Thread: What Caused the Fish

Government shut down lol

I have a few ideas. For a little background information, I spent several years as a tropical fish retailer and a few years working for the country's largest wholesale tropical fish outlet. The company I worked for imported fish, both wild caught and captive raised, from around the globe on a daily basis. It was common to receive very expensive fish and coral from the South Pacific and the former USSR. I have a little experience in keeping fish alive.

Sudden death like you're describing could be suffocation, shock, lethal chemical, or some type of noxious algae or bacteria. Suffocation could be caused by low dissolved oxygen in the water but that doesn't make sense as the water's surface usually churns enough to keep it oxygenated. Even pumping surface water into the live well will oxygenate it enough to keep fish alive. Shock could be a big one. Higher water temps can fatigue fish and if they're at the thermocline, there could be a huge swing in water temp in a very short period of time. Fish do not adjust well to huge swings in temperature, at all. A sudden ten degree change could be enough to put a fish in shock and kill it. It's probably not some type of poison, as this happened to a number of fishermen. That being said, dead fish release highly toxic ammonia into the water and kill other fish. We would receive overseas shipments that would have 100% live fish in one bag and 100% dead fish in another. The culprit is usually one or more fish dying and killing off the lot. I suspect that's what was doing it. Finally, there could have been some type of toxic algae or bacterial bloom in the first few inches of water that killed everything. We'd experience this with red tide in Florida. It would kill everything. This type of studs usually creates some dead fish in the lake as we'll, though.