Tragedy struck last night and now I'm questioning if fish keeping is for me, upset :(

[marne2]

Last week I noticed a few marks on my Corys , turned out they hat hurt themselves on a new ornament in my tank and the wounds had become infected with a fungal infection, some of the other fish were bothering them and luckily I had been cycling a tank in my daughters room ( to house a betta ) so I moved 2 of the Corys to the small tank, all was going well and the fungus seemed to be clearing up. Last night I went up before bed to feed them and ( it's hard to even type what happened) basically my heater had a broke and instead of switching off when reaching the correct temp it did not switch off , you can imagine what had happened. I am gutted, they were my favourite and most expensive fish in my community tank and I have had them for over a year, I have been unable to find any more the same ( they were sold to me as bandit Corys ). I can't stop thinking about the poor things and what they suffered and I now have 2 lonely Corys left and can't find them any friends

Anyway, I'm now really worried that this could happen to my big tank, is there anything I can buy that would alert me if the temp got too high in my tank ( something that would beep or flash ), I don't always check my thermometers. I can't risk this happening again.

Oh mate, that's such a bummer :( Don't beat yourself up, this has happened to other fishkeepers before and it'll happen again. Sometimes equipment breaks. It's no reflection on your abilities.

You can get thermometers with alarms, they're not even that expensive. You can set it to beep if it gets too hot or cold.

You do need to keep a regular check on water conditions and temperature though, because if you catch any problems early then you can stop them escalating. Some geekier fishkeepers keep spreadsheets and whatnot (or scrappy bits of paper for the less technologically-minded ;) ) so they can keep track of what's going on.

The scientific name for Bandit corys is Corydoras metae. You could try mail order or if you can't find them then another similar sized cory will be better than nothing. Don't forget to quarantine! Corys like cooler water than bettas so if you use the betta tank as a quarantine, turn the heater down a little.

Have a glass of wine later on and don't beat yourself up too much

Thank you, I hope their death was not too painful , it was just horrid to see them cooked! luckily I managed to dispose of them without dd1 seeing. I'm going to order a thermometer with a alarm for my main tank, It would be so much worse if I lost all my fish. Have had it happen before ( a few years ago ) but managed to get to the fish in time to save them, this was only a small tank so I guess it would have heated up quite quickly, had the tank set up for 6 weeks and hadn't got around to buying dd1 a betta, heater was working fine and I tested the water before putting the Corys on. Just can't get the image of the poor Corys out of my head , I will try and track down some more Corys to go with the others! I tried ordering some through my local aquatic shop but when they turned up they were panda Corys instead ( they seem to be a lot smaller than the bandits).

Pandas are a bit smaller than Bandits, yes. This place has Bandits but they aint cheap! I don't know much about them so don't know their reputation.

Thank you, I think I will go back to the shop I got the original ones from ( although I hate the shop as I have since bought fish from them that have been diseased ), I think I payed £6 each for them just over a year ago so there's a small chance they might be able to get me some. I worry about getting fish in the post although I have heard great stories, if I get stuck I will order online. I could do with selling some of my bn pleco babies to make room for a bigger group of Corys .

I had some in the post from a different seller and as long as they use a proper courier then they should be fine. Fish are all flown in from Eastern Europe (or further) anyway so as long as you take precautions, they travel OK.