Friend has two sick fish, Please Advise.

[mduros]

I have never seen a Tetra with a fin falling off then where it falled off it leave a black spot. Also I have never seen the brownish spots, like ich, on a Gouramis before.

How often have you dealt with fish in tanks that have NEVER seen water changes??? I hope your answer is that you have never seen it before...
Take care,
Mary.

 

[DaisyTattoo]

Yep, glad I am in the newbie forum, because I got alot to learn, thanks again guys. I just talked to him and he did say that his nitrates are perfect, 0ppm, as well the ammonia and nitrite are also 0ppm. That is about as far as I got, because he is not too concerned about the little guys I hope I can talk some sense into him.

I hate to be the one to break the news, but if your friend never does water changes...he is either lying about the nitrites, nitrates, and ammonia..or else he has a bad test kit. Tell him to check the date. I do regular water changes 50% and my nitrates are still at 10-20ppm. Something is a little fishy here :laugh:

 

[Kiel'thalin]

How often have you dealt with fish in tanks that have NEVER seen water changes??? I hope your answer is that you have never seen it before...
Take care,
Mary.

Never seen a tank without a water change every now and again, I had them when I was growing up, but that was over 6 years ago, my father maintained them though and he did do water changes regularly, I didn't know why until now.
I am most defiently sure that his tester is good, his fish are just acting strange and coming down with these ailments, so the advice would be to treat the tank as an OTS problem from your experiences?

 

[budrecki]

take a sample of the water to your lfs for testing as a backup...

are there plants in the tank?

 

[Roan Art]

so the advice would be to treat the tank as an OTS problem from your experiences?

ABSOLUTELY.

There is NO WAY in hello kitty that he could skip water changes and not have OTS.

So, regardless of his nitrate readings, if he has not done any water changes in a year -- or only a few water changes -- he has OTS.

At this point of decline any new fish he adds will go into osmotic shock and die almost instantly.

Guaranteed.

Roan

 

[Rbishop]

Would like to repeat the advice on the test kit.

Test strips? That are inaccurate to begin with but still may be outdated?

Liquid kit that is more accurate but could be expired?

Good idea to back up the testing with a reliable LFS; get exact readings, not an "it's okay".