Everything is Dying!!

[bibbles]

Alright, so I have a 90 gallon tank and a 20 gallon, a female endler in the 90 got what looked like ich, which was weird because nothing new had been introduced for some time. Salt bath in quarantine, it went away in a couple days, continued treatment for a couple more as everything i read suggested, back into the tank. A few days later it was back, and another female endler had it as well... A little more reading and it looked like it was probably Saprolegnia, so I treated the whole tank with Maroxy as it was clearly more than just the one fish now.

A few days later I was done, it looked almost gone, did a 50% water change, then again the next day to remove the meds. While treated some fish seemed a bit out of it, but nothing awful, just lethargic, but now everything seems to be dying. In the past couple days it's been 3 ghost shrimp and a female endler, then I noticed a male guppy who's tail was a little extra tattered and had a red spot at the edge (normally yellow with black spots); later he seemed to be having swim bladder problems, so into quarantine, and then dead. Last one fish was having bladder problems again, and another was sitting on the bottom breathing quickly. Today the second with bladder problems and the one that was on the bottom are still there, but a female guppy who seemed totally fine last night was dead on the bottom, as well as another female endler, however this time i noticed what looked like red spots/veins along the endler's side.

Also, the one that had the fungus initially, while there are still a couple white spots, seems to be doing fine physically... what could be going on here? It seems like a secondary disease presented itself as a result of medicating for the first...

The unaffected (at least so far) fish in the tank are cherry barbs, male endlers, neon tetras, a variety of cory cats, khuli loaches, red cherry shrimp, and dwarf puffers which is extra odd because in all my reading puffers sound like they should be the easiest to get sick, etc... I'm not to worried about losing some endlers or guppies as i still have more than I started with, and it seems to just be killing the ugly ones... but those dwarf puffers are like the best ever and given the whole no scales thing, they might be next on the chopping block...

Oh also, secondary question, in the 20g tank there are just snails and shrimp, though there seem to have sprung up a bunch of tiny little aquatic something or others which are about a millimeter long and look round, not sure what these are, but if they some how could have gotten into the 90 gallon (using the same net or something) maybe they caused whatever this is...

PH: 7.4
Ammonia: 0.25ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm

The tank has been up for 5 months and was well cycled with some guppies before adding anything else, also, it's planted, and there's some algae fighting with the plants for control of the log, the plants seems to be holding their own.

Edit: Oh, I feed them Nutrafin Max Tropical Fish Flakes, frozen blood worms, and the occasional algae pellet.

[purplecandle]

Your ammonia is up a little high, is that due to this fish dying or is it always that high?

Puffers do not get sick easily.....they are just easy to kill (bad water, small tank), but cared for properly they are not immune deficient

[J-P]

you have on your hands what appears to be a tank crash:

Safe, stable and non-staining MarOxy treats fungal, as well as bacterial diseases such as clamped fins, swollen eyes, and patchy coloration. Use of a hospital tank is recommended. Active ingredient: stabilized chlorine oxides. 1/2 teaspoon per 10 gallons daily, for no more than 5 days. 1 oz. treats 25 gallons for 5 days. For fresh and saltwater.

Anyway that is probably why your inverts and others are dying. For some reason they feel fine while medicated, but once the meds are out, the biofilter has taken a trashing and will take a while to get it back up to par.

Basically, I think, you are currently doing a "Fish In" cycling process. This happened to me also Heavy water changes daily or multiple smaller water changes (the latter is recommended for larger tanks) daily is your solution for now.

[bibbles]

Your ammonia is up a little high, is that due to this fish dying or is it always that high?

Puffers do not get sick easily.....they are just easy to kill (bad water, small tank), but cared for properly they are not immune deficient

The Ammonia looks between 0 and 0.25, so I figured I would rather round up than down given the situation, but normally it is 0; nice to know about the puffs though!

you have on your hands what appears to be a tank crash:

Safe, stable and non-staining MarOxy treats fungal, as well as bacterial diseases such as clamped fins, swollen eyes, and patchy coloration. Use of a hospital tank is recommended. Active ingredient: stabilized chlorine oxides. 1/2 teaspoon per 10 gallons daily, for no more than 5 days. 1 oz. treats 25 gallons for 5 days. For fresh and saltwater.

Anyway that is probably why your inverts and others are dying. For some reason they feel fine while medicated, but once the meds are out, the biofilter has taken a trashing and will take a while to get it back up to par.

Basically, I think, you are currently doing a "Fish In" cycling process. This happened to me also Heavy water changes daily or multiple smaller water changes (the latter is recommended for larger tanks) daily is your solution for now.

I don't have much in the way of a quarantine tank, just a half gallon measuring cup I used hung inside the tank, a squeeze for one fish, let alone more than one. The RCS are doing totally fine, it was just the ghost shrimp and they died during the treatment, everything else did fine till it stopped. What I find strange are those red spots and the swim bladder issues emerging AFTER medicating, but not before or during...

Additional: I have a CO2 system (compressed) which I have no set up as it took forever to find a wrench that would open large enough; I found one last night and was going to set that up today. The additional fish dying that looked 100% last night are what's really making me question this... it seems like there are new symptoms now, I thought I might have just over medicated, but those red spots and stuff... I'm not sure.

EDIT: Er, what i was asking was, should I still set it up? Wait? Could it hurt or help? It'll lower the PH right, but I have no idea what effect that will have...

EDIT2: I was just staring forlornly into the tank hoping for the best and noticed 5-6 tiny baby guppies or endlers which seem to be doing just fine, I don't know if fry are more or less likely to be effected by stuff, but... there's that. :/

[J-P]

well I have seen guppy fry first hand surviving an uncycled tank.

The meds usually hit scaleless fish and inverts first. That is a direct result of the meds. The chems tests show that it had an effect on the bio filter.

CO2 can wait till later. You don't want a PH crash on top of a bio crash.

Personally, I'd start of 20% water changes 2 or 3 times daily. The reason is if you change a large volume of water in a large tank it take a LONG time for the temps to adjust and it stresses out the fish. Keep running the carbon to get those meds out, keep the water quality up there and possibly on the 2nd day, take the filter media from your other tank and drop it in there.

Ohh... do a very good gravel clean initially before you drop in that filter media. Stir it up the night before, get that tank nice and cloudy and do the water change. Wait 24 hours .. keep running carbon and drop in the media.

Now... there are people on here that know better than I do... so you may want to hold off on those actions until it is confirmed or denied. They may have better suggestions also.



Don't worry you'll get through it... but keep up with the water changes at least.

[bibbles]

well I have seen guppy fry first hand surviving an uncycled tank.

The meds usually hit scaleless fish and inverts first. That is a direct result of the meds. The chems tests show that it had an effect on the bio filter.

CO2 can wait till later. You don't want a PH crash on top of a bio crash.

Personally, I'd start of 20% water changes 2 or 3 times daily. The reason is if you change a large volume of water in a large tank it take a LONG time for the temps to adjust and it stresses out the fish. Keep running the carbon to get those meds out, keep the water quality up there and possibly on the 2nd day, take the filter media from your other tank and drop it in there.

Ohh... do a very good gravel clean initially before you drop in that filter media. Stir it up the night before, get that tank nice and cloudy and do the water change. Wait 24 hours .. keep running carbon and drop in the media.

Now... there are people on here that know better than I do... so you may want to hold off on those actions until it is confirmed or denied. They may have better suggestions also.



Don't worry you'll get through it... but keep up with the water changes at least.

For sure, I actually took out the filter media out of one filter (I have two) while medicating, then changed the water a couple times and vacuumed the gravel, then replaced the medicated filter with the filter that had been sitting in tank water, and added carbon to the second filter to get the last of the meds out...

[Brandon8521]

I have seen platy and guppy fry outlast all of the adults in a crashed tank before. You would think it would be the other way around but it doesnt seem to be the case.

[J-P]

How are the fish doing?

I know we haven't heard an alternative reason, so I hope this diagnosis and procedure is correct.

[bibbles]

Well, there've been two fish that look out of it hanging around the bottom for a couple days now, but they are still alive, one has a red spot on it's upper left side. The other looks fine, just lethargic, it was having swim bladder problems but I can't tell if it still is. This morning there were three more neon tetras dead, two floating and one stuck to a filter, interesting as all the other fish that died did not float...

Everyone else SEEMS to be doing fine, but last night there was nothing wrong with the tetras, so it's hard to say... :/

I switched both filters to carbon and hung the other media in the tank to remove medication from that if it turns out it was over medicating that caused the trouble, I also did a water change with water from the shrimp tank which is doing fine... except for those tiny little things I mentioned before, but I used a stocking to make sure they didn't get moved with the water in case they were the cause in the first place, hitch hiking on a net or something.

All levels are the same except ammonia which is still a bit over 0ppm, but less than yesterday.

[J-P]

that is a good sign. I don't think it was "over medicating". I used Paraguard by Seachem and it crashed my tank also. I used a tad less than directed but it still happened.

I think at this point water changes and dechlor are going to be your best friends for the next week or so

as PP would say: "Your weakest fish are going to go first."

[bibbles]

I pulled up some pictures of the tank I took for a friend a few days before medicating and everything, and I noticed that algae has increased quite a bit and the plants look less happy, so I added some nutes and CO2 (small amounts of both) to see if I could jump start the plants as they will help keep the water cleaner and maybe jack some of this newly spreading algae...

Probably not the best idea, but I'm going to check PH a few more times today just to make sure that doesn't drop and hopefully it will help.

After a little searching I've found a few more mentions of meds crashing a tank... does that mean if you have a fish that gets sick it would be better to euthanize it assuming you don't have any way to quarantine it?

[J-P]

you can QT a fish in a food grade cooler

HOBs will work and because of the insulation you are less likely to get temperature swings

I drilled the top of one of mine, just in case to allow for an air hose and sponge filter (also used for fish transport). With the lid down it is dark and won't stress the fish too much.

CO2 does lower the PH depending on how aggressive it is pumping out, but in your case I wouldn't worry about that right now. You can post on the algae after the tank recovers

[bibbles]

you can QT a fish in a food grade cooler

HOBs will work and because of the insulation you are less likely to get temperature swings

I drilled the top of one of mine, just in case to allow for an air hose and sponge filter (also used for fish transport). With the lid down it is dark and won't stress the fish too much.

CO2 does lower the PH depending on how aggressive it is pumping out, but in your case I wouldn't worry about that right now. You can post on the algae after the tank recovers

My reason was, things are certainly not normal at the moment, something's going on... and whatever is going on is causing massive algae spreading as well as killing fish. CO2 and nutes will help the plants fight the algae, and in doing so remove more nitrates et al from the water. So if XYZ causes fish to die and algae to bloom, maybe fighting the algae will in some way fight whatever is killing the fish... just a thought, either way, the fish seem much more energetic already, and I didn't notice before, but the males had stopped dancing for the females - they are dancing again. It might just be coincidence but, who knows...

[J-P]

I have a feeling we may be confusing 2 different symptoms.

What caused the algae MAY have killed the fish, yes.. but at the moment you have a cycling issue. That must be dealt with first. IMO.

[Nick]

Trying to do too much can do more damage to a tank than doing too little. I would probably stop adding anything to the tank and stick with large, regular water changes, with clean water, not water from another tank.

When I worked in a fish store, the people who lost the most fish (other than those that cycle a tank with fish) were those who over-medicated their tanks.

Someone with ich would start using a strong med... the ich would seem to be gone in a couple days, replaced by fish with odd behavior, a few random deaths, and often redness of the body or gills (all reactions to the meds, usually combined with poor water quality). Then they start on the antibiotics, which don't help because their is no bacterial problem... the erythromycin, the first thing most people try, usually does no particular harm, other than stressing the fish a bit more, so they go on to something that wipes out the biofilter, then they have sick, stressed fish in a tank that isn't cycled... often only one or two fish would survive the whole thing.