Mysterious Honey Gourami Death

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AceReject

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Sep 9, 2021
Messages
30
Hi all,

I’m just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how / why my beautiful male honey gourami may have died? I was just feeding everyone when I found him upside down at the bottom of the tank. :(

The tank is a 160L community tank and has a few other honeys too. It’s a fully cycled tank with no ammonia or nitrites, and nitrates are pretty low too as it’s heavily planted. I do tank maintenance weekly, and they had their last clean / water change yesterday.

The gourami looked perfectly healthy (except for being deceased). He was still a lovely yellow with the typical sunset orange markings. There was no sign of any injury, infection, inflammation etc. He was only just under a year old.

The only problem I can immediately see is the water temperature. They are kept at 25°C, but unfortunately we are currently in a bit of a heatwave here, and all of my tanks have gone up a few degrees today. I took a thermometer reading and it was 27°C which is hotter than they’re used to, but still within the acceptable range stated online for honey gouramis. It is of course possible that the water was slightly higher than this earlier today, but the rest of the tank all seem fine.

Do you think the heat could have killed him? If so, what can I do to prevent this happening again?

Thank you.
 
I dont think a few degrees over or under will kill otherwise healthy fish short term. The only time ive ever attributed fish deaths to water temperature was when the temperature has been off by a significant margin for 2 or 3 weeks.

I will concede that the temperature being off might exacerbate something a fish is already suffering from however, and over a longer period make fish more likely to become infected with something.

The big thing with higher water temperatures is it loses the ability to hold oxygen, so dropping the water level a little so your filter causes more surface agitation and promotes more disolved oxygen might help. But, a loss of oxygen would be showing issues throughout your community, and gourami can get oxygen from the surface if needed as well.
 
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Thanks for your thoughts, Aiken.

It seemed strange that he was still fully coloured and completely healthy looking rather than pale, washed out or showing signs of disease.

I think I’ll just have to chalk it down to an unexplained case.
 
I lost a lot of fish 3 or 4 years ago when the temperature was in the 30s for a couple of weeks and there wasnt really anything i could do to keep the water temp down to a worthwhile degree. I think we may have a similar period of hot weather coming up.

Things you can try that dont involve dropping ice or frozen bottles of water in there, or constant water changes with cooler water. This can lead in fluctuating water temps which can be worse than just letting it warm up and cool down naturally.

If you have a lid, remove it. Run a fan over the surface to promote evaporation which will lower water temp by a little.

You would be surprised how much heat is given out by lighting, even LEDs will raise the temperature a couple of degrees. Turning off the lighting will be more use than turning off the heater.

It will be difficult to cool water lower than room temperature, so anything you can do to cool the room will help.
 
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Thank you for these tips. I really appreciate it.

I’m sorry you lost fish a few years back. It really sucks. :(

I actually turned my lighting off last might after I discovered the issue. My thoughts for the next week or so are to keep the lights off during the day and just run them for a few hours in the evening once it’s a bit cooler. I have lots of plants so I do want them to get some light hours.

Hopefully it will cool down soon!
 
You might want to add an air bubbler to help aerate the water a it is harder for the fish to take up O2 when it is warmer.

How many males are in the tank? Maybe they are fighting.
 
Hi AutumnSky, thank you for your reply.

I have an air stone in each of my tanks, and I do periodically test the oxygen level. I might do a test later today and just double check that all is ok.

There were 2 male honeys that got on really well together. I never once saw them fighting or chasing as I suppose they had established themselves together. There’s also 1 female who is a little bit bossy and does chase the boys ocassionally. I never really understood that dynamic, but she’s not really aggressive with them, just a bit more assertive. Those 3 have all been there for about a year. Just recently I asked my LFS if they could help me pick out another female, as I hoped it might balance things out better. They gave me a youngster and it’s not easy to be 100% sure if it is female or not. As it got a bit bigger, I have started to suspect it might be a male. Anyway, they all seemed to be fine still, with just the established female being a little assertive. I was keeping an eye out, and if any weren’t doing well, I would have moved them to my other tank, but they have all seemed fine. I do hope my introducing the new gourami wasn’t the cause of the problem. :(
 
Of course. Though the introduction, could have caused additional competition in the dynamic. I once bought 4 Pearl Gourami, and there was never peace, one was killed by the other male and the killer was removed to a semi aggressive tank and lived a long life not bullying anyone as the other fish wouldn't put up with it.

It's difficult to know exactly what happened. If there was illness, you'd likely see more fish affected.

Don't beat yourself up over it, if you are thinking that way. Fish in the wild sort these things out as well.
 
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Thank you for the words of encouragement. I do overthink things sometimes and I suppose I have to accept that I'll never truly know why.
 
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