A Number Of Questions And Concerns...

[WillyRBeek]

First off, a little bit about both of my tanks:

Community Tank(25 gallon, fully cycled, up and running about 9 months):

1 Angel Fish(I know i'll have to re-home him eventually, but at the moment he's only about 2-2 1/2 inches long)
1 dwarf gourami(About 2 inches)
2 Paltys
11 corydoras(7 bronze, 4 peppered)
3 black neon tetras
2 red eye tetras
1 Rocket Red danio
1 BN Plec(About 2 1/5 inches long)

Gourami Tank25 gallon, fully cycled, originally had another 25 gallon tank that was up and running for 3 months, but it sprung a leak and I bought another, which has been up and running for about 2-3 months)

1 Silver Gourami
1 Blue Gourami
1 Yellow Gourami(All of them are roughly about 3-4 inches
2 BN plecs(Only about an inch long or so each, just bought them like 2 weeks ago)

Cleaning schedule:

25% water change every 5-6 days(Regular)
25% water change every 2 days(Crisis, like if I have a fish that's looking sickly)

Question #1: In my community tank, my fish have lived pretty peacefully and happily for about 4 months with no problems(Except for the 3-4 day period when my gourami tank sprung a leak and I had to re-home all those fish into the community tank). About 2 months ago one of my Cory's was looking pretty sickly, not very active, back fin completely gone, top fin pretty much the same, but after about 2 weeks of water changing every 2 days, he was healthy again and has been ever since. Then, last week, I noticed one of my red eye tetras was looking quite sick. It's back fin was all ragged and he had gotten noticeably smaller. Also, I had another platy that had gotten noticeably smaller, but who's fins still looked fine. Anyway, on Tuesday I found the platy dead, and today I got home and noticed my red eye tetra looks to be on it's last legs, if he makes it through the night, i'll be shocked. Anyway, is this just a coincidence, that these 2 fish have died in the same week, after months of healthy living? Or is there something else going on I should be concerned with? All the other fish in the tank seem to be fine, but then again, about 2 weeks ago, both the dead platy and the sick redeye seemed fine. I checked my ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels, and they are all fine, so i'm kind of at a loss for what's wrong. Could it be that the tank is too crowded? And in the last few months, as the fish have all gotten larger, it's begun to stress them out?

Question #2: This question is about my feeding schedule in the gourami tank. I try to feed the fish in both my tanks daily, but sometimes I forget, but they never go longer then 1 day without food. I don't think i'm really overfeeding them, not much of the food seems to make it to the bottom(At least, not that I see), but every time I do a water change, there's always a huge cloud of crap every time. Are gouramis just really messy fish who produce a lot of waste? Or am I really overfeeding them? Also, would the addition of a few cory's to the tank help(More on the lack of cory's in my next question)?

Question #3: The gourami tank used to be stocked with 5 gouramis, 6 corydora catfish, and a clown pleco. After that tank sprung a leak though, and I had to move all the fish to the community tank, I left the cory's in the community tank, as they didn't seem to be getting any food at all in the gourami tank as the gouramis were pigging out, they weren't growing a lick, and seemed to be dying at a regular rate. Since i've left the 4 that remained in the community tank though, none have died, and they've all started to grow. I ended up adding another clown pleco to the tank a few weeks ago, but little did I know that it brought a nasty little friend with it. It's friend being ICK, which killed the new clown pleco, the original clown pleco, and 2 of the gourami's before I managed to get it fixed. Now I just have the 3 gourami's and the 2 small BN's. This question I guess is kind of a continuation of the last question, but: Would adding a few corys to this tank end up overstocking it?


Any advice is welcome, thanks.

 

[drobbyb]

Question #2: This question is about my feeding schedule in the gourami tank. I try to feed the fish in both my tanks daily, but sometimes I forget, but they never go longer then 1 day without food. I don't think i'm really overfeeding them, not much of the food seems to make it to the bottom(At least, not that I see), but every time I do a water change, there's always a huge cloud of crap every time. Are gouramis just really messy fish who produce a lot of waste? Or am I really overfeeding them? Also, would the addition of a few cory's to the tank help(More on the lack of cory's in my next question)?

Your feedings should be fine with once a day and skipping a day or 2 during the week. Fish in the wild don't eat everyday. That cloud of stuff that comes up is normal.

 

[WillyRBeek]

Question #2: This question is about my feeding schedule in the gourami tank. I try to feed the fish in both my tanks daily, but sometimes I forget, but they never go longer then 1 day without food. I don't think i'm really overfeeding them, not much of the food seems to make it to the bottom(At least, not that I see), but every time I do a water change, there's always a huge cloud of crap every time. Are gouramis just really messy fish who produce a lot of waste? Or am I really overfeeding them? Also, would the addition of a few cory's to the tank help(More on the lack of cory's in my next question)?

Your feedings should be fine with once a day and skipping a day or 2 during the week. Fish in the wild don't eat everyday. That cloud of stuff that comes up is normal.

This isn't the same kind of cloud like in my community tank though, this is far, far more messy, and I clean them at the same time...

 

[durst101]

i once had a gourami tank set up and they are more messy than others so dw bout it

 

[Syphoniera]

Hi, WillyRBeek,

Don't know if any of these speculations will help, but they may give you something to consider.
And don't know if this applies, but I do vaguely recall hearing something about fish actually shrinking if they don't get enough nourishment.
I've also heard that even some of the high-selling commercial brands contain little digestable food useful for fish, as they lean on things like grains.
Do you always feed the same foods, or a variety?
And do you think this could be related to nutritional deficiencies?
If you haven't yet, might be an idea to look at the ingredient list on whatever you do feed, and maybe try something different: it's been pointed out that for for optimum health, fish typically need various foods, including live/frozen, depending on their needs, rotated through the week, just as the rest of us need variety and different nutrients to maintain health.

Another possibility is that there could also be internal parasites sucking the nutrients - and the life - right out of your fish.
Or a mycobacterial or other infection, as symptoms are not always evident prior to the rather final one of death.
But the shrinking is a definite warning sign of something being rather drastically wrong, and I'd suspect that the best place to start would be by expanding nutritional quality and availability.

The emergency removal of the fish in the tank with the cory deaths into the tank later suffering platy and tetra sickness and death may have spread some intestinal parasite or other problem the Gouramis were able to cope with reasonably well, or at least survive longer, but that smaller/different fish couldn't handle as well or for as long.

If I understand the order of occurance correctly, it sounds as though: 1ST) the corys in the Gourami tank were dying off: 2ND) the fish from that tank were transferred into the community tank due to the leak: 3RD) after the Gouramis returned to their own tank, the fish in the community tank began to sicken and die.

If this is so, it sounds like cause and effect.

Honestly, I'd think it would be better not to add new fish to any tank until some idea was formed of what the problem was with the existing - and no longer existing - fish, and a solution achieved.
Because nobody's going to be happy in a situation where anyone keeps spending money in buying fish only to have them suffer and die...

 

[WillyRBeek]

Hi, WillyRBeek,

Don't know if any of these speculations will help, but they may give you something to consider.
And don't know if this applies, but I do vaguely recall hearing something about fish actually shrinking if they don't get enough nourishment.
I've also heard that even some of the high-selling commercial brands contain little digestable food useful for fish, as they lean on things like grains.
Do you always feed the same foods, or a variety?
And do you think this could be related to nutritional deficiencies?
If you haven't yet, might be an idea to look at the ingredient list on whatever you do feed, and maybe try something different: it's been pointed out that for for optimum health, fish typically need various foods, including live/frozen, depending on their needs, rotated through the week, just as the rest of us need variety and different nutrients to maintain health.

Another possibility is that there could also be internal parasites sucking the nutrients - and the life - right out of your fish.
Or a mycobacterial or other infection, as symptoms are not always evident prior to the rather final one of death.
But the shrinking is a definite warning sign of something being rather drastically wrong, and I'd suspect that the best place to start would be by expanding nutritional quality and availability.

The emergency removal of the fish in the tank with the cory deaths into the tank later suffering platy and tetra sickness and death may have spread some intestinal parasite or other problem the Gouramis were able to cope with reasonably well, or at least survive longer, but that smaller/different fish couldn't handle as well or for as long.

If I understand the order of occurance correctly, it sounds as though: 1ST) the corys in the Gourami tank were dying off: 2ND) the fish from that tank were transferred into the community tank due to the leak: 3RD) after the Gouramis returned to their own tank, the fish in the community tank began to sicken and die.

If this is so, it sounds like cause and effect.

Honestly, I'd think it would be better not to add new fish to any tank until some idea was formed of what the problem was with the existing - and no longer existing - fish, and a solution achieved.
Because nobody's going to be happy in a situation where anyone keeps spending money in buying fish only to have them suffer and die...

Thanks for your assistance.

To answer your questions: For the most part, no I do not feed them an overly large variety of different food. I primarily feed the fish in both tanks just the generic flake food, along 2 sinking pellets/alage pellets each day for the Corys, although a few of the other fish, such as the angel fish, the dwarf gourami and the 2 remaining paltys like to pick at them as well. Also, I usually have some zucchini in each tank for the plecos. That is pretty much the As extent of my feeding routine though.

As for the cause and effect of transferring the corys to the community tank, you could be right, but since i've transferred them over, all the peppered Corys from the gourami tank have been fine, and have been getting bigger. The one Cory that did get sick was a Bronze one, but unlike the dead platy, and the sick Tetra, he never actually got smaller, he had remained about the same size, but had just basically lost all his fins. Also, it's been a couple of months since I transferred the corys and gouramis over to the community tank, and it wasn't until just recently that I really begun having problems.