Had Enough!

M

Mini Me

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Jan 4, 2003
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I am getting fed up with fishkeeping as nothing seems to go right for me. I have a 300liter tank (48"x20"x24") which has been set-up for around a year now, I do weekly water changes (with dechlorinator) of around 70 liters along with gravel vacing and alternate week filter cleaning (I have 2 big filters on it, 1 internal fluval jumbo and 1 external fluval 304) one week I clean the internal and the next i clean the external and so on. Its a planted tank with DIY Co2 and the plants are growing fine. Dispite all my best efforts at tank maintenance, even at this point in time I have multiple diseases in the tank and its really getting me down. Some of the fish have white spot, some have fin rot and some have some kind of white fungal growth, and ontop of all that I have some wierd 'worm' things living in my gravel. The livestock in the tank are :
2 angelfish
2 clown loaches (2")
4 african butterfly cichlids (1-1.5")
2 blue acaras (2")
2 ottos
2 swordtails
7 herlequins (altho i suspect one has died as I havent seen it for a while)
8 rummy noses
2 neon tetras (again I think one has died)
2 bristlenoses
2 apistogramma agassizi
1 jade eye cichlid (is that the same as blue eye cichlid?) (2")

As u can see the tank is deffinatly not over stocked as they'r all small at the moment, and even when they'r fully grown that will be an ok tank stocking level yes?
The water parameters are pH : 7.2, Ammonia 0, NitrAte 0 most of the time, NitrIte 0, GH 7, KH 3-4. and tap water is the same but with pH 7.6
I have tried treating with melafix which didnt seem to do much and also have tried a white spot treatment and raised the temp to 82F (normally 79F) which seems to have helped somewhat

Can anyone see what i'm doing wrong here? :mad: :confused: :mad:
 
Originally posted by Mini Me
1 jade eye cichlid (is that the same as blue eye cichlid?) (2")
Click to expand...

I'll have to mull over the more important aspects of the question, but this mini-question's answer is yes. Both are Archocentros spilurum.
 
Which fish have the disease? You will be a bit overstocked when they reach adulthood (but the Angels will take care of most tetras when adult-tetras are perfectly swallow sized). The only problem I see is ya do have a lot of Cichlids and then keeping them with known peaceful fish such as tetras can be a bit stressful. I agree as to question what the diet is since everything else seems to be okay. I'm kinda suprised you don't have any nitrate (even though it is a planted tank) with that many fish. Might just be my opinion but yah. Anyway, hope this helps and it will help us to know what fish have what disease.
 
I would guess that it's a compatibility-stress related problem, as far as the diseases. It certainly isn't over stocked, but maybe someone is being harrassed all the time. It just takes one, it seems, to upset everything. Melafix is usually great for repairing fins and mild fungal troubles. Parasites and diseases sometimes take 2-3 weeks to fully eradicate. As far as the little wigglers in your gravel, aren't those some sort of nematode?? I'm surprised the clown loach hasn't eaten them all. And aren't they a sign of overfeeding? Maybe try siphoning a bit more to get rid of them? Have you tested other levels in the tank, like oxygen?
 
ok, I think this is a stress problem...even semi aggresive cichlids like the jade eye and acara are too much for peaceful fish like the neons and the harlequin (I am assuming this is a harlequin rasbora??) .

Anyway, i am goign to say you need to decide if you want to have the cichlids or the tetras and then remove which ever side you dont decide on.

I would say the diseases are coming from the cichlids stressing out the more timid fish and the diseases then spread to the other fish.

Plus the acara get to 8inchs and the jade eye get to about 5 inchs...at this length they will start inhaling the tetras and probably trying to eat the harlequins too. Plus the angels are the natural predators of the neons and cardinals.

It may not be what you want to hear but I am sure that is where the problem is coming from...

The other possiblity I can think of is that you bought your fish from a bad petstore where they got the diseases. however you said you had the fish for 1 year? did you recently add any fish??

i hope this helps
 
Thanks for the help all.

Two things I missed off the list is 6 guppys and 1 oapline gourami.

Ill try and remember which fish have what, one of the bristlenoses has some sort of whife fingal patch on its head inbetween the bristles, the neon tetra also has a similar patch but that may ne neon tetra disease. Fish that had white spot are : 1 angelfish, 1 clown locah 2 acaras a few rummy's. The fin rot killed 3 male guppys, and 2 female which left me with 5 female and 1 male, of which the last male has finrot, but this was no ordinary fin rot, it was some super finrot, it would strip the fish of its fins overnight! (and this was before I had most of the cichlids, just the apisto's) but the finrot in the now seems tobe the normal one. Regarding the worm thing I posted pics here

I got the 4 butterflys, 2 acaras and the jade eye about a month ago, but even before then the fish have had diseases and those fish came from a ver reputable place, which was voted best retailer 2002.

As far as the aggression theory, the angels used to chase the guppys away, but that was ages ago like 4 months or something and they dont bother any of the fish now. I havent seen any aggression from the other cichlids. The one fish that I have seen chase another is the gourami chasing the jade eye when i first got the jade eye but that seems to have stopped now

I feed the fish a mix of King British flakes, hagen(i think) algae flakes,King British freeze dried bloodworm, hikari cichlid pellets, Kin British sinking catfish pellets and last week I got some frozen blood worms. How much I peu in is once a day I put a sprinkle of the flakes, algae flakes and a small amount of freeze dried bloodworms (mixed in one tub), about 10-15 of the small cichlid pellets and about 8-10 of the catfish pellets(those small round brown colour ones), and I will now probably give them a cube of frozen bloodworms each week. All of the food seems to be eaten strait away. If I was over feeding then there would be nirite or ammonia in the water wouldnt there?

Thanks fo ryour help everyone
 
8-10 cat fish pellets a day is quite a lot! It takes them a long time to eat one, so I can imagine 7-9 others wasting away. I would recommend feeding two, twice a day. Other wise it's making a lot of excess waste.
 
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