0.25ppm

Nitrite 0.0ppm

Nitrate 0.0ppm

Temperature: 76° Farenheit

I do not have hardness readings at this time. 

I am attaching a photo of the deceased to this post. Please view at your own discretion, and thank you for any help. Rest in peace little lady. 

 

[JaredL]

I don't have any insight or experience on this, but wanted to get your thread bumped to the top so hopefully you can get some advice.

[Mahi27]

Thanks @JaredL. So far the others seem OK so I am hoping she was just weak out of the LFS. But it's never fun to lose a pregnant fish 😞

[Nataku]

I have been told before that it is not uncommon to loose female kuhli loaches the first or second time they become full of eggs in home aquaria because they don't spawn in home aquaria. Because whatever conditions they require for breeding are not met, they never release the eggs, become egg bound and eventually develop sepsis and die because of this. If they would release the eggs, even unfertilized, they would be alright. Which seems to be what happens in the females who do live a long time in home aquaria - they learn to release their eggs even unfertilized.

Now I found this to be a rather strange thing. Why would a female hold onto eggs until it literally killed her? I still don't have a good answer as to whether or not that is true, or just some wives tale. But, of all the kuhlis I have lost within the first couple months from the LFS that weren't already clearly starved or diseased to a point I couldn't save them, have all been females. Egg heavy females. Necropsy every time has found them to be full of green eggs.

[Mahi27]

On 11/13/2020 at 10:17 AM, Nataku said:

I have been told before that it is not uncommon to loose female kuhli loaches the first or second time they become full of eggs in home aquaria because they don't spawn in home aquaria. Because whatever conditions they require for breeding are not met, they never release the eggs, become egg bound and eventually develop sepsis and die because of this. If they would release the eggs, even unfertilized, they would be alright. Which seems to be what happens in the females who do live a long time in home aquaria - they learn to release their eggs even unfertilized.

Now I found this to be a rather strange thing. Why would a female hold onto eggs until it literally killed her? I still don't have a good answer as to whether or not that is true, or just some wives tale. But, of all the kuhlis I have lost within the first couple months from the LFS that weren't already clearly starved or diseased to a point I couldn't save them, have all been females. Egg heavy females. Necropsy every time has found them to be full of green eggs.

@Nataku Thank you so much for this extremely interesting perspective. I think it must have been the phenomenon you're describing, or one other possibility: A day or two before she died I had moved a really big piece of driftwood around, and as I was moving it I noticed kuhlis darting out from all over underneath it. I think maybe I smooshed her by accident, since like I mentioned she had some internal bleeding that looked like a contusion or something. 

Anyhow...she's over the rainbow bridge, and the rest of the tank is doing great. Just wanted to drop by and give a brief update for anybody who looks at this topic in the future.