Everyone is dying

[bozco]

This is horribly frusterating.

My guppy tank, a 10 gal, seems to have contracted something that is killing off my fish one by one. There were 10 guppies and 5 glowlite tetras in the tank. The tetras were going to be moved out making the tank a guppy only setup and of course lessening the fish load. Infact they were going to be moved out a few days after the last four guppies were added, but one of my old fish died, so I decided to wait before moving the tetras into my big tank to avoid speading anything. A few days ago, just when I thought it'd be safe I lost another guppy and yesterday another one.

Today I have a very unhappy looking tetra and female guppy. The symptoms are simple, they stay at the surface and gasping for air, sometimes eating sometimes not. The guppy is the worst I've seen so for, she sits almost vertical in the water.

My quarentine tank is currently housing guppy fry and I don't have the finances at the moment to set up a new one.

I have started treating with melafix, but I have my doubts it will do any good. And I have increased the airation in the tank as the sick fish seem to want more oxygen but I'm not sure if that will do any good either.

I'm comptletely lost here. I can't afford to loose all the fish in that tank. I have three pregnant females in there. I don't want to move them to the fry tank, afaid they'll carry the disease over. I know it sounds awful, but would it do anything at all if I just removed and disposed of the two sick fish. Would this give me any chance at all of breaking the pattern?

The tank is not a new setup, its been running smoothly since September 2002, with only about 4 deaths in that time.

Please help

[OrionGirl]

Ammonia readings? Sounds very much like either ammonia or nitrite toxicity.

[JSchmidt]

Agree.

Jim

[bozco]

Ammonia 0 and Nitrites 0
The tetra was dead when I got up there to do the tests
I changed the water on saturday, and after finding the body yestery did another change. 25% the first time and 50% yesterday.

[Ryoken]

Did you just recently add new guppies to the tank? I'm unclear as to where those 4 guppies you mentioned in your original post came from. How long ago were the most recent fish added to the tank?

Does the remaining sick guppy look really fat? Not pregnant fat, but is it bloated at all?

[bozco]

No, not bloated, just heavy with eggs, and even then not very, she's not in condition.

I've dug up my records,

The last guppies were added on the 10th of January.

The first death occured on the 11th, but this was a very old fish and had been showing it before the new fish arrived, I don't beleive he his related to this problem. He was not displaying the symptoms of the dying fish now.

The second death was on the 24th, one of the new fish

The third death was yesterday, on the 28th, an origional guppy

The tetra, as I said, just died, today, the 29th

The female is still going, but just barely, she is also a new fish

There is no pattern in which fish are dying. It seems to be affecting both old and new. I was very careful when I picked them out. I don't buy fish from tanks that contain sick looking or dead fish, and I check out the tanks they share filters with as well, just to be sure. I have no idea whats going wrong here.

[Silent xXx Rage]

1. Disease?
2. Water Temp?
3. Water purity (ph, ammonia, other)?
4. underfeeding?
5. overcrowding?


I recommend for your 10g tank.

1. 50% water change
2. change chemical medium (new charcoal etc)
3. add aquarium salt (as recommended on package)
4. add aquari-sol (as recommended for prevention)
5. add stress coat (both for water and fish health)

wait 1 week to re-evaluate

This is the most common thing done for just about any fish problem (disease, pollution, water quality etc).

[JSchmidt]

Increasing water changes and adding carbon (to adsorb toxins, if present) are pretty good ideas. I don't think I'd start adding stuff to the water willy nilly without some good idea of what I was trying to treat, though.

Stepping up water changes is almost always my first response to any sign of illness or distress.

Jim

[bozco]

Disease and overcrowding are the only things I can think of, and the load was only meant to be temporary, like I said.

The water temp is fine, the results from the tests above are fine and they are fed once a day, everyday. I used to feed them more but was told I ws overfeeding so I cut it back.

The 50% water change was done yesterday.

I removed the carbon today, do I put it back in now? People are telling me to take it out while others are saying to put some in. It should not need replacing as it is only 20 days old.

I fogot to mention I am running a new filter. I was using a UGF system but was not pleased and pulled it up, replacing it with the AC mini(on Jan. 9th). Until last week I had the media from the old ugf in with the sponge and carbon on the AC. I also replaced 3/4 ths of the old gravel with new gravel, because of a terrible algae problem that has since cleared up.

Could it be some kind of internal parasite? The fish that have died, save for the tetra, did so during the night and I found them in the morning ripped open by the other fish. If one was carrying a parasite and other others ate it could they have contracted it too?

[Ryoken]

From that history, it's really hard to tell what's going on. One thing though is that when you removed the UG filter and the gravel, you disturbed the biological filteration of the tank, which can cause all sorts of trouble. Your tank may have even went through another cycle, did you get raised ammonia or nitrite levels after you changed filters? Something like this could certainly be a factor in your troubles, but there's a lot of variables.


Another thing is, commercially bred guppies are notorious for parasites, disease ect. I think many commercial guppy breeds nowadays are just weak sickly fish in general. I've heard many experienced fishkeepers have lots of trouble with guppies, which are, when properly bred and raised, tough as nails.

My only experience with them in the last 15 years is 6 "sunset guppies" I had a few years ago where 3 died of parasites in my QT tank 3 days after I bought them (these 1 - 3 inch long, very thin tapeworms must have left their bodies when they died - I found them on the bottom wiggling around) I took the remaining 3 back to the store, and I'd say 50% of the guppies in the tank they were from were gone - huge losses. This is really common at stores in my area.

So, that said, if your guppies were mass raised and from a pet store, it's likely they were in poor health. Given that history, that's not a great explanation to your problem, (yours could have been perfectly healthy) but it's something to think about.

[bozco]

Thanks for the responses, I've just done some more tests and another water 25% water change yesterday. The results are the same, nothing wrong there, the kit does still work I used it to monitor a cycle.

Last night around midnight I checked the tank, the sick female was lying on her side just barely alive and the other fish were starting to pick at her. I decided to put her out of her misery.
And this morning I lost another male. Thats 4 fish in two days.

If it keeps up at this rate the tank population will have dropped to 0 before the weekend is over.

On the upside, a female I removed from this dying tank two weeks ago just dropped her fry and she is doing well.

Thanks again for the replies

[Must4ng s4lly]

Still... the gasping sounds like ammonia to me... Esp with all the recent changes of gravel etc. The only time my fish gasp is when I do a heavly cleaning and change media too fast or have not borken down the filter and cleanned it so it gets proper flow.

Is the tank cloudy?????

[bozco]

The tank is clear, tests show ammonia at zero.

The last two to die, yesterday and this morning, both showed no signs of the gasping that the other fish had. It seems that half of them show this syptom and the rest show nothing. I've looked closly at all the uneaten bodies and can see nothing wrong.

The filter media smell old, I mean it smells like the media from my other tanks. The tank even smells healthy, they're just dropping dead.

The tetras seem to be holding out well, save for the one, I guess they are tougher than the guppies. I am going to the fish store later today, is there anything I should try picking up?

[sigmatauntaylor]

You may want to hold off on buying new fish in case there is a disease or something in there. WOuld hate to see you get some great looking fishies only to loose them:(

[Squint]

Did all this start after a water change? Were there bubbles clinging to surfaces in the tank after the water change?

[bozco]

Noe, started a few days before my weekly water change. Bubbles? The bubbles created by the output on the filter rising to the serface and sit for awhile, but nothing I noticed was strange. After another death on Saturday things seem to have slowed down a bit. Didn't have the chance to speak to the guys a the fish store about the problem (was looking for bird cages not fish)

Anyway the death toll is pretty high. The tank will not recieve new fish and no one will be moved out of it for at least a month, until I am sure that everything is back in order.

[Squint]

If it was gas emboli then there would be more bubbles than that.

Velvet seems to be going around right now and wiping out entire tanks.

[bozco]

The population of the tank has now dropped again. I lost a few more males, but the deaths are occuring less often now, again, no physical symptoms. The tetras seem to be alot better off than the guppies, who all appear heathly for the moment.

Is gas emboli something like 'the bends' that divers get? Never heard of that one before. There are no velvet syptoms either. I will just have to wait and see this time. The friend that I got some of the guppies from says to make sure that the tanks occupants remain isolated from my other tanks. Unless something miracules happens I will stop replying to this thread.
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Thank you all for trying to help.