Help! To Many Fish Dying And They All Have Different Symptoms!

[shaniav]

Hi there,
I am new to this forum and looking for some help as the employees at my local petstore just keeping pointing me to buy things. This is my first tank, and have learned tons but obviously have a lot more to learn.

I have had my tank set up for about 5 months. Within the first 2 months, I added 6 tetras, 2 dwarf frogs, and two tiny corydoras. Oh and a small pleco. The tank was cycled, and water was perfect and everyone in it was healthy as could be!
I decided to add in 2 blue gourami about a month ago. Everything was fine up until about last week.

A few days ago, I noticed one of the gourami had a red spot. Looked like it was fighting so I let it be (thinking it would heal, not knowing that you have to treat fish with open sores). Then a day later, I came home to a dead tetra! I assumed maybe the gourami killed it. So i assumed maybe there was just some stress or bad water in the tank. I did a 50% water change. Water was cloudy for a bit then went back somewhat normal but still not as clear as usual. Nope, because then 2 days ago, I noticed one of the tetras (diamond tetra) was breathing rapidly and it's gills were extremely open. Right away, did some research, thought it was gill flukes. I went to the petstore and told them about the sore on the blue gourami and the fins on the diamond tetra. I bought some API Melafix. Started treating the tank 2 days ago. It is helping healing the one red spot on the gourami, but now there is another spot that looks infected and it's not getting better. I have another tetra now showing signs of gill fluke. Since the 50% water change and the starting of the 7 day treatment of melafix, all of my fish are showing signs of sickness. They are rapid breathing. Not to active. The little cory cats usually swim around the bottom non stop. They just stay in one spot now and don't move. I see ONE little white spot on one of them... could that be the start of something else too? Ick? The frogs are shedding, which means high ammonia, but yet I just did a 50% change. The water is still cloudy after that water change and usually it clears up after a few hours. I was told to take my carbon out of my filter as it will filter out the medicine, but my oh my tank is just a mess now. It was going to perfect. Can I do water changes while treating? And how to I keep my good bacteria up? I'm just lost and losing hop that I may lose my whole fish tank and have to restart and that I'll be a fish murderer if all of these fish die because of something that could have been fixed/prevented. Help!!!!

 

[Koridora13]

Hello, I'm going through the same issues with having too many things going on in my tank and not knowing what to do to stop them from dying. 
What I have found worked for me in the past and understanding what you're going through is you need to get a test on your ammonia and get some water treatment for that. I know API sells an "Ammo lock" to help with ammonia to go down in your tank. Once a fungus or open sore happens and isnt treated relatively fast it can weaken the fish and cause stress within the tank. Because when one fish is stressed it can make the others ones stressed too. The fish breathing at the top may indicate alot of ammonia or that there isn't enough oxygen in the water. You can help by putting an air pump in the tank a little each day to release some air in the water to see if this helps. 
Plus the corydoras will love it!
As far as medicine to treat the open sore, the melafix or the pimafix will be your best options. Make sure you test your water before you do any crazy water treatments just to make sure you are not worsening the issue more than you would intend to. 
Post your water parameters like pH level, nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels and we can go from there!

 

[Asteria]

First of like kotidora has mentioned you need to get yourself a test kit. So people on here can help you better.
Liquid test kits are the best kind.

Secondly when you say your tank is cycled what did you actually do to cycle your tank?

This sounds to me like high Nitrite levels as this cause the rapid breathing your seeing.
And the sores on the fish could be due to high ammonia levels.

When water changing do you clean you filter? If so how do you go about this.

 

[the_lock_man]

I would agree that you need to get a test kit. As a minimum, you need to be able to test for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. Most people on this forum recommend the API liquid drop tests, as they are reasonably good value, personally I prefer Salifert and Nutrafin, but the API works nicely.
 
The rapid breathing could be caused by low oxygen, high ammonia or high nitrite, since they all reduce the amount of oxygen entering the blood stream, there's no real way to tell which without those test results.
 
When you say that the tank was cycled, can you tell us how you went about that? If you ran the tank empty for a few days, unfortunately that isn't cycling, and it could be that what you are seeing is a result of high ammonia in an uncycled tank (ammonia poisoning is rather like smoking in humans, the effects can take some time to manifest themselves). In any event, I would expect to see a 5 month old tank fully cycled. If you are now suffering high ammonia or nitrite, there must be a cause for it. Can you tell us how you maintain your tank? How often do you normally change water? Do you use a water conditioner? Do you often change filter components? Please give as much detail as you can, so we can help you sort out the issues.
 
Your priority is to get the test kit, until you can tell us what the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels are, it's impossible to give any specific advice. In the meantime, I would suggest 50% water changes daily will help the situation.
 
If you don't feel able to obtain the test kits, then please take a sample of your water to the LFS, and have them test it for you. Ask them for the specific levels indicated by their tests, don't let them just say "that's all fine" or "that's bad, you need to buy this".

I wouldn't suggest you buy ammo lock, we don't know if your problem is high ammonia. It might not be, in which case you are wasting your money. 

 

[Akasha72]

one thing that jumps out for me is you say you removed your carbon so you could treat - this is the correct thing to do BUT that sponge will have had some bacteria colonies on it and so by removing it you crash the cycle and put the tank into a mini cycle.
 
This is why we don't recommend running carbon. I find the best way to run a filter is with standard filter sponges and/or ceramic bio balls/noodles. This way if I hit a problem such as illness I can add the carbon to remove medication and when I take it away I cause no problem to my cycle