Emaciation or just thinness is a sign of many things; bacterial, viral, internal parasites or something else. It's not definitive of any 1 disease. I know it's frustrating to have many sudden fish deaths but that's not a helpful sign of what may be wrong. I think your new cardinals brought "something" nasty with them or they could have just been more sensitive to...whatever...
Fish Disease ID & Clean up
- Thread starter Arrow1oo
- Start date
I'm sure they probably bought something. Now I know to QT, just tryna get whatever is in there cleaned out so I don't have to constantly worry about it lingering around. I've seen first hand how fast it can destroy a tank.
Assuming I can't find out what it is, what would be the best way to go about cleaning things
Emaciated, thin, that could just be semantics. The top cory looks thin to me as well, at least on this pic. Fish don't get emaciated or thin over a week, meaning they were weak to begin with and the deaths of the cardinals might be unrelated.
VHS is not a virus that is known for affecting tropical aquarium fish.
VHS is not a virus that is known for affecting tropical aquarium fish.
Your right tl, maybe semantics.
Your plants are not super sensitive to carrying fish diseases that I know of. You could just rinse them in tap water & stick the plants in a bucket of chlorinated tap water in a sunny place & see if any of your fish survive for 3 or 4 weeks...I do understand the desire to "punt" when everything seems to be going wrong, it can be very frustrating. I wish I had better advice.
Your plants are not super sensitive to carrying fish diseases that I know of. You could just rinse them in tap water & stick the plants in a bucket of chlorinated tap water in a sunny place & see if any of your fish survive for 3 or 4 weeks...I do understand the desire to "punt" when everything seems to be going wrong, it can be very frustrating. I wish I had better advice.
Trust me, I GREATLY appreciate all the help you guys are giving right now.
Another update, first time I haven't had a death overnight after a larger than normal water change yesterday. Everyone looking active as usual no symptoms today either. Took some more pictures to see if we could diagnose anything.
My camera isn't amazing and I really sick at taking pictures but Cory's seem healthy so far.
Not sure how relavent it is but when I bought my Cardinals I got 1 accidental green neon tetra. He's very very active swimming around a lot, not sure if this is normal in comparison to my cardinal tetra who is much calmer but he doesn't seem in distress. It's also when I come to the tank so he may be responding to feeding better
This cory still seems thin on these pictures. At least his whiskers are fine. Your substrate is much too coarse for either cories and plants though. Swordtail seems fine on these pics as well. Maybe if you could get some shots of the cories when they're going up the glass going for air, so we can see their bellies?
I did fast yesterday, but usually I dedicated feed with shrimp pellets. While the substrate isn't ideal I've seen it work for some friends before. Should I feed more shrimp pellets.
I use those because they work with the substrate to allow them to eat without the food getting stuck and falling through.
I also have hikari sinking pellets
For how long did you have the cories? The substrate may work for your friends, but it ain't working for the cories. Their natural behavior is to sift through the substrate, so they need something less as ±3mm grain size. They can't move these boulders, pellets eventually fall apart and they can't get to it, they would normally dig in to the substrate to get the food. So chances are you either overfeed to compensate (creating excess waste) or they might not have been able to eat enough, causing them to be thin and weak. I'm not saying either is the case, they are often sold thin and weak, it's a possibility, but the substrate you have is only an extra hurdle, it does have no benefits for either fish or plants.
I've had them for 6 months until the introduction of the disease. I can make a sandy area to try to feed them on soon. Need to have a seperator however between the gravel and sand
You could just put a small dish or something on the gravel and feed there. Maybe they're not underfed, we need more pics of them to see what is going on. It doesn't have to be a infectious disease it could be poor quality fish.
