Silver dollars at Fish Story Aquarium and Rescue
- Thread starter thebiggerthebetter
- Start date
Sorry for your loss.
Your fish looked healthy, well cared for. It was a male, not-too-old fish. I think something unfortunate happened, not age. Again, a bummer.
I inherited 3 ~6-6.5 inch dollars, known to be 14 years old, from a school. I have had them for 1 year, and they are doing well, courting each other. These fish can live long lives.
Thank you. Can you please provide support for this statement?
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One of the wide-bars has hit a wall or something pretty hard, smashed its snout badly, struggled for a week with what looked like a brain or central nervous system injury as it couldn't swim right, and then perished. I didn't expect that from a silver dollar.
I wonder if a couple dozen of rescue African cichlids are to blame because these have been added recently and have been pestering the SDs a bit, apparently when I am not looking. I actually had to transfer the only surviving common SD to another 240 gal as it looked stressed and its fins were thoroughly tattered.
The 12 red hooks (9 youngsters plus 3 adults from the 4500 gal) and two surviving wide-bars remain in the same 240 gal.
The dead guy grew from 3" to 7"-8" in 8 months with us. I also noted that when they are seriously stressed, their tummy turns bright red and they look strikingly like a red-belly pacu baby.
Used to be a person I followed who had a very old silver dollar, they stopped updating his age when he was 47 years old, since then I've run into a number of people with s.ds well into their twenties ,40s and 30s,I doubt they live that long in the wild tho, anyone know their wild life expectancy?
Wow! Mind blowing. Thanks, bro. Were they the common SDs or different species? I assume common as all these fancy ones appear to have started to come in not that long ago, 10-20 years ago?
Update. Two videos have been shot for other purposes than the SD's but the latter are featured prominently - 14 red hooks, 2 wide bars, one common:
The second of the pair of common SDs has perished. About 7" tip to tip. I have not been paying it much attention and then saw one day that most of its tail fin was missing. Even though it still fed and behaved ok, I rehomed it to another 240 gal but it died there shortly thereafter... I am guessing from the additional stress of the netting and transferring.
I wonder who was biting its tail so badly. Could have red hooks and wide bars done it? Or the relatively newly introduced rescue clown knife? I've caught it giving a quick chase to a SD every now and then.
I wonder who was biting its tail so badly. Could have red hooks and wide bars done it? Or the relatively newly introduced rescue clown knife? I've caught it giving a quick chase to a SD every now and then.
Update video with feeding. The feeding behavior is poor because the fish are not used to having the tank lights on; also placing a camera in the tank makes them uneasy. Still can hear them crunching away the pellets with their molar teeth:
