Cory died - he had one red eye???

guppygal · Post by **guppygal** » 12 Mar 2007, 14:26

Hello Everyone

I have a 10g that has been up and running for almost a yr. I really don't have many deaths but about a 4-6 weeks ago - I lost another cory who tuned completely translucent and then died - not sure why he died either.

Today, I awoke to a dead cory Tril. no obvious illness outside of 1 of his eyes was bloody red!

I tested the water - all normal

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
PH 7.0
Nitrate 5
Temp 78

I have a guppy with a split tail so I am doing daily 10% wc. I also added 3 new guppies (after qt).

I want to see if I need to treat the tank for a bacterial infection or to leave well enough alone.

ALSO - I now only have 2 cories -- my closest LPS does not have any cories -- will these two be OK until I can get a couple more??

THANKS!!!

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 12 Mar 2007, 15:37

Bloody eye is a sign of infection, but whether that means that you should medicate against that or not is a different question.

If your other fish looks healthy, then I would recommend not medicating. This is a personal choice, and there's really no right/wrong answer to "when to medicate or not", as you can have success with almost any choice you make, and failure on any choice, the hard part is to determine if the success/failure was from the medication or not.

I just feel that unless you know for sure that you're dealing with something that is treatable with some medication, then it's, in my opinion, not recommended to medicate. The alternative, of course, is the "medicate first, ask questions later", to para-phrase a bit.

Your water parameters look good.

Daily water changes of 10-20% shouldn't cause any problem (unless the water is "bad" in some way).

--
Mats

guppygal · Post by **guppygal** » 13 Mar 2007, 16:40

No one else with an opinion or experience?

1 of my remaining False Julii has her dorsal fin laying flat most of the time ... not sure if I have another sick fish.

I do have a guppy with a split tail - it has been split for about a month but the fish seems otherwise fine.

I am still doing 10-20% daily treated wcs.

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 13 Mar 2007, 17:25

I'm not writing this to make fun of you, or in other ways try to embarass you - I see this all the time, where someone don't get the answer "they wanted", and thus ask again.

Let's say you got three more replies, making it a draw between "medicate" and "don't medicate", would you still complain that you didn't get enough advice? Or would you just say "Oh, heck, I still don't know what to do"?

It is not easy to advice over the internet - I can't see your fish, I don't know what it's doing (and perhaps more importantly, what it was doing a few weeks ago).

My reply is "sitting on the fence", because I don't KNOW what the right answer is, and I don't believe anyone else does with 100% confidence.

There's nothing wrong in your reported water conditions. The fish isn't (from what you describe) showing any distinct symptoms of any particular illness [although sitting still with it's dorsal down isn't a sign of good health, that's for sure]. However, whether that will be better or worse from medicating is a different story.

Have you done any LARGE water changes recently? That's my first resort when I have fish that look "unhappy" [which despite my efforts, does happen from time to time].

Have you vacumed the gravel? If ther's a lot of gunk there, it may be adding nitrates to the water (you show an admirably low value, but it could be wrong - double-checking by taking it to a shop may be worth doing too).

Cleaned the filter recently? Make sure you don't clean it with tap-water tho'.

--
Mats

guppygal · Post by **guppygal** » 13 Mar 2007, 22:54

Hey - no offense taken. I am just trying to be proactive and learn about fish disease. I thought someone with more fish experience may of run into a similar situation.

At most, I've probably done a 50% change about 5 days ago. I have two filter on the 10 -- clean 1 entire filter 5 days ago -- then today I just swished the other filter media in old tank water.

I always suction the gravel -- I hate to think about the gunk building up.

Thanks for trying.

hellocatfish · Post by **hellocatfish** » 14 Mar 2007, 07:21

Hmm...awhile back when I was losing fish left and right, some of them (danios and cories) did have one protruded & maybe slightly reddened eye but only right before death. The other common symptom was they wasted away down to nothing, with some of the cories looking more like tadpoles than fish, due to emaciation. My water qualities were rapidly fluctuating between cycled and uncycled readings, so most people who were trying to help me figure out what was going on settled on "New Tank Syndrome" as the probable culprit. NTS of course can encompass a variety of problems that will include or lead to actual pathogenic illnesses. Like you, I didn't know whether to treat or not to treat. I opted to NOT treat, as the wrong medication can kill or stress fish as badly as illness can.

To be honest I never did get the cycling problem solved in any conventional way. I simply started a larger new tank with a canister filter with MUCH greater biological filtration capacity than my Hang-on-back filter could ever have provided. And then I moved the survivors into it, lost just one more cory who'd been iffy ever since I got him, and then, knock wood, have had no losses atributable to illness since then.

The difference this go around with both the new tank, and my old tank that I re-established as a quarantine tank for new stock, with two HOB filters instead of one, was that I've salted both tanks with API aquarium salt--a good bit under the therapeutic dosage recommended on the package for the new populated tank. And super megadoses of salt for the quarantine tank before I intended to stock it. I ran both tanks with their respective doses of salt for a few days, did water changes, refreshed the salt in each, then did another series of water changes so that I could safely assume negligible concentrations of salt were left. Salt won't kill or hurt your cories in the short term. And over on CorysRUs, they say it doesn't hurt at all, short or long term. But again, that's something people debate back and forth.

In the quarantine tank, after adding my new stock, I VERY slowly brought up levels of salt again to a therapeutic dose. All new stock added to the quarantine tank have done well so far, minus a baby panda cory that the LFS clerk had beat up while netting him. Grrr! Even some pale, sad-looking peppered cories have taken on more color and pep.

And after reading endless debate and commentary, I made the decision to rely on Nutrafin Cycle (I got mine from PetSmart) for my biological bacteria instead of relying on nature to take its course. (Hagen Cycle, though packaged differently, might be the same product or a better quality--not sure). I honestly don't know if I made the right decision--short term, maybe. Long-term, I'm not sure how stable systems that rely on artificially introduced bacteria cultures are. I'm a novice, I've no way of knowing. Their product literature certainly makes a plausible sounding case, and my test results support it. But again, long-term, I sure don't know.

One other thing--what kind of test kit are you using to test your water quality? I'm using the one where you take vials of water and add test chemicals to it--it's made by API and comes as a complete kit for testing low range PH, high range PH, ammonia, Nitrate, and Nitrites. It's pretty good about not being fooled by some of the water conditioners I've tried that supposedly give false readings on some ammonia tests. I also have their test strips, which do NOT work reliably at all. It was always showing 0 levels of toxins even when my other test kit was practically screaming "Danger, Will Robinson" at me.

So as Mats was saying, your readings may not be reading true. Some types and brands work better than others, and sometimes a good kit goes bad after awhile.

One observation I came across when researching the so-called more delicate panda cories was that nitrate, nitrite, and ammonia readings don't tell enough of the story of what's really happening in a tank. The observer lost her pandas in a tank that had optimum readings. There could be some electrolyte imbalance going on that stressed your fish and made them vulnerable to ever-present but usually dormant disease.

I do wish you luck and I'm so very, very sorry for your losses. I've just been through that, and may be in for another round at any time--I totally empathize. If you do ever find out for sure what made your fish sick, please post an update somewhere on this forum. It would be so great if we could pool all of our experiences and at least make better guesses!

hellocatfish · Post by **hellocatfish** » 14 Mar 2007, 07:39

Oh...if you get a chance, go over and read the discussion on this forum about Sterbai Breeding Question. One of the breeders give a very detailed analysis of the various things that can cause sterba fry to die. Some of the items he brought up had a ring of familiarity to some of my losses or others I've read about. I noted some of my fish taking ill after feeding freeze dried tubifex which was supposed to be pathogen free. I doubt it was pathogens that made any of my fish ill, but maybe the freeze dried aspect made them ill when the worms rehydrated in the stomach. I have since learned to pre-soak food.

wrasse · Post by **wrasse** » 15 Mar 2007, 10:47

Hi guppygal,

If , after water-changes and gravel-cleaning and water tests are okay, your fish are still unhappy, look for the following:
-do you have ornaments, wood, rock, etc in the tank that you don't clean under? These areas can become anaerobic.
-When you lift them out of the water, do they 'pong'? Even your filter media should not pong if the filtration is working correctly.
-Have you had the corys for all that time or were they more recent additions? A water-change the day before adding new fish helps them adjust to your tank conditions.
-Some corys, particularly trilineatus and julii for some reason, don't travel so well and should be quarantined by shops for longer. Their quality can vary.
-Don't feed dried foods and frozen live foods at the same time, allow at least a couple of hours gap to avoid digestion problems which can lead to blockages and internal bacterial problems.
-Myxazin is a relatively mild anti-bacterial medication that doesn't harm your filtration system. A reddened eye/ gills and split fins could be treated with this.