First, let me compliment you on QTing. Second, thanks for the good quality pictures. It’s very difficult in most cases to determine why a particular fish dies days after purchasing.If you understand the rigorous gauntlet fish go through on the way to your LFS, perhaps you can get a better understanding why things like this happen.
When a “fisher†(local diver in the fishes native waters) catches a fish it is most often caught by using chemicals to stun it making collection easier. This chemical exposure far too often dooms the fish to a slow death (days or weeks). The fisher takes his daily catch back to his “holding penâ€, a wire cage placed in shallow water which houses his catch for days until a “fish broker/buyer†comes to buy his fish. The fisher DOES NOT FEED HIS CATCH in captivity. He and the rest of the handlers do not want the fish to crap in the transport bags because of the chance of Ammonia build up and the death of the fish. The broker sells the fish to a fish Exporter who has a “holding†facility where the fish are held until sold to a fish Importer in America, Europe or Asia. This may be days or weeks. During this time the fish are still not fed for the same reason given above. During this time from capture to to Importation to a facility in the US, usually LA, the fish have emptied their intestines of all contents and are in the early stage of starvation. While in this weakened state of health the intestines have shrunk up and the beneficial bacteria needed for digestion have died for lack of food to process. In other words the fish’s gut is totally empty and non functioning at that point. Survival is questionable at this point.
Enter your LFS who brings in fish to offer to you the unsuspecting customer. Unsuspecting because you and I expect someone along this route to take care of the fish in a manor that would insure their health, right? Well, we are wrong. Even most LFS owners/employees under feed the fish. It’s like this... fish order comes in, transferred to LFS tanks, customers are coming in need to be waited on, if LUCKY the fish get a pinch of flake or pellet food, maybe some frozen brine shrimp. Some of the fish are will begin to taste that foreign food but NOT eat it eagerly because it is totally foreign tasting to them. Let’s take a closer look at this...
In this, now captive, fish’s prior life nowhere did it ever run into food like flake, pellet, brine shrimp, even Mysis shrimp are foreign to them. Those food items and most others are not found in the ocean much less on the their home reef. Yet, we expect them to simply begin to chow down because we know they are hungry. Ain’t going to happen, at least not in the beginning of their life with us who REALLY care for them. No, they must be “trained†to eat our foreign food in order to survive. IF you are lucky and find a LFS that actually begins this learning to eat process, you will have better “luck†with your fish.
There are two articles I’d recommend you read one is “Nine Simple Rules†and the other is “Spa Quarantineâ€. I don’t think I can post a link to them on R2R as they are on my web site. If you will PM me, I will send you the link.
Hope this helped you understand the why your fish died question.
Dick
