Can Anyone Help Me

[Sebby]

Hi, I'm about a year into tropical fish keeping and have two quite different problems.

I have 3 angelfish in one aquarium and after a water change get a rapid growth of red dust all over the inside of the tank. When viewed closely there are little white hair-like particles moving in clusters amongst this dust.

My water parameters are good, the fish are doing well but I cannot eradicate this problem or find anything online or in books to help me find what it is!

The second problem is in another aquarium with a variety of other tropical fish, all small. There are quite large pale creatures that are tick-like in appearance. They appeared immediately and I have never seen anything like it before. It has happened in the last day, and the fish are as they should be, healthy, swimming properly, eating well.

These things are quite large and are not attached to the fish. I have had a snail infestation in the past so am positive they are not snails. I have carried out a water change and taken everything out of (apart from filter, heater and oxygen media which I have cleaned thoroughly) so that I can see where or how these creatures are developing.

I do have good clear pictures of both problems should anyone which to give me an address to email them to if they feel they can help me.

Many thanks
Sebby

 

[Terriann]

http/animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/info...ses.htm#Argulus

Hi I found this link and there is a section about parasytes on there, maybe it can help you identify so some more of the more experienced fish keepers can help you - I have only had my tank a few months.

Good luck with making your fish all better!

Tan

 

[Underwurlde]

Upload those images to photobucket and then Copy & Paste the image text into a response to get the pictures to appear in this thread (there's a pin on how to do that somewhere I think - search 'Photobucket').

Love to see that red stuff!

Andy

 

[edgelgil]

Wow, sounds like you have some major problems startig up in your tanks. It seems like some real bad bugs are growing all over the place. Do you have any pets in your house? Did you just fire up your heater? Usually, if your heater has sat all summer, just the wind drafts will collect all sorts of trash in the vents. Then when you first fire it off, your house has just became infested with what ever was collecting over the summer. Also, if you have not thought about an inline water filter for your feed air, it helps to keep out unwanted pollution as well.
Only two things you can do to actually rid your tank of these problems.............I had a nasty infestation some twenty years ago and it nearly wiped out my collection. This is why you should have a hospital tank on the side...it does come in handy, but must always be operational. I had to completly brake down my entire tank and boil everything, then start back over again. I was lucky to have associates who also had tanks to farm my fish over too. but it was a real ugly situation.
Once my tank was clean and back up to par, I was able to bring my fish home to a clean tank.
Medicine works, but only to a certain point in the game. It is good to strip the tank of all the decorations and do water change, clean your decorations in a bleach bath and rinse with treated water before replacing in to the tank. When everything is out, stir the gravel and use a portable canister filter to clean your tank. Paracites are a real chore to rid the tank of. You will need to treat the tank with the proper chems. You can keep the fish in the tank and you might need to treat for a couple of weeks with just a bare tank. Do your water changes during the two week period and in some cases your temp will need to be changed to help kill the bugs.
Once you have knock out the bugs, and your decor is now dry and clean of bugs, set it all back into place.

Oh, one last thing, I forgot to ask in the front......did you just bring home some new plants and restock your tank?
If so, this is how it all came to be.......you might think it is a bit of an overkill, but a quarentine tank is good for many reasons.

Good luck,

Maximo

 

[Underwurlde]

...Let's ID those 'bugs' first ay?

Andy

 

[edgelgil]

Pictures if you can get them on the web........I agree before any hospital is setup, 100%.......8-o

 

[Sebby]

Hi guys. Thanks so much for your replies thus far. This is a real worry to me.

I followed the pin on photobucket so here goes. Hopefully this will work. You can just make out one of my Angelfish behind the red dust with white moving things in it. This happens after a water change and only takes about 6 days to get this bad. I have removed all decorations and gravel and thoroughly cleaned the tank and heating, filtration, oxygen equipment. There have been no live plants in this tank.

The bugs… I don't think they are snails, I have had a snail infestation before and don't recognise these as such. I've inset a closeup of one of them so hopefully it's clear to see. As with the above, I have removed all decoration and gravel and cleaned all equipment. Since the snail infestation I have used silk plants only. The bugs do not seem to attach to the fish but are in clusters. This happened literally overnight. Could it be contaminated food?

Water quality is good.

 

[edgelgil]

Could be from your food......take it back to the store in which you picked it from......have them do a test in a controlled environment........contact the food manufacture and tell the of the problem aswell. You never know.

Do you have a small tank or even a jam jar witht he center sealing cap out? Put some food in the jar and place a lite cloth over the jar with the lid on over it to allow it to breath. Shake the jar and get the water excited enough to possibly cause the bacteria to burst. You might even be able to drop it off at your local university science center and have them run a bacteria study on it also. It is a worthy challenge to find out if the problem is actually in the food.
Good luck......them are some ugly little bio-critters.

Maximo

 

[edgelgil]

Found my disease book and came across the section on mites.........Arthropods.
It looks like you have an infestation of Acarina, known as fish mites. Trimalaconothrus, feed on the food in the tank, however, once the food is depleted, they feed on the fish. The mites are very resistant to chemical agents and high temperatures, and according to my book, the only way to really get them under control is to dry out the tank.

Good luck, this information was excerted from the "Handbook of Fish Diseases", by Dieter Untergasser.

Maximo

 

[afishdude]

external parisite meds.


what fish do you have and what size tanks.
whats your stats?
ammonia
ph
nitrite
nitrate

 

[Sebby]

Thanks Maximo for the answer on Anthropods. That's great, I now know what I'm dealing with. It happened so quickly! I have emptied and cleaned the tank so it's free for the minute so now I can look into the best steps to take.

I will get the water readings and post them up.

Great guys, thanks so much!
Sebby

 

[Sebby]

Hi Guys

These are the details for my tanks:

I've got 3 angels in one tank which is about 45L. This is the tank with the red stuff that grows on the sides. All the stats are completely fine and have been all along.

My other tank is 20L, there are 5 neons, 2 mollies, 1 guppie, 1 small albino catfish and 1 large plecko. Again all the stats are fine and, as above, have been all along.

I test the water of both every other day basically because of paranoia! There have never been high nitrate levels at all. The water p.h levels again have always been completely fine. I realise that the 20L tank is too small, this was due to bad advise on start-up. As all the fish bar my plecko are tiny I'm not so concerned. I really want to take the plecko out and place him with the angel fish but I dare not do this until I've sorted this fungus-type problem.

Hopefully this will help.

Thanks
Sebby