Black Sunday

This is the first time in two and half year that I scooped out as many as 6 dead fishes in a day.

Firstly, one of my older tropheus sp black bemba bellied up for no apparent reason. No sign of disease or attack by fellow tankmates.

Next, noticed that the pseudotropheus demasonis were not coming out of their hiding places during the evening feed. Curious, I lifted up a few rocks and lo and behold found one dead fish after another. They could have been dead for a few days. Didn't even notice it when i did the weekly wc the day earlier. Did a final roll-call and found 1 demasoni and the 4 newly introduced cypris left.

Can't help but feel it has to do with the introduction of the 4 cypris. The demasonis were all by themselves for the past year in the 2ft standing tank. Reclusive but growing and getting along well with each other. As they were always hiding within the rocks and sand bed, I thought it would be nice to add 4 of my cypris (1m4f) to occupy the top half of the tank and also increase the possibility of them spawning. At first I was actually more worried for the cypris as these demasonis can be pretty territorial. All went well for about a week, even noticed the demasonis coming out more often than before. Sigh...now there is only 1 left. My post mortem, died of stress. It's highly unlikely that the cypris attacked them. Demasonis are mean fighters.

This batch was painstakingly brought up from tiny fries for about a year. Was still hoping that I will see little babies soon. Have to now decide what to do with the remaining fella. Poor fella lost his entire family.