This has got to be my last problem

G

goozy

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Dec 14, 2002
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Please note that I am very embarassed about these problems that I am having but I must try and find out what I did wrong and try and fix it. I have 6 aquariums which all came about in just a little over a year.
This has been going on for a while. I had a baby molly tank which I accidentally overfeed the babies and some kind of a disease took over where many of them got real thin and some developed bent spines. All the ones affected died a while ago. There was a chinese algea eater that I gave away recently because he was unaffected. and he was going after all the fish
Then I had a disease in another tank with my rainbows and a purple stripe gudgeon and a couple of misc. fish. The rainbows died. One of the fish left was a male sailfin molly. Also left is the gudgeon and an orange chromide. the molly bothered them and they ganged up on him and tried to kill him. They ripped of his dorsal fin, only rays were sticking up. I put him in the baby tank because there was no where else to put him but he started acting very strange, he was hanging in the back, almost vertically. He acts normal when being fed.
I tryed to replace my rainbows but one had mouth fungus and was very ill. I put him in there too. ( I know, I should have quarentined them all but they looked so good when I got them)
Here's the problem. The skin on the molly looks really strange. he has some patches that look like they are scaleless and hard but the same color as his normal skin. ONe other observation. The algea eater was always trying to suck the slime coat off of him. the rainbow also looks very wierd at some angles and lighting. HIs skin looks like it has some dull, bluish tinited patches that aren't nice and shiney like it should be. His mouth fungus is 99% gone and he is very active.
It doesn't stop there. In another tank I had three dwarf rainbows. I got them months ago. When I first got them one of the female turned sort of a goldish colored and died with in a couple of hours. The remaining two did very well for months but then the day before yesterday I noticed that the second female wasn't eating and looked kind of colorless. I wanted to put all the rainbows together but today she was swimming upside down and I had to euthanize her. The male is still unaffected and no other fish are affected.
In the baby tank the nitrite is 0, ammonia is 0 ph is 7.4 the nitrate is 5.0
In the tank where the dwarf rainbows lived the nitrite is .25 ( I know I have to fix that) the ammonia is 0 the nitrate is 0 and the ph is 7.8. This tank is my newest of the 6 tanks.
I know I'm an idiot.
:o :o :o
 
I forgot to mention

The other rainbows are new guinea red rainbow.
I just did a 50% water change on the baby tank and the other tank where the neon rainbows were
 
Geezzzzz you wore me out reading that....;)

Somethings wrong definately.....maybe water quality and adding deseases to your communities with new fish. Overfeeding fish will not give them bent spines though overfeeding will raise amonia levels and maybe kill fish.

Do you have a hopsital or quaratine tank?

Re check those readings.

Where are you getting all these sick fish at? 'Cause you may want to shop elsewhere.

Do you use any salt?

Chinese algae eaters can be aggressive......they need a variety of food.
 
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1. Get a fresh ammonia test kit and do very careful procedures. Some of your problems are NH3 related.

2. "Nipped" fins are more usually eroded, sometimes by ammonia, sometimes by bacteria following skin parasites.

3. Time to get a good basic book. Read the material here and at www.thekrib.com

4. Perhaps you have too many kinds of fish, and too many of them, in tanks that aren't big enough.

5. Don't strip down your tanks. One by one, as they are empty, run them for a month without any fish in them. Get some easy floating plants. Don't add ammonia or canned bacteria. Get one tank running healthy.

6. Start feeding your fish half what you give them now, and if that seems like not enough, make it one-third.
 
They seem better now

The rainbow with the wierd skin looks much better now that I did a big water change. I still don't know about the mollies, what ever's wrong seems to affect them more then anyone else. The male is 2 years old and maybe at the end of his life.
Actually the two 37 gallon tanks are in good shape now, no sick fish. it's this baby tank that had the problem but I think the water change helped. The only fish that died was the female neon rainbow. I think it was from overfeeding and the nitrite rose to .25 ( this was in a 16 gallon tank) then I had the bright idea of putting her in with the other rainbows in the 37 g tank (plan on upgrading to a 75 or 90 in the spring), it may have been to much for her. the male is still ok. I have to admit that I got some fish at petco. :o BAD BAD BAD
I am trying to cut down on the food which I really think has caused alot of problems. (I hate to see anything go hungry. )
The hoses for my canister filter were filled with crud so I rinsed them out, it was disgusting and I think some nasty bacteria had to be growing in there.
 
...

with 6 tanks do you have appropriate size filters for all of them?

if water changes helped dont go changing %75 of the water in every tank at once. %25 at a time is safe so you dont cause any sudden enviromental changes, even if they are slightly bad at the moment.

i try not to keep any more than 3 species of fish in the same tank together just to be sure they are compatible.

from my experience in breeding black mollies, they are weak fish and prone to disease. from what i hear they only do well long-term in brackish tanks.
 
Boy do I have filters!!

I have an emperor 400 on one 37 gallon, a rena filstar xp 2 on the other 37. I have an aquaclear mini on the 5 1/2, an emperor 280 on the 20 gallon. A penguin 125 on the ten gallon baby tank and a penguin 125 on the 16 gallon and a wisper 15 on the 2 1/2.
No, I woun't change that much of the water on all the tanks. I never change more then 50% at a time and usually if I am in cleaning mode I do 30% every other day or so. Not on all tanks, just ones with problems.
The mollies are creamsickle sailfins. They were in the 37 gallon tank originally with a sword tail and pleco. there's alot of salt added but I'm not sure what makes a tank brackish as opposed to freshwater with salt added. The female had hundreds of babies but passed away during child birth, the male wore out the remaining female. When the mollies are all gone I will never have any again. They breed way too much.
In the end I will have rainbows and a purple stripe gudgeon, a pleco and an orange chromide. I still have a really old female swordtail in there at this time but she woun't live much longer.
 
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