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We are having a problem with not only our fish dying suddenly but in cruel ways and we think that one of our fish may be to blame for the sudden deaths in our tank. is this possible?

we had 3 fancy guppies and 2 platys along with a Chinese algae eater. they lived just fine for about 5 mouths until all of a sudden one by one they starting dying in awful ways, two of the guppies (which were the smaller two) had their tails sucked in to the filter on different days and were left to die while we were away at work. both platys were picked apart and left in corners of the tank almost hidden ( one was missing his eyes and the other his fins)

we left just the last guppy and the algae in the tank for a month to see what was going on and nothing, they lived just fine together. recently we added a few more fish to the tank (3 mollys, another small algae and a loach). they were all doing just fine, one of them surprisingly even had babies (we thought they were all boys!). we went away from the weekend and when we came back i sadly found my poor bigger algae eater stuffed under the bridge in the tank torn to shreds and mutilated. and my smaller algae is missing :/

any idea as to which fish could be causing all these deaths or what we should do about it?

My vote is for the Chinese Algae Eater. CAE are notorious for preferring to suck on any passing fish instead of the algae after they've been in a tank for not too long. I made the mistake of getting a "golden CAE" from p3t$mart in my early days of fishkeeping. Saw him going after one of my barbs and took him back right away.

However, it's not necessarily a fish doing the attacking, if you havent kept up with water changes and tank maintenance poor water quality can play just as big a role in fish deaths as an aggressive fish. Once a fish is stressed and dying other fish may find it an easy target, or they can easily be sucked up by the filters intake.

You didn't mention tank or filter size. Too strong of water flow in a tank can also cause fish to try and hide in places where they don't have to fight against the current, too much fighting and they die exhausted.

^_^