Autopsy of Flaming Dwarf Angel

[kylem]

I lost my Flaming Dwarf today. Wife says he was hiding out in a rock at noon and now he is dead. No visible trauma, no visible diseases, was feeding fine in the morning. Not breathing and no rigamortus yet.
Any ideas....maybe picking on polyps and got poisoned?
Should I rip open stumock and see what he ate?

 

[Angelscrx]

You probably could cut him open and see but it might be hard to tell. What do you have in your tank that you think might have poisoned him?

 

[NaH2O]

kyle - sorry to hear about your fish....it never is easy, as we try to do our best for them. It might be difficult to figure out the cause of death. I imagine there are a number of possibilities. How is your water quality? What other fish/livestock are in the system? What size is the system? How are the other fish behaving? What are you feeding? How do you store your food, and if it is frozen, how do you thaw it out?

 

[Terry B]

It is very difficult to get an acurate diagnosis from an autopsy with fish, because they pose unique problems unlike a cat or human. For example, oportunistic and unharmful bacteria quickly invade the fish even before death. This does not mean that those particular bacteria were pathogenic or the cause of death.

If you take a look at the questions in my consultation form (over 100 questions) you will get an idea of many potential causes of death in fish.
http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/consultation.html

HTH,
Terry B