Hi everyone.

Tonight I am extremely upset, I have just had to euthanase my elephant nose fish. What I need to know is what happened to it. When I approached my tank I noted the elephant nose swimming feebly at the water's surface and it looked as though it had growths or fungus on its head. Upon closer inspection I discovered, much to my horror, that it was the fish's skin that appeared to be hanging off it in shreds. There were no chunks of flesh out of the head, the skin just seemed to be shredded. I am not sure if my Oscar could have done this, I have had my Oscar for about 6 weeks already now (he is about 4 inches and the elephant nose is about 3 inches) or whether my elephant nose had some sort of a disease that could infect my other fish. Please, if anybody has an answer for me I am desperate to know what went wrong and if it is some sort of disease what I can do about it to ensure I do not lose anymore fish. Please look at the pics and let me know what you think it is.

Water Conditions:

pH: Acidic - usually neutral.
Total Alkalinity: about 40
Total Chlorine: 0
Hardness: Hard
Nitrite: between 0 and 0.5
Nitrate: about 80 - don't know why it is so high.

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it's difficult to say what happened to the elephant nose Without seeing detailed photographs, even then, I doubt whether we could really give you a conclusive answer. By the way, I couldn't open your attachment.

Your nitrite should be zero and no higher. If you are guessing readings, try and find out why. Are you cleaning your filtration too much, leaving uneaten food in the tank, or maybe have too many fish?

The reason most people have high nitrate is because they have been carried out either enough water changes, or a large enough water change.

It sounds as if your pH is okay, neutral is 7.0, this is very good. even so, a little bit higher is going to cause no harm, unless you have very sensitive fish which I don't think you do. Unfortunately, in many cases, it's virtually impossible to determine why a fish dies, unless of courseyou have it scientifically examined which does cost quite a lot of money

Your elephant nose died because of poor water quality. These fish are very sensitive to poor water- if fact water companies have in the past used to them to let them know if the water was bad (if they died is was bad)

You should have no nitrite and your nitrate is too high. Bigger or more frequent water changes will lower nitrate, the nitrite is possibly because of an uncycled tank