Something is killing my fish

december_wind

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Nov 1, 2005
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Georgetown, Ontario
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not sure what's going on in my 30 gallon plant tank. Last week I noticed one harlequin rasbora was losing it's balance, dorsal fin was tipping either right or left till it was upside down most of the time. Figured it was an isolated issue and didn't worry too much about it. A week later I'm down from 9 harlequins to 2 to the same thing and a rhummy nose tetra is losing weight. Of course there are inverts in that tank.... So I netted as many as I could and moved them to my quarantine tank which is having it's own problems right now, for treatment. Tossed in Jungle parasite fizz tabs and am trying to feed Jungle parasite food (why do they make those pellets so hard?) I have no idea what's wrong with them, the only addition since december was a twig catfish and that was in April.
 
Sorry to hear it... This kind of thing can be frustrating. What are your water parameters?
 
no changes in colouration or bloating that you can see?
sounds like it could be a number of different things

now to isolate what it is...is not going to be easy

I'm sorry for your losses :(
 
Nope colouration is still bright even after death and the harlequins don't lose weight. Just one rhummy nose and in the quarantine tank 2 platies are losing weight, one now has a lump on his side that make him look like he's got one sided dropsy. Will get water specs in a few hours.
 
Does sound like parasites of some kind. Soak the pellets a bit in a container before feeding. It softens them so the fish can eat them easier.
 
PH - 7.6
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0-.5 (I suck at judging colours)
KH - 11
GH - 8ish

I use mostly R.O water. I live in cichlid heaven.

The big question, since I have inverts can I move all the fish to a quarantine tank and leave it plant and invert only for whatever length of time in order to kill off anything in there? Or do can inverts carry parasites easily?
 
When you say you "use mostly RO water"-what do you mean by that? How much RO water? If you're using too much and your kh is too low that would cause the problems you're seeing. The Jungle tabs won't hurt but I just don't think that's your problem.
 
When you say you "use mostly RO water"-what do you mean by that? How much RO water? If you're using too much and your kh is too low that would cause the problems you're seeing.

Low KH! Hah! This is something I dream about. I refer to my water as liquid rock. The whole region is like this. I work at a large chain petstore so I see water tests from all over the place. Our GH and Kh are off the charts.

A water change in this tank involves a 5 gallon barrel going in and the last inch or so of space being topped up with tap water with a squirt of additives for RO water users in this exact situation (called RO Right? By Kent?). According to Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc. I'm still outside the range of "live plants, tetras and Angels".
 
If you're adding some tap water, you don't need the "RO right". It only contains the same stuff as tap water does."0
 
Yeah I know I haven't used it in ages, though I might go back to completely ro water cause my ph, kh, and gh are still high for what I"m keeping, anyways, lost another two fish... So I gave up and put them back in the original tank with the softer water cause the quarantine tank wasn't doing them any good. I've had the fish since Dec 26th. Any diseases that can lie dormant that long?
 
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