I've read on here that hot water will kill a rosie red minnow. But what about cold water? I put some rosies (21 of them to be exact) out in my new outdoor pond in September. They were going to be like canaries - if they survived I'd know that the water quality was at least good enough to support rosies for a few months. I want to be sure there's nothing poisonous in there before I put Spot out later this year.
Slowly, little by little, the rosies have died and now they are all gone. I don't think they died of old age - there are three in Spot's indoor tank that are older by several months and they're doing swimmingly.
They seemed to die in groups. Half or more died immediately, probably because they were in bad shape from the pet store. Several more went away later. Until a few days ago, we had three that were hanging on but the last one died last night.
I wonder if the cold could have killed them. Does anyone know? A couple of weeks ago it got so cold that there was a skim of ice on the pond. The temperatures have been near freezing several times since then.
By the way, I'm going try to have tests for water toxins done by someone who would do this for people's water, but I'd also like to know what killed the minnows.
