3 fish deaths in 5 days... help.

I wouldn't recommend a large water change since the fish may have gotten somewhat use to the salinity of the water..you might shock the fish(osmotic pressures may have changes a bit).

how did you acclimate the gourami's?
it is possible you could have gotten bad stock from the LFS.

did you get the gouramis from a large petstore? if you did you have to consider that they may not have had the fish long enough to aclimate to their water..then sold you the fish that then needed to try and adapt to your water?
 
I don't think it is the salt. I use aquarium salt in my tank to treat ich when I think there is a possible outbreak. It has worked wonders for me and saved fish from death. When I had Black Mollies I used salt to keep them healthy and happy, as black mollies are more prone to getting sick. I have also seen where fish will stop eating and fade away at the bottom. I have not figured out what the cause was accept maybe it was already sick when I got it from the store.
 
hmmm... salt is good for treatments as i already mentioned in my previous post like when there is ich but i really dont think it should be a regular additive for a tank.. some fish can tolerate salt.. but others can't... black mollies can i think.. some of em can live in brackish environments...

but here is what i witnessed with salt on a friends pond...
he did put some salt... 1tsp for every 5 gallons... the tinfoil barbs in it stopped eating.. stopped swimming... some crashed at the bottom very lethargic.. others were just floating or withering away... after a few days... fins started to have red streaks and fins started to rot...

after performing 3 days of back to back h2o changes, fish became active again.. started to eat again.. red streaks slowly disappeared.. and fins started to regrow..

btw same thing happened to goldfish and koi
but nothing happened when it was done to a flower horn

so i dont really know..
maybe its the salt and maybe its not

btw my neighbor has a pond with hundreds or thousands of black mollies.. he doesn't use salt.. so maybe its not really a requirement?
:huh:
 
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I'm having a similar experince, but with Pearl's. Water parameters are Ammonia = 0, Nitrite = 0, Nitrtates = 10, ph = 7.8, 20% changed weekly with dechlorinator. They looked healthy from the shop, acclimitised them with the drip method (did 2 buckets over an hour) - put them in and they swam around for a bit. The next morning they were on the bottom, following day the male's hiding and the female's still pottering around the bottom.

The only thing I can think of is thermal stress, as the tank was 84 (due to high ambient temps atm) - although is now around 80 with the help of fans, hood open, windows open, blind down.

Only time will tell I think. :shark:
 
it could be the tiger barbs. they are fin-nippers and bullies, so the long fin barb and potentially the gouramis are targets for them. The may have been overly harrassed by the barbs.
 
khombre, the fact that blck mollies need salt is a myth, same for ebery other freshwater fish. Yes, mollies can and do live in brackish in the wild, but aquarium salt does not produce brackish, you need marine mix for that, and they will be fine in freshwater anyway.
 
dorkfish said:
khombre, the fact that blck mollies need salt is a myth, same for ebery other freshwater fish. Yes, mollies can and do live in brackish in the wild, but aquarium salt does not produce brackish, you need marine mix for that, and they will be fine in freshwater anyway.
Click to expand...

that's what i think as well.. :)
i don't put salt unless i have to treat something like ich
 
I used aquarium salt and my Black Mollies seemed to be happy and healthy. I did use it to cure Ich and then just kept it because they were happy. I eventually got rid of them because I was tired of all the babies, and didn't have the space to raise all the babies.
 
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Well, if you bought them all from a single shop, it's possible that they were already dying. either from a disease or exposure to toxins.
 
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