Everything is poorly. help!!!!

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cecooper

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May 24, 2011
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Hi all need some help,

I have 5 neons, 6 black neons, 3 peppers, 1 albino, 1 common plec, 2 breeding mollies(mixed species) 8 orange coloured fish of which i have no idea and 2 apple snails was 3.

The problem is everything is poorly, the peppers are acting strange, they keep darting to the surface (which i know is normal), but alot more often than they used to. One of the pepper, my largest one, is breathing heavily and seems to off lost its balance. I found him this morning upside down behind the filter he seems to be listing to one side or the other. One of the gold fish seems to off developed some form of abrasion to his side, which i thought at first was itch, but no im not so sure.
The mollies are fine as are the other species.

I had a snail die in the tank while i was at work. I removed her as soon as i got home. but these problems are spiralling from this point about 5 days ago.

I am performing water changes 25% everyday at the moment. Although my amonia is still at 0.25 and it has been like that since day one last Nov. I have cleaned my filter this morning. I have also added stress coat to try to combat the skin illness. Along side a fungus treatment.

I am completely at a loss, i have no idea what is wrong. The water levels are the same as they always have been. Nothing has changed. I feel completely helpless and my fish are what looks like dying.

Please help!!! Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Last edited:

NeonFlux

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Oct 16, 2005
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Hi Cecooper, looks like your tank is not cycled properly. The fish are all experiencing ammonia and nitrite poisoning. I would do larger 40% water changes everyday to keep the toxic wastes at bay. If I were on your shoes, I would find a friend that keeps a fish tank for some filter squeezeings (yeah that brown nasty gunk stuff) is actually what you need to seed and cycle your tank instantly or if you don't have a buddy that owns a tank, I would go to a Local fish shop and ask for a squeezing (Make sure their fish tanks are healthy). After introducing the bacteria, keep checking your ammonia and nitrite levels, they should be at 0ppm a day later, if not, get more of the stuff and put more in until ammonia and nitrite goes away. Good luck and welcome to AquariaCentral.
 

cecooper

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May 24, 2011
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thanks

Hi neon flux thanks for the advice.
I have a second tank so ill take some from there. Are you sure though as like i said i have not had any issues untill that snail died. She was damaged during mating and it was only a matter of time really before she dies.
But like i said im at a loss so anything is useful. Do i put it straight into the water or add it to my filter
 

OliviaBolivia

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Mar 18, 2011
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Near London, England
Hi!

I think you could put your filter squeezings directly into the water, but straight into the filter is probably best. How big is this tank anyway?

So you've had ammonia from day 1? Strange.....if the tank cycled, you should have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and a few nitrates (a reading of say, 5-30). But if you've had ammonia all this time, the fish shouldn't have been doing as well as they have....!? Unless of course the deceased apple snail pushed the ammonia level up again?

I'm not sure why your nitrifying bacteria hasn't developed sufficiently over the period you've had fish in the tank, to be able to handle this bio-load. Lets see.....how often are you cleaning the filter (too often can damage your bacteria cultures)? And when you clean it, do you clean the biological media (i.e the ceramic bits) in tank water, or tap water? And I assume you use a de-chlorinator when you do water changes?

Also, what temp is the water....do you use an air stone at all?

Some of this info might be useful to work out whats goin' on your tank.......
 

cecooper

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May 24, 2011
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Ok this tank has been running for four months. Its size is 125lts.
I have cleaned the filter this morning, but maybe once every two month before that. I used the water from the tank to clean the media's. Strangly enough there was not half as much gunk in there are i would have expected. I'm using the fluval u3 filter. The setting that pushes the bubbles out the top outlet.
I use stress coat as this also de-chlorinates the water and helps the fish.
The water temp is as the moment 81-82.
I donot have a air stone, but is on my list of things to buy.
I have completed three 25% water changes in four days as a just in case anything from the dead snail was hanging around.
Ill try and post a picture of the tank see if that helps.
Cheers for your help.

fish 020.JPG fish 019.JPG
 

cecooper

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May 24, 2011
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I have a better picture of the poorly pepper, but its still not great. He is still listing but not going to surface as much.

fish 025.JPG fish 026.JPG
 

silentcircuit

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Mar 3, 2011
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The orange fish are some kind of barb. The damage to its side looks like an abrasion as you said, but there could easily be some kind of secondary infection with a wound that large. Any idea how he got it? Regardless, you should set up a quarantine tank and treat the hurt barb with antibiotics as soon as possible. Do not treat in the display tank! Many antibiotics for fish will also kill the good bacteria you're trying to establish to deal with ammonia and nitrite converting it to nitrate.

The pleco is still pretty small looking, so he shouldn't be an issue yet. 125 liters is about 33 gallons. That's not large enough for a common or high-fin spotted pleco long term. If you want a pleco I'd recommend you rehome or trade him in and get a bushynose pleco. Those stay much smaller. The common / high-fin pleco can reach 12+". Your other fish should be fine in that tank long term, so you're actually doing better than most in that respect.

81-82 is really the absolute top of the range for these fish. They'd probably do better around 76-77. It doesn't seem like a big difference, but it can be. Also higher temperature water has less oxygen in it, and since your corys seem to be surfacing a lot lowering the temperature might help that. Also, higher temperature water leads to the fishes' metabolisms running faster, so they need to eat more and produce more waste. Lower the tank temperature if possible in to the mid to upper 70s over the course of a day or two. That may help.

Do you know if you have ammonia in your tap water? Around here we do, so I have to use a dechlorinator that also deals with that. I don't know where you're located (I'd assume outside the US since you didn't use gallons for tank volume) so I don't know what's available there, but I recommend Seachem Prime. If you can get Seachem products there I'd also recommend you get some Stability and dose as if this is a new tank until ammonia drops to 0 where it should be.
 

tolawdjk

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Sep 8, 2010
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Also, are you running test strips or the liquid test kit? Are you actually at .25 or is that just the "bottom" reading for your ammonia...are you seeing an actual color change with the test?

The wound on that barb looks bacterial. If possible, segregate into a QT tank. Even one of the larger couple gallon disposable "tupperware" containers would be acceptable as long as you are dilligent on water changes. I would treat with marcyn 1 and marcyn 2 in the smaller container, rather than the entire tank.

Long term, besides thinking what to do about the pleco who will out grow that tank, you might want to consider additional filtration. A HOB or canister will give you more capacity for the nitrogen cycle and help get that ammonia number lower. As a general rule, if I am finding sick fish in my tank, I try and not muck too much with the filtration unless signs point to it clearly being the problem. The best thing to help 90% of problems we find in our tanks is solid water quality and that can't happen unless the filtration is running at full potential.

I'm thinking, and this is mostly a WAG on my part, that your issues are stemming from TDS issues. Cories seem to be the canary in the coal mine on these things and seem to exhibit the behavoir you describe when water quality takes a dip. Couple that with the wound on the barb and the apple snail and I think your water quality hit a tipping point that started the snowball. Up the WCs, see about backing off a bit on the bioload and increasing your filtration, seperate and treat the obviously ill fish.
 

OliviaBolivia

AC Members
Mar 18, 2011
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Near London, England
Just to add to the above, I'll second the comment re corys....they always show tell-tale symptoms first, I lost 4 when my Fluval U2 wasn't working properly in my 20 gal. :(. I've replaced with an external canister now.

Was also going to say that your temp might be somewhat high for corydoras, they prefer much lower temps of around 24 C/75 F. I keep my rams at 80F, so I moved my corydoras into another tank at 75F!

Can't help with identification of the barbs I'm afraid, someone will though.

Good luck, will be interested to see your updates.....
 

cecooper

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May 24, 2011
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Wow thanks everyone. Loads of ideas i will give them all ago one at a time. I will qt the ill fish although over the day he seems to be getting better. (Plus side).
I neevr thought about the water temp speeding things up. Its seems obvious now you have said it.
I have added the sludge from my other tank to this one so see if that helps.
I use a test kits not the strips. the water changes to a yellow colour which shows up as being 0.25 or below. I would say its below that but its hard to tell.
I know about the pleco, i intend to get a bigger tank in about 6 to 8 months. But im working my way up. This is my second tank.
I have lowered the temp by one so will leave that for a day and then lower again.
The barbs were spawning and he became damaged will it was going on.
One point someone did make today was there could not be a huge amount wrong with the water as the barbs have spawnd and the mollie is pregnant again. They recon fish dont breed if the water is not correct. Not sure on that though. Will keep you posted thanks again
 
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