another one bites the dust

[deli_conker]

I bought 4 guppies from my local petsmart about 3 weeks ago. So far I've lost 2. One was last weekend, the other this weekend.

I know that it's not me. The paramaters are good, water changes are regular; I take care of my tanks.

I got them at petsmart instead of my regular lfs because they were much cheaper and now I'm paying the price for it (in the two years I've bought from my lfs, I've only lost 2 fish). I've never lost so many fish so quickly before. They don't look sick at all, I just come home from work and find one at the bottom.

It just sucks when I'm doing everything right and I'm still experiencing casualties...

[Menagerie]

It is the poor quality of the fish. Sorry to hear about all the losses.

[krap101]

yeah. the most ive lost is 4 fish in 2 days. otos.

[Punkymom]

I bought 6 guppies from PetSmart not too long ago that I was going to breed and feed the babies to my Oscars. Well, 4 of the 6 didn't make it. The other 2 I fed to the Oscars because I wanted to watch them hunt them down...it was so great...but I've never had good success with Guppies.

[chasgood]

neons and guppies have the greatest death rate. the breeders over breed and overcrowd. So they get more disease.

[BrianNY]

chasgood makes an excellent point, but I think the problem is a bit greater than that. Sometimes you can buy very healthy looking fish at an lfs and a short time later they're dead.

A fish may make the move from the wholesaler to the lfs without showing signs of stress, but when we buy the fish, just the moving, reacclimating, and new environment is enough to stress the fish over the edge. The smaller the fish, the more prone they seem to be to this happening. JMO.

[deli_conker]

I keep adjusting my signature to reflect what I have. It feels like I'm playing 10 little indians with my guppy tank. I'm going to see how the remaining two pan out and go from there. If they kick the bucket I'll probably just run something else...