Posted by rcharmon on July 31, 2002 at 13:15:11:
Recently we've moved - and bought 2 (3-4 inch) snakeheads at a local pet store to temporarily keep in a 10-gallon tank until they grew to be a little bit bigger.
Regardless of the endless supply of rosey reds that we provided them - they did not eat after the first couple days and starved to death (although they did kill some of the minnows.) To make a long story short - we have just bought our sixth and seventh red line snakehead, about 4 inches long each. Both were healthy looking and eating at the pet store, and these lived the longest out of all those we have gone through. However to our dismay, one of them has just died of starvation. The last remaining snakehead was eating better than any of them, and after the death of his companion has stopped eating. We have tried everything - the tank we filled with distilled water ONLY, the heater remains about a 78-80 F temperature, although one day due to extreme outside temperatures it did go up to 83F. Along with the Rosey Reds, we have been putting guppies in to induce the weaker of the two to eat. We are currently using CYCLE water treatment, Stress coat, and we tried Proper PH 7.0 thinking that maybe the fish were in shock being in distilled water (which we used at the recommendation of a local fish store owner.) Since then we have put 5-in-1 water conditioner in the water in hopes to neutralize the pH. Also, the pet store we purchased these final 2 fish at gave us an extra bag of water to place in our tank to avoid further shock - knowing our recent issues. We have owned snakeheads in the years back and have never had one die on us - but instead florish to extreme levels. Please contact us if you have any suggestions or recommendations on what is going on at rcharmon@wadsnet.com as soon as possible. This is becoming a very expensive and distressing hobby. Thank you for your help!!!!
