I'm so worried! Fish and frog not eating!

[LilGreenPuffer]

Parameters: 0-0-7, as of yesterday.

Tanks/inhabitants: 10g, 2 DPs, 3 otos, a few MTSs; 1/2g, 1 African dwarf frog (temporary; he's getting 100% w/c daily).

Feeding: live blackworms, frozen bloodworms/mysis/tubifex (for both puffs and frog).

Water changes: I keep nitrates below 20 in the puffer tank, so I change 80% once a week, or less if I test and it shows up as under 10-15ish. For the frog, the 1/2g is temporary and uncycled, so I do 100% changes daily.

Products: Prime to dechlorinate.

Changes:
-I bought a new heater for the puffers, and the temp has gone from 70, where it's been for the past two weeks (long story short, the old heater broke), to 82.
-I purchased new frozen food; the puffers and frog had their first tubifex and mysis. I also opened a new pack of bloodworms yesterday. They are no longer getting a steady diet of live blackworms, as before; the worm culture died.
-I have some new cherry shrimp in my other tank, but as far as I know, their water did not come into contact with that of the puffers or the frog. Also, I've had these shrimp for several weeks now, and they came from a private seller who bred them as a hobby, not from a fish store, so I don't think they are likely candidates for disease-carriers. If they were, then surely the betta whose tank they live in would be having trouble, too?

Puffer tank has been running since January, cycled fishlessly; the frog's been in the 1/2g for a month, tops, uncycled.

Okay, I'm really stumped here, so I'm going to be as detailed as possible, and I’m starting a long way back, with details that might be completely irrelevant. Feel free to ask me about minutia.

It started five or so days ago. I had run out of blackworms, about three weeks ago, so I bought a new batch and began culturing some of the few I had left from the old batch. The new batch was in putrid brown water. I rinsed them in chlorinated water, which I heard was okay, and they died by the next morning. I began feeding the puffers and frog off of the culture, which was still really new. (I brought frozen worms with me to school, but they melted in the stupid dorm cube freezer, so I tossed them. I didn’t have a way to get to the store for more food at the time.)

Since I had so few worms, I began feeding the puffers every other day or even every two days, and only half the usual amount or less. The frog still got a worm almost every day. This went on for a week and a half, maybe. Then I finally got to the store and got a variety of different frozen foods (they didn’t have blackworms, and this time I decided I’d keep them in the community freezer in the dorm kitchen so they wouldn’t melt). The guy at the store is really nice to me, and he made me a medley out of some blister packs that he had opened (some of the cubes were cut off, but the ones he gave me were unopened).

I fed the puffers and the frog when I got back. I offered the puffers mysis, and they sort of picked at it, ate a little, and then gave me this look like, “What is this ****?” I offered the frog tubifex, which he ate some of, not a lot, and which the puffers didn’t even try.

Then I barely saw them for two days. I offered them a little food, but they weren’t interested at all, which really surprised me, since they’d spent the whole week begging (and making me feel rotten that I couldn’t give them anything). They stayed mostly out of sight. I did see them once a day or so, lying on a big Indian almond leaf (dried-out leaf that you add to lower pH and condition the water, has tannins and such, nice for blackwater environments or just softwater fish in general). They were pretty unresponsive until I reached in and poked them with the net. I figured they were just sulking because they didn’t like the mysis. I did keep offering tubifex to the frog, but he wasn’t interested.

Yesterday I decided to try bloodworms, an old favorite. They looked at them a lot, for a long time, and swam around the ones on the bottom, but he didn’t eat. Weirdest of all, they were thin, especially Thumbelina – their stomachs were convex, and she looked pinched, like she had worms really bad. This was new. They hadn’t looked like this the whole week that they were barely getting anything. Also, the frog ate three worms, then barfed them all up. Yes, really, my frog puked. It was hilarious, at the time, but not anymore. They looked the same as they had when they went in, whole. I thought that I saw maybe the teeniest bit of white poking out of James Bond’s anus, but it could have been my imagination.

The same thing happened this afternoon, except that this time Thumbelina ate two worms. They’re still interested in food, really watching it, but James Bond hasn’t touched a bite. I offered the frog two worms, and he puked them up. Again.

Tonight, Thumbelina ate two more worms, James Bond didn’t eat anything, and the frog hasn’t eaten either (unless he ate them and barfed them up while I was typing).

Some details that may or may not be relevant:
-The puffers were dewormed when I first got them in February.
-Two otos were dewormed at the same time as the puffers; the third was not. It came from PetSmart, fat and healthy and eating at the store. The others looked healthy, too. I cut its quarantine short because it stopped eating in the QT, and I assumed that it would be better off with its school in my tank, with access to algae. I did call PetSmart and ensure that it was tank-bred and therefore not carrying wild parasites; they said that they got all of their fish tank-bred. This was back in the summer.
-My betta also had some mysis, and he's fine.
-My blackworm culture died the same day that the puffers quit eating. I had changed their water the night before. This would lead me to believe that there was a problem in the tap water, except that I have not changed the puffers’ water in over a week (nitrates 7, remember), so they had not been exposed to the water that would have killed the worms.
-I talked to Dadof4. We discounted the possibility of a roommate or someone with access to my room harming my animals – one of my roommates dotes on the fish, the other doesn’t mind them, and none of the RAs have anything against me. He suggested the possibility of something bacterial. I dunno.
-I have one solid(ish) theory: the newer oto or some other feeder animal carried parasites into the tank (I do quarantine feeders for at least a week, but you never know), and the puffers’ immune systems were strong enough to hold them off. Then, when they went without food, they were weakened, and the parasites got a grip. However, the frog was in a different tank.
-Another theory: could the new food have carried anything? Once again, the individual cubes were unopened.

As you can see, I’m really worried. I just typed three pages on my Word processor. Ugh. Help!

[Pufferpunk]

Did you feed them ANY of those nasty worms?

[LilGreenPuffer]

Probably.

[Pufferpunk]

Any time I see death like that in my worms, they are tossed, no matter what I paid for them, unless I can take the good ones off the top 1st. Not sure what to do other than WC.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Argh!!! I don't know what to do! Okay, water changes, then wait...

The thing about the worms is, they were nearly all alive when I got them, and then they all died the next day, except for some of the ones I had from the old batch in the same container. It was weird.

[Pufferpunk]

Yeah, sometimes I can pour off the live ones off the top & the dead ones stay in the container, so I can toss them.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Thumbelina, 2; James Bond, 0; frog, 0.

[Dadof4]

What concerns me is the possibility of a bacteria coming in with the worms for the new culture. The other thing is try dropping your temp in the tank, the rise in temp may have some effect on their appetite? Usually it increases appetite...but if they are unhappy with the new temp maybe? Just tossing out ideas to maybe make some connection.....

[LilGreenPuffer]

Okay, I lowered the temp to 78.

New culture? I don't have a new one...

[LilGreenPuffer]

For some reason, the heater is overdoing it. They were at 81 this morning. I moved the knob down to 76, and we'll see what happens.

Thumbelina, 2; James Bond, 0; frog, 0.

[LilGreenPuffer]

The frog died. I found poor Claude Monet belly-up this afternoon.

[side19]

ohhhhh i'm sorry for your loss. i hope thumb and JB make it.

[LilGreenPuffer]

They're so active, I don't see how they can't, but they're not eating... Even Thumbelina didn't eat today...

[Pufferpunk]

I'm so sorry Clare, I wish I could tell you something that could help them.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Well, I left four bloodworms in the tank, and they've disappeared! Hopefully they got munched!

Edit - I added some Melafix, since there's the possibility of a bacteria problem from the worms. It won't be very much good with anything internal, but hopefully a little at least will make it into their systems.

I'm going to try and hitch a ride to the pet store to get some fresh live worms - that was always their favorite, so maybe it'll entice them. Or som live brine... the extra fat will do them good, if they'll eat at least a little. I just wish that the LFS had vitamins! Could I soak their food in a little of my own multivitamin, maybe?