Cory died - suggestions?

[AJM]

i simply wanted to relate my recent experience with one of my corydoras juliis and see if anyone can figure out why he/she died. i had three corys. one i had to put to sleep last night. the other two seem perfectly fine. i got home yesterday and the one was just sitting there motionless, and when it tried to swim it would sort of go sideways or spin and float to the bottom and lay there for a little while. it kept getting less and less active. it hadn't showed any signs of problems recently as far as i remember. i took it into the local pet store and, with no outward signs of distress or disease (accept that one of its babels was kind of short whereas the other corys' barbels seemed to be fine), one guy told me it may simply have hit it's head really hard at some point and damaged it's brain or spinal cord. he said he sees it sometimes and one of his corys did that once and had the same symptoms. but he wasn't totally sure. my water is very clear, with no ammonia nor nitrites and only about 20 or 30 ppm of nitrates. the pH is rather high at around 7.4-7.6, and i keep the temp at 78 or so. the water is relatively hard. i have 8 neon tetras that i recently added, three platys, and two african dwarf frogs (that i just returend yesterday because i thought they would be happier while not in a community tank - and they were sort of a pain to feed). i feed them all a mix of flake food and blood and tubifex worms on occasion, and sinking algea tablets for the corys. anyway, that's about it. i ultimately ended up euthanizing the fish when it's movement ceased to almost nothing. just wondering if anyone had any ideas, and if you'd ever heard of the banging-the-head thing. thanks. sorry this was so long. oh, and my gravel is this dark blue painted small rock, each pebble about 1/4 inch in diameter.

 

[arcab4]

the cories i've had that passed alway had shorten barbels...how long have you had them?

 

[AJM]

I had them for about 1 1/2 months. the one that died had normal length barbels on both sides of the mouth within the last week. and again, the other two look fine as far as the barbles are concerned.

 

[fishboy]

Sorry to hear that :'(

The banging of the head might actually be something there...... have you lost anymore fish???Or this may be one of the problems that aquarist never find out...... something like htat had happened to me also but , i think it was the temperature
                               HTH,
                                    Daniel