One of my Corys died

[Adam_StL]

Hi all,
I returned from a weekend trip to find one of my 5 corys had died . There were no external injuries that i could see, but here's what i did see. There appeared to be a red area under the skin, right behind the pectoral fin extending up toward the dorsal fin, almost like a bruise. Is there some disease that would cause this? I don't want any more fish to die. All other fish in the tank are peaceful so I don't think they would have injured him or anything.

Adam

[Coryman]

Adam,

Sorry to here about your fatality, it is a problem that is quite common. The good news is that it does not appear to be contagious. In simple terms the major cause is stress which induces a bacterial infection and once the problem begins to show like the red blotches it is usually terminal. It happens a lot with freshly imported fish.

I occasionally loose a fish to this problem but have never seen it spred through a tank of fish like a virus would.

Ian