nosferatu51
New member
How long after a fish dies do the eyes tend to cloud over? Does that take just minutes, hours, or days?
I'm wondering because I just did a really big water change in preparation for taking a tank out of hypo. In the process, I knocked over a powerhead and created a sandstorm. Once I had drained a good portion of the water and removed most of the PVC, etc I realized that I did not see my tiny baby puffer. Considering he has been hiding A LOT since the hypo, I wasn't really bothered and began looking harder. I still couldn't find him so I scooped out the sand where he usually hides and found him buried under it, dead. I haven't seen him in a couple of days because I haven't been home much and when I have been I haven't checked for him since I know he has a tendency to hide. He couldn't have been buried for more than 30 mins.
What I'm trying to figure out is whether he was dead before the sandstorm or whether he was buried and died from that. When I pulled him out, his eyes had already glassed over and had that foggy look fish eyes (and most eyes I guess) get when the animal is dead. My assumption is that this clouding process takes a while to occur since it is most likely protein degradation, but I may be wrong. Does anybody have any idea on how long that takes and whether I just killed my puffer doing a friggin water change?
I'm wondering because I just did a really big water change in preparation for taking a tank out of hypo. In the process, I knocked over a powerhead and created a sandstorm. Once I had drained a good portion of the water and removed most of the PVC, etc I realized that I did not see my tiny baby puffer. Considering he has been hiding A LOT since the hypo, I wasn't really bothered and began looking harder. I still couldn't find him so I scooped out the sand where he usually hides and found him buried under it, dead. I haven't seen him in a couple of days because I haven't been home much and when I have been I haven't checked for him since I know he has a tendency to hide. He couldn't have been buried for more than 30 mins.
What I'm trying to figure out is whether he was dead before the sandstorm or whether he was buried and died from that. When I pulled him out, his eyes had already glassed over and had that foggy look fish eyes (and most eyes I guess) get when the animal is dead. My assumption is that this clouding process takes a while to occur since it is most likely protein degradation, but I may be wrong. Does anybody have any idea on how long that takes and whether I just killed my puffer doing a friggin water change?
