So what went wrong?

[ncjharris]

Had a case of (what appeared to be) white spot, on a couple of Zebra Danios.

Course of King Britsih treatment didn't solve it.
Neither did turning the temp up and adding salt.

So rather than try those again and stress the whole tank, decided to set up a hospital tank and treat the two patients seperately from the main tank.

Set up a tank, added fresh, treated water and filter medium from the existing tank, added heat and air stone, left it for a while to heat up and then added the Danios.

Added the first course of the treatment, left them last night.
Got up this morning, and ok, although a little static.

Came home this evening to find both dead!

Tested the water and all was fine - nitrAtes were a little high, but was going to do a water change anyway - indicating to me tank water was cycled.

Temp was around 25C.

Anyone any idea what went wrong for next time?

We realised that the Danios are schooling fish and so to try and reduce some of their stress we covered three sides of the tank, so it wasnt so open (the rest of the tank was bare).

We also have four left in the main tank - should we look to replace the missing two or will four be ok? The tank is 20 gallons.

We we're trying to help.

 

[jrd77]

Maybe the shock of the move was too much for them?

 

[WILDER]

Just one of those things i'm afraid, probably to much stress, keep an eye on main tank that you have got ridden of the whitespot, as it soon can come back.

 

[sinistral]

Set up a tank, added fresh, treated water and filter medium from the existing tank, added heat and air stone, left it for a while to heat up and then added the Danios.
...
Tested the water and all was fine - nitrAtes were a little high, but was going to do a water change anyway - indicating to me tank water was cycled.

Sorry to hear about your losses Sometimes it is just one of those things as Wilder suggested... but I have to admit that I am curious about how you acclimated the Danios to the new tank (I think jrd was alluding to this in his post). Also, do you have nitrates in your tap water? I'm not sure I understand why you would expect to have high nitrates in a tank with two danios after just one night.

As I see it, it's up to you about restoring your danio school to 6.

 

[simonbrown403]

its strange that king british didnt work, i've used it on my 66gal discus, when i made the mistake of adding 2 unquantine clownloach.

i genaraly works fine unless, its been under dosed or chem removers havent been taken out.

superb stuff 3 treatments 48 hours apart, job done.

 

[sylvia]

I think though that you may not have been patient enough with the med. In a discus tank I'd expect the temp. to be higher than in a tank with danios so the med. would work faster (ich lifecycle is sped up). You probably were not patient enough with it is all.

 

[ncjharris]

Thanks for your replies guys.

In response to your question,

We acclimatised the patients as we would moving any fish - they were transported in a bag with tank water, and that was left to float in the q tank for temp to adjust,. after 20 mins we put them in - being careful not to transfer any water.

The tank isn't very big (7 gall) and our tap water has a little nitrate, so I would expect it, after 24 hrs to be in the region of 40-60ppm as it was.

I too was suprised the King British didn't work - it worked fine when we had a dose in a coldwater tank and cleared it up no probs.

We tried the medication over a course of 4 days, and the heat/salt treatment over 7. I've never read anywhere about how long this should be kept up for, but I wasn't too keen to keep the temp upa round 30C for much longer than that.

As you guys say, its something that just happens, although now I think about it they did have red around their gills, so perhaps there wasn't enough o2 in the water? Although we did have an air stone in their.

Anyhow, we've been watching the main tank since, and decided yesterday that the four remaining danios are doing ok, and decided rather than replace the two get another Sunset Gouramis to go with the pair we have.
After adding, I don't know whats happened to the tanks, but everyone now is starting to breed!

 

[pseud]

I don't know why they died but, you need to treat the whole tank not just the affected fish.
White Spot (Ich) is a parasite. The white spots are cysts, when they fall off they release more parasites into the water, which latch onto other fish. So even if you remove the fish with signs of Ich, there could, and probably is, still parasites in your water.

 

[ncjharris]

Done that, as mentioned, using King British.

However, has got me wondering if it was white spot all along anyhow.

 

[pseud]

Ohhh, my bad, didn't read a carefully enough! Apologies.