PlanetCatfish.com

Howdy all.

We have a tank about five weeks old now. Its 55 gallons, and we started it with nine cardinal tetras and one 2" common pleco. After it went through the first cycle (complete with amonia and nitrite spikes - I test every day), we added six panda corys, two small clown loaches and seven purple empororer tetras. Now - both the corys and the emporers had come into the shop the day we bought them. Reading the boards the past week has taught me that isn't such a good idea. Didn't realize it then.

Last Thursday, two days after bringing them home, four of the emporers died, and one of the corys did. I was never able to locate the body of one of the emporers - I looked under rocks, driftwood, etc. Now - the water chemistry remained normal. There were no spikes in any of the chemicals, no pH changes, and the temperature was constant. The only thing we can figure is that maybe the emporers just went through too much stress. They were very dull the first few days - the surviving ones didn't show any interest in food until a few days ago.

The cory, we're pretty sure, had some sort of fast fungal infection. Its tail was stubby and frayed, and had a cloud like appearance around it. It died while we were at the pet store getting medicine. I never noticed anything wrong with it until the day it got sick and died.

Yesterday (Tuesday, five days after the five fish died in one day) a cardinal died. Again - the water chemistry has remained constant. No sign of illness. Although - this cardinal has never schooled with the rest of them, ever.

Now - three more corys have what I think might be fungus. I am an aquarium newbie, so I'm going to books and the description on the medicine. In any case - two of them have cottony looking white patches on their tail and fins, and one has a white speck on the black bottom stripe. The water chemistry is fine.

The only other odd thing about the tank is it is somewhat cloudy. Its not cloudy like a new tank, or foggy like you occasionally see a tank in a pet store. Its full of particles floating around. It was't like this a week ago. Things that have changed:
- new fish
- new chemical - I added some "Cycle" (Hagen) with the new fish. I used to use Stress Zyme
- new food - I've been feeding a new type of smaller bottom feeder wafers for the corys, and sinking micro pellets for the tetras.

Water Chemistry:
-no amonia (there were trace amounts, but hardly enough to even register, the day after I added the new fish)
-no nitrites (there were trace amounts, but again, hardly enough to register, three or four days after I added the new fish)
-some nitrates, but we do a water change weekly, and the plants also seem to do a good job using up the nitrates
-pH 6.5
-temp 76 or 77 usually
-soft water

What should I do? Should I treat the whole tank with the fungus medicine? Is it fungus and not ick? Should I try to catch the effected corys and treat them in a hospital tank? Could it be from the dead purple tetra that was never found?

I probably brought it on myself after my husband and I sat around congratulating ourselves for not loosing any fish.

And I have to say - the pandas are fabulous little fish!! I love watching them school together, and swim all over the tank. They're always up to something! And I can't believe how much my pleco has grown in the past two months!

Thank you in advance for the help!

Erin

If you have a hospital tank, that's probably the better choice. Take the water out of the big tank, so that there isn't a water quality change for the fish that need treating.

Also, sometime bacterial desaese may look like fungal, so don't be too sure about which it is until you've shown some pictures to someone that can identify the problem.

The main reason you want to move them to a hospital tank would be that you run a real risk of killing your good bacteria in the filter system with the medecine (even if it says it's safe...).

In general, fish get ill because of some stress-factor or another. It's anything from wrong water conditions (don't think so in your case), wrong temperature (don't think so, 77'F = 25'C, Panda wants 20-26'C), to being shipped around (quite possible).

Ick is "white spots", which doesn't match your description.

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Mats

Another cardinal died today - no sign of anything wrong, and the water chemistry is fine.

I'm tempted to treat the whole tank just because everyone seems to be doing poorly!

Could they be stressed from not enough sleep? Maybe I leave the light on too late. The light isn't on more than 12 hours in a day, but the room is a sunny one, and there are a few hours in the morning where the tank gets sunlight. Could that cause the stress?

It is not likely that the amount of light you mention would be the cause of a stressful situation for your fish. I would do another water change and treat the tank with a broad spectrum bacterial/fungal medication. I have had good success with the combination of Melafix and Pimafix.

Mark

I have a medicine to treat fungus, but not an antibacterial med. Will try to get to the store first thing tomorrow.

Two more of the cardinals look bad - their fins on the top and bottom are coming apart - they're stringy and seperated rather than together. ?? Any ideas?

And my snail died.

I don't understand this. We had no fatalities for six weeks, and now everything is going south, and the water chemistry is perfect!

Don't feel bad. It does happen to all of us (or at least, it's happened to me) that some fish gets sick, and the others catch it, without any reasonable cause.

One reason of course may be new fish that are added to the tank without proper quarantine, which is something that can be avoided by having a separate tank for quarantining fish before adding them to their final home.

That's little help right now...

But I had a situation a few months ago where my cold-water tank got infected with something. No new fish, no bad water, just all of a sudden the fish look very poorly. I changed plenty of water and added some medicine (a product called BSB, generic antibacterial, but there's probably three dozen other ones that do the same thing). A few of my danio's died, but the rest of them made it through and have recovered nicely. I still haven't got a clue what caused it.

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Mats

Matt,

Thank you for the note. Its been three days, and there have been no more deaths, so I'm cautiously optomistic. I did some reading, and I think that the problem with fish that have died in the past week, and the ones that aren't looking good, is "fin and tail rot". I'm on day two of treatment with Marycyn, which is supposed to cure body fungus (what I think I'm observing on the corys) and fin and tail rot (which is what I think I'm seeing on the cardinals). I think this is what the first cory died of 10 days ago, and he probably infected the rest of the tank.

My theory is that the first four purple tetras (which all died within a few hours of each other) must have been victims of the stress of moving. They came off the truck, spent a few hours at the local pet store, and then got put back into a bag, and then into my tank. 48 hours later, 4 of the 7 are dead. One thing I wonder - the ones that died, at least two of them (maybe more) had messed up stripes. They have a long stripe down the horizontal (the lateral something or another?). In the middle of at least two of them, that line was squidgy. I read a thread here the other day about Hexema. It made me wonder. In any case, the other three are looking great.

My snail - I wonder if he ate himself to death? He double in size in about two weeks (Golden Mystery Snail).

Anyway - I'm going with the Marycyn, and if anyone has any other suggestions, I'd really appreciate it!

Erin

Bead Queen,

I have read through all the posts and the one thing that struck me at the beginning was the number of fish you introduced on one go 15 fish, which could have created a nitrate surge when you started what I assume would have been putting extra food into the tank for them. It is always advisable when introducing a relatively large number of fish to gradually introduce more food, because new fish are usually under stress, they will not feed properly any way. We all tend to feed to much, which I would say is the cause of 90% of all aquarium problems. Your cloudy water is a sure sign of too much food, uneaten food will settle in the substrate and decompose creating poison gas pockets in which can and will kill fish if ingested. Another thing is fish selection and many lfs's are guilty of not giving the right advise when it comes to fish compatibility. I my opinion Corys and Botias (Clown loaches are Botias) should not be mixed in the same tank, they are both bottom dwellers and Botias are far more aggressive, their natural diet includes snails, so they are more than capable of taking pieces out of Corys or nipping their fins. They may also be the reason your snail died.

Ian