hello all, i am new here and this is my first post. i have kind of a weird dillema with my fish, and it's kind of long but if any of you have the time i'd appreciate if you can give me some sort of insight on this problem of mine, but let me tell you the basic point of it: i am basically just wondering if my fish have internal parasites or not.
around august, i bought some african cichlids, all of them peacocks. being as irresponsible as i am, i did not quarantine them and i just put them in my tank (i figured it'd be fine). one of them died within 2 days. everything remained fine for a while, and then i got 3 more africans. i noticed within a few days that one of them had a sunken belly. then a few days later it looked like my original peacock that i bought started looking skinny. i would wait around in my basement for a long time after feeding them 3 times daily to see if they would poop, but none of them ever would, but occasionally i did see stringy looking feces floating in the water.
i then treated my entire tank with a metronidazole bath, using a product called metro+ and i made medicated food with it. i treated the tank for a week and fed medicated food for 2 weeks. after the first week, i began thinking about something: most of the time, my clown loaches will chase my cichlids away from the food and take all the food themselves practically, so my cichlids could not get as much food as the clowns no matter what.
i then decided to quarantine every fish i suspected had a problem, and then i took them to my work. i continued to feed the medicated food to them for one more week (making it 3 weeks total that i was feeding it to them). after that week, i noticed my red-tailed shark had some really stringy poo, so i decided to take the shark up there and QT him too. once quarantined, i just fed him regular food to see what happens. 3 days later (yesterday) he was quite a bit fatter. in 3 days he gained all that weight with no medicated food, and in the meantime all of my cichlids are fat again as well.
i ended up getting a UV sterilizer for this tank and it's been in there for about a week and a half now, and i was assuming everything is fine until last night, when i saw some stringy poo floating around in my fish tank again, and i've seen more stringy poo today.
so here's the whole dillema: all my fish seem fine, all the quarantined fish seemed to have gained their weight back rather rapidly, and all i wonder is: did i even have internal parasites in the first place? should i really to worry about if it just seems like maybe my fish just aren't getting enough to eat due to my loaches chasing all of my fish away from the food? am i just being a "fish hypochondriac"?
as for their diet, i feed a variety of food to all of my fish, including cichlid pellets, flake food, blood worms, algae waefers, tubifex worms, shrimp pellets. the medicated food i made was mainly cichlid pellets with some algae wafers and blood worms in the mix.
the reason i ask this is just because i have not really had any fish die besides one of my africans but nothing even seemed to be wrong with it. this has been a long time i have been dealing with this problem (if i even have a problem) but the only thing i realize is that none of my fish have died from any internal parasite symptoms, so do i really have a problem?
i figured if the problem is internal parasites, then it sure seems like they are a pain to get rid of, and i was sort of thinking it'd be nice if you guys had a good in-depth article of the proper steps to deal with them (especially if you have planted aquarium because i fear the problem may have lingered to my other tank). everywhere says i should use metronidazole, but honestly i don't think it really worked for me, unless i was doing it wrong.
if any of you have time to actually read all this i highly appreciate it
around august, i bought some african cichlids, all of them peacocks. being as irresponsible as i am, i did not quarantine them and i just put them in my tank (i figured it'd be fine). one of them died within 2 days. everything remained fine for a while, and then i got 3 more africans. i noticed within a few days that one of them had a sunken belly. then a few days later it looked like my original peacock that i bought started looking skinny. i would wait around in my basement for a long time after feeding them 3 times daily to see if they would poop, but none of them ever would, but occasionally i did see stringy looking feces floating in the water.
i then treated my entire tank with a metronidazole bath, using a product called metro+ and i made medicated food with it. i treated the tank for a week and fed medicated food for 2 weeks. after the first week, i began thinking about something: most of the time, my clown loaches will chase my cichlids away from the food and take all the food themselves practically, so my cichlids could not get as much food as the clowns no matter what.
i then decided to quarantine every fish i suspected had a problem, and then i took them to my work. i continued to feed the medicated food to them for one more week (making it 3 weeks total that i was feeding it to them). after that week, i noticed my red-tailed shark had some really stringy poo, so i decided to take the shark up there and QT him too. once quarantined, i just fed him regular food to see what happens. 3 days later (yesterday) he was quite a bit fatter. in 3 days he gained all that weight with no medicated food, and in the meantime all of my cichlids are fat again as well.
i ended up getting a UV sterilizer for this tank and it's been in there for about a week and a half now, and i was assuming everything is fine until last night, when i saw some stringy poo floating around in my fish tank again, and i've seen more stringy poo today.
so here's the whole dillema: all my fish seem fine, all the quarantined fish seemed to have gained their weight back rather rapidly, and all i wonder is: did i even have internal parasites in the first place? should i really to worry about if it just seems like maybe my fish just aren't getting enough to eat due to my loaches chasing all of my fish away from the food? am i just being a "fish hypochondriac"?
as for their diet, i feed a variety of food to all of my fish, including cichlid pellets, flake food, blood worms, algae waefers, tubifex worms, shrimp pellets. the medicated food i made was mainly cichlid pellets with some algae wafers and blood worms in the mix.
the reason i ask this is just because i have not really had any fish die besides one of my africans but nothing even seemed to be wrong with it. this has been a long time i have been dealing with this problem (if i even have a problem) but the only thing i realize is that none of my fish have died from any internal parasite symptoms, so do i really have a problem?
i figured if the problem is internal parasites, then it sure seems like they are a pain to get rid of, and i was sort of thinking it'd be nice if you guys had a good in-depth article of the proper steps to deal with them (especially if you have planted aquarium because i fear the problem may have lingered to my other tank). everywhere says i should use metronidazole, but honestly i don't think it really worked for me, unless i was doing it wrong.
if any of you have time to actually read all this i highly appreciate it
