Sisorid catfish die offs

[Weirder_weird]

I posted about an year ago about my sisorid cats collection, and I was very proud of it. With all those erethistes, pseudolaguvia and glyptothorax I felt I was doing something right keeping these cats for such a prolonged period of time. Like Icarus, I too flew too close to the sun when I bought some P.ferruginea. Disaster struck. Every pseudolaguvia died in the same fashion, heavy breathing, body with or without some blood streaks, and sunken stomach. My old glypto decided to follow suit. To my dismay, even the smaller erethistes pusillus did that too. I have a few e. pusilus, a lone p. riberoi. This die off happened about two months ago. Yesterday I added g botius and g telchitta. And today 3 are dead and the rest shoe similar symptoms to the previous victims. They also swam restlessly against the flow of the power filter. I've tried deworming with albendazole.

Specs: 15 gallon, planted, 1 power filter, 1HOB filter, amm: 0, nitrites: 0, nitrates: ~10.

Please help me out here guys I am honestly frustrated and disappointed that i can't seem to keep my favourite family of cats. Also I have a sicyopterus griseus. Whatever this disease may be can it jump the family barrier to that? Also these were already quarantined before I brought them home AFAIK. I'm at my wits end here.

[bekateen]

I'm sorry for your loss. That's really heart breaking.

I'm curious... with the first fire off, how quickly did all the fish die? Hours? Days? Weeks?

Regards, Eric

[Weirder_weird]

I'm sorry for your loss. That's really heart breaking.

I'm curious... with the first fire off, how quickly did all the fish die? Hours? Days? Weeks?

Regards, Eric

Once they started showing the aforementioned symptoms, it was a matter of hours for the affected individuals. The total die off(first one) took place within the span of a week. And this one was less than a couple of days.

[bekateen]

If nitrates and ammonia were normal, I'd consider sulfur gas poisoning. How deep is your gravel? Do you ever stir it?

[Weirder_weird]

If nitrates and ammonia were normal, I'd consider sulfur gas poisoning. How deep is your gravel? Do you ever stir it?

Substrate is 3.2" At the deep end cus I have a variety of crypts. I just gravel siphon the unplanted areas, never really stirred. If it's indeed H2S poisoning it would explain why my crypt flamingo is withering away. What do I do? In addition to stirring the substrate and releasing trumpet snails?

[bekateen]

I would remove all fish ... and maybe plants too... to a temporary bucket of safe tank water, then stir the gravel thoroughly and vacuum out sediment, then do a 90% water change. Run tank for a half hour or so, then carefully reintroduce the fish and plants.

Maybe consider thinning the gravel to an inch or less. Pot the plants if you need to.


Others might have better advice, but that's what I'd do.

Good luck,
Eric

[Weirder_weird]

Thanks for the reply! I will do that ASAP. But won't that disrupt the nitrogen cycle?

[MarcW]

It may knock it back, depending on how many plants you have, and if there is already an established filter of some kind, if you have a filter on the tank which has been running for a while you should be fine (keep it in a bucket of tank water while performing the maintenance), just monitor things closely for the first few weeks after the clear out.

Another possible consideration is a pH crash, I'm not sure of your water chemistry, but this is something I experienced recently, in my smaller tanks, I noticed that some fish were struggling (breathing fast, behaving different to normal), after a while I checked the pH, it had dropped from about 7 to 4.6 in a couple weeks, unfortunately I lost a few fish. I didn't check the pH sooner as my water is so hard I thought several very soft water changes wouldn't make much of a change to the pH.

Good luck.

[Weirder_weird]

So i lost my pseudolaguvia riberoi too, and one symptom I noticed was that the barbels were all noodly and not at all stiff. Now that i recall, most of the others had lost stiffness in their barbels too. They usually lost their appetites a day before death.