I'm helping my 9-year-old son establish and maintain a 28-gallon freshwater, planted tank. He had a year-old angel fish that he previously kept in a one-gallon tank, and along with him we introduced six neon tetras and four glass catfish. We also put in several ghost shrimp but they disappeared almost immediately (they tended to hide in the back around the tall plants and I suspect we vacuumed them out inadvertently with the siphon when doing the next water change).
When the tetras were first added, they stayed clear of my son's much larger angel fish, Stripey. However, Stripey is a timid, anxious soul, and never made the slightest aggressive move toward them, so that within a few weeks they paid him no heed. He, likewise, totally ignored them along with the glass catfish.
Unfortunately, we had a big algae bloom because we were using a powerful metal-halide bulb that was made for saltwater reef aquaculture. We ended up with a bad case of green water, which made it hard to see what was happening in the tank. We stopped using the light, and within a couple weeks the water cleared up. That's when my son noticed there were no longer six tetras, only two.
We looked carefully around the entire tank and found no carcasses. And the other two tetras, along with the other fish, all look and act healthy. It's possible, I suppose, that we vacuumed out the carcasses and due to the opacity of the algae-infested water, didn't notice them in the bucket. Or, even less likely, vacuumed out live fish -- but I doubt there is enough suction to take out a swimming fish.
The other possibility we could think of is that Stripey ate them. But since he still doesn't even seem to notice the remaining two, and they are still not afraid of him, and we haven't noticed him looking fat, or less hungry than usual (he's well-fed, probably over-fed, but always up for more), and it's been a couple of weeks now and neither of the remaining two tetras have disappeared, it seems unlikely to me that Stripey is the culprit.
Does anyone have any theories about what could have happened to our tetras? If they died, could it have been due to the algae bloom? My son and I are not only curious, but also concerned about whether we should try to replace the fish. We know tetras are normally not happy unless in a school of at least several of their own kind.
Chris
When the tetras were first added, they stayed clear of my son's much larger angel fish, Stripey. However, Stripey is a timid, anxious soul, and never made the slightest aggressive move toward them, so that within a few weeks they paid him no heed. He, likewise, totally ignored them along with the glass catfish.
Unfortunately, we had a big algae bloom because we were using a powerful metal-halide bulb that was made for saltwater reef aquaculture. We ended up with a bad case of green water, which made it hard to see what was happening in the tank. We stopped using the light, and within a couple weeks the water cleared up. That's when my son noticed there were no longer six tetras, only two.
We looked carefully around the entire tank and found no carcasses. And the other two tetras, along with the other fish, all look and act healthy. It's possible, I suppose, that we vacuumed out the carcasses and due to the opacity of the algae-infested water, didn't notice them in the bucket. Or, even less likely, vacuumed out live fish -- but I doubt there is enough suction to take out a swimming fish.
The other possibility we could think of is that Stripey ate them. But since he still doesn't even seem to notice the remaining two, and they are still not afraid of him, and we haven't noticed him looking fat, or less hungry than usual (he's well-fed, probably over-fed, but always up for more), and it's been a couple of weeks now and neither of the remaining two tetras have disappeared, it seems unlikely to me that Stripey is the culprit.
Does anyone have any theories about what could have happened to our tetras? If they died, could it have been due to the algae bloom? My son and I are not only curious, but also concerned about whether we should try to replace the fish. We know tetras are normally not happy unless in a school of at least several of their own kind.
Chris