Help me save Malawi Cichlid PLease

[Dragonmommy]

HI all, I have been MIA from here for many moons now, its a LONG story. Anyhoo, My Malawi tank lost 1/3 of its population because we lost all our plumbing in the more toxic part of the tank re-cycling (also long story)
Since then everything has gone great, till today. I noticed my smallest Malawi was looking pretty battered. I quickly did a full (80%) water change (was planning to anyhow) and restarted up the hospital tank. Now this fish is swimming every way but right side up, he is all battered, missing scales, and his tail end (not tail itself) is red and inflamed looking, all his fins looks like thay are battered too. You can tell he IS trying really hard to live.
What can I do for now? I have Maroxy on hand and thats it, I found this problem 5 minutes after the pet stored closed and may not be able to get there till late tomorrow because we are getting a ton of snow at the moment and hubby will have to take the truck in the morning and go plow.

I am pretty sure the fish may die... but if there is a chance of saving him I would like to try.

I dont have water parameters for you because as I started the clean out I forgot... I am pregnant and I tend to forget my own name when I am pregnant. The temp is normal, but there is red stuff algae (???) growing like crazy in that tank. Speaking of the reddish stuff, anyone know what it is? Harmless or harmful? What if anything can I do? The snails and sucker fish arent handling it for me... in fact I have lost 90% of my snail population, also when I had the plumbing issue. I have a few ramshorn snails left, all my trupet snails are survived (thrived in fact)... but the apple snails, mystery snails are dead. The big ole apple snail I have left seems to be dormant right now but I am pretty sure he-she is not dead. Could this all be related?

I know this is a mess of problems... like I said... a lot of long stories involved. Thanks for any help you may have.
PLease don't attack me and tell me I haven't taken care of my tank or something because I have done everything I could being as sick as I have been so far in this pregnancy... then had all the plumbing problems ect.

[graysilm]

give him some salt in the H.T. and hopefuly he will make it until tommorow. Leave the light off, and try not to check on him too much. I had a similar situation and i was 99.999% sure my Mbuba cichlid was going to die but i transfered him to a hospital tank and treated him with a product called APPLUS Anti Bacteria, and followed their exact instructions. After about day three he still wasn't doing well, but on about day five, he was doing much better, and is thriving today. I do wish you and your fish the best of luck.

[Dragonmommy]

What kind of salt and how much? I think I have sea salt in the kitchen. I have never used salt before
Thanks!

[Roan Art]

Never use sea salt in a FW tank. Just use table salt.

I'd really like to be able to help you, but really can't without your water parameters.

See if you can get to your LFS today and pick up a test tube kit.

Roan

[Dragonmommy]

I have a test kit, but I forgot to test the water before i changed it. I am pregnant and just plain forget things, lots of things. Its bad. I was just so interested in fixing my fish that I forgot to test. Besides that, the water should have been fine. This also happened overnight, like yesterday the fish was fine, eating and swimming, looked great, today he was suddenly a mess.
Its no matter now, my fishie passed away sometime in the last half hour. Considering all the other fish are doing great I think he just got his butt kicked, became the underdog... he was the smallest.
I never added any salt, I think all we have is sea salt anyway, no regular salt... I should buy some just because its good to have.

Thank you though.
Still wondering about the algae and snail death thing though.

[liv2padl]

Never use sea salt in a FW tank. Just use table salt. why not? the Rift Lake salt content is probably far closer to "sea salt" than table salt. the latter of course, is just plain NaCl. sea salt on the other hand, is:

Element ppm

Chloride, Cl 19,500
Sodium, Na 10,770
Magnesium, Mg 1,290
Sulphur, S 905
Calcium, Ca 412
Potassium, K 380
Bromine, Br 67
Carbon, C 28
Nitrogen, N 11.5
Strontium, Sr 8
Oxygen, O 6
Boron, B 4.4
Silicon, Si 2
Fluorine, F 1.3
Argon, Ar 0.43
Lithium, Li 0.18
Rubidium, Rb 0.12
Phosphorus, P 0.06
Iodine, I 0.06
Barium, Ba 0.02
Molybdenium, Mo 0.01
Arsenic, As 0.0037
Uranium, U 0.0032
Vanadium, V 0.0025
Titanium, Ti 0.001
Zinc, Zn 0.0005
Nickel, Ni 0.00048
Aluminium, Al 0.0004
Cesium, Cs 0.0004
Chromium, Cr 0.0003
Antimony, Sb 0.00024
Krypton, Kr 0.0002
Selenium, Se 0.0002
Neon, Ne 0.00012
Manganese, Mn 0.0001
Cadmium, Cd 0.0001
Copper, Cu 0.0001
Tungsten, W 0.0001
Iron, Fe 0.000055
Xenon, Xe 0.00005
Zirconium, Zr 0.00003
Bismuth, Bi 0.00002
Niobium, Nb 0.00001
Thallium, Tl 0.00001
Thorium, Th 0.00001
Hafnium, Hf 7 x 10-6
Helium, He 6.8 x 10-6
Beryllium, Be 5.6 x 10-6
Germanium, Ge 5 x 10-6
Gold, Au 4 x 10-6
Rhenium, Re 4 x 10-6
Cobalt, Co 3 x 10-6
Lanthanum, La 3 x 10-6
Neodymium, Nd 3 x 10-6
Lead, Pb 2 x 10-6
Silver, Ag 2 x 10-6
Tantalum, Ta 2 x 10-6
Gallium, Ga 2 x 10-6
Yttrium, Y 1.3 x 10-6
Mercury, Hg 1 x 10-6
Cerium, Ce 1 x 10-6
Dysprosium, Dy 9 x 10-7
Erbium, Er 8 x 10-7
Ytterbium, Yb 8 x 10-7
Gadolinium, Gd 7 x 10-7
Praseodymium, Pr 6 x 10-7
Scandium, Sc 6 x 10-7
Tin, Sn 6 x 10-7
Holmium, Ho 2 x 10-7
Lutetium, Lu 2 x 10-7
Thulium, Tm 2 x 10-7
Indium, In 1 x 10-7
Trebium, Tb 1 x 10-7
Palladium, Pd 5 x 10-8
Samarium, Sm 5 x 10-8
Tellurium, Te 1 x 10-8
Europium, Eu 1 x 10-8
Radium, Ra 7 x 10-11
Protactinium, Pa 5 x 10-11
Radon, Rn 6 x 10-16

lotsa good stuff in that sea salt. can't hurt the fish and can add some important chemistry to both brackish and Rift Lake environments.

[Roan Art]

why not? the Rift Lake salt content is probably far closer to "sea salt" than table salt.
.....
lotsa good stuff in that sea salt. can't hurt the fish and can add some important chemistry to both brackish and Rift Lake environments.

Good case for the fact that this should be posted in the Cichlids Forum, eh? ;) Sounds like she's not using any salt at all in the tank. Dunno.

Seriously, Dragonmommy, if you have a cichlids problem, you really should post in the Cichlids Forum.

Can you test the water as it is now? Really need *some* sort of information if you want answers to the snail problem.

Thanks,
Roan

[stingray4540]

from what it sounds like, I think she has sea salt in lue of table salt, like for eating and not the sea salt sold in the fish store for marine tanks. That being said, I don't know what the difference is between sea salt meant for human consumtion and aquarium sea salt, if any.

[ghinksmon]

Dragonmommy,

I keep coming back to your "plumbing" problems. Do you mean household plumbing or aquarium plumbing? If you recently had new piping installed in the house you likely have elevated copper which is poisonous to invertebrates. Other chemicals from flux, solder, chlorination etc. could cause problems.

[Dragonmommy]

Well first of all, I didnt find the cichlid forum till this morning, I was very tired and not all "there" when I posted yesterday. The moderator can move the thread, doesn't matter to me. I used to belong to 3 different aquarium chat places and only 1 had a dedicated chichlid forum, could not remember if it was this one and I did look, but just didn't see it. I am a bit sleep deprived on top of everything else.

There is no salk in my tank, only salt we have is for eating, in the kitchen. I do mean sea salt for seasoning, not a reef tank.

As for plumbing, I mean the house, not the tank. We didn't get any new pipes but we lost water for a week and could not run any water down the drain. I did attempt to do a partial change by bringing water outside and dumping it and getting some from the bathroom sink, but it was next to impossible and I was getting shooting pains from lifting the water, not knowing I had just become pregnant at the time. My husband had a work accident involving his hand and a drill press, so he was unable to carry water for me. The FIRST thing I did when the water came back was wash the dishes to clean the sink then clean the tank. I didn't know about the new pipes thing, so thats good to know for when they finally do geat around to re-doing the plumbing in this dump.