Emergency!

[Out of the Boxfish]

My guppy tank has only been active for about two months. It is ten gallons with 7 guppies 3 shrimps and one small pleco and there are two sick fish!!! One of them recently had babies and all the babies are doing fine, but the mom Ezmerelda developed a long red streak on her formerly clear tail. Now the red streak along with 1/4 her tail fell off. But the remaining part of her tail is red, and her gill is so damaged!!! It looks really bad. Another fish, Mai, had a yellow tinted tail but its like all the pigmentaion is FLAKING off. Her tail has flakes all over it. The two are in quarantine together, in a betta vase, because I was cocky and unprepared for a disease outbreak. I am really freaked out I don't understand what happened, they were fine yesterday!!! I have 7 fry in a breeding net inside the aquarium, should I remove them from that? I belive the cause of the outbreak is an algae wafer I tried to give Plecy, but he didn't eat it. I tried removing it and it broke into a bunch of tiny peices and I'm considering a 100% water change. I really don't know what to do. I don't have a test kit at the moment, but the tank was running beautifully (not even one dead fish the whole time) until I put that blasted wafer in the tank. I need to know what kind of disease it is because I looked online and it looks kind of like fin rot, but I can't really tell.

Ezmerelda: Red streak on tail caused 1/4 tail to fall off, rest of tail now has red tint, her gills turned red
Mai: Tail has flakes

Please please please help me!!!

 

[Tessla]

The algae wafer wouldn't have caused this by itself, though long term water quality issues could very well be the case. What are your water stats? Need a reading for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. If you haven't got a test kit, you can take a water sample to most fish stores and they'll test for you. I would strongly suggest investing in a good liquid test kit however, API makes a good master test kit. Also, how often do you do water changes, how much and what other sort of maintainence do you do on the tank?

The betta vase isn't the best for the sick fish and will cause more stress as it is not cycled, if you can get a larger container set up with an airstone they'd be much better off, the bigger the better. Also make sure that you do daily small water changes on the container with the sick fish to prevent too much ammonia build up. It does sound a bit like fin rot, but I'd be absolutely sure before you use any medications. Just make sure that you keep them in clean water for now.

For your main tank, whatever you do, do not do a 100% water change ever! That will kill off all the good bacteria in your tank and cause a huge ammonia spike. A large water change, 20-30% would be an excellent idea, depending on your water readings you may want to do small 10% changes daily or every other day for a bit as well. The frequent small water changes won't hurt anything in your tank. Regular maintainence should be something like 10-15% weekly water changes, checking the filter and removing any gunk buildup in the tank to keep it healthy once your fish recover.

Your stocking actually sounds fine except for the pleco, there really aren't any species suited to a ten gallon and you've more than likely got one of the larger varieties (not to mention those things are poo factories.)

 

[Out of the Boxfish]

I will def buy the best test kit I can find, that was a BIG mistake not getting one sooner. The fry are in a HUGE bowl right now in fresh water (i used aquasafe) and the sickies are still in the betta vase until i buy a container today. The gross wafer turned into weird fluff on the gravel so I also need to buy a vaccum. OMG ITS AN INFESTATION. my bad. I never noticed until today this weird thing wrapped around one of the fakey leafs and another strange worm-type thing sucking on a rock. Or it could be fish poo stuck to the rock, but it seems to be attached on both sides. weird... Anyhoo.... I am really stressed.

I do weekly 25% water changes (thats what I was told to do) and add a few drops of aquasafe to it and I bought the pleco and shrimps for the sole purpose of cleaning the aquarium but the pleco seems to be making matters worse. I think the weird thing on the leaf is something he caused...like a whisker...or....goodness how did it ever come to this?

I am really confused and I'm doing all the research I can. I will keep posted (its all I can concentrate on today) and if there's anything else, I'm listening intently!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tessla]

Definitely get a syphon for cleaning the bottom of your tank when you do water changes, they're nice and cheap and make water changes much easier to do. When you go to grab your gravel syphon and test kit, you may also want to pick up some aquarium salt to add to the tanks (don't use iodized table salt!) It won't hurt your guppies at all and helps with a lot of parasites and diseases.

Shrimps are great cleaners, but plecos are poo-factories. If you haven't been gravel-vaccing with every water change you've likely got a lot of waste built up from him. Hopefully you can take him back as he'll likely get much too large for your tank as well.

It sounds like your water change schedule is good for regular maintainence, and when you get a syphon you'll be able to do more thorough cleaning. Also sounds like you're doing the best you possibly can at the moment with your sick fish! What have you been doing to clean your filter? Just curious as a friend of mine refuses to touch hers, and a lot of disease outbreaks happen when her filter gets clogged up, dead fish get in the filter... won't listen to a thing either. I doubt yours is nearly as bad but it is a possibility if you haven't been rinsing it out with water changes.

 

[Out of the Boxfish]

I didn't know I was supposed to touch the filter besides change the cartaridge...because when you start an aquarium the filter must go for a week or so until the aquarium regulates or cycles or whatever it has to do during the no-fish week. So during water changes do I turn the filter off and clean it? I thought that would ruin everything? I definitely got a lot to learn, but I'm trying!!! I'm going to Wallyworld first thing tomoro morning. I am confused though...can a fish have two diseases at the same time? I'm positive one has ich (so they must all have it) and another has fin rot i guess (those are the sickies mentioned earlier) would it help any if I posted pictures of my poor little guppies? I want them all to live...one is pregnant I think and she seems perfectly healthy, her tail is perfect, no white spots. Should I put her somewhere from all the other fish? The others are all white-bodied (besides the pink male with a neon rainbow on his tail and black spots---hes so pretty!!! ) and I can NOT tell if they are "ichy" or finrotted. I'll follow everything I have been told and pray the fish meds work. I will keep posted....

 

[Tessla]

Good thing I asked about the filter then! The filter is where most of the good bacteria that convert ammonia into less toxic substances live, so you'll want to take care of it. Never rinse it under tap water as the chlorine can kill off your bacteria but do give it a good rinse in old tank water or dechlorinated water whenever you do a water change or it gets gunky. If it gets clogged, it will stop filtering the big particles of nasty out of your water which likely contributed to what's happening in your tank right now. I'd go do a water change and rinse out the cartridge ASAP. You'll likely need to take apart the filter and clean out the other components as well, tap water is fine for that so long as it doesn't touch the filter media.

If that isn't the problem, then you could be changing the cartridges too often, you should only replace them when they become clogged enough that rinsing won't do any good, and make sure you keep some of the old filter media in there. If that's the case then what is happening is a mini-cycle: every time you replace the cartridge you're killing off lots of the bacteria converting ammonia to nitrites to nitrates, and a test kit will help you out with this end. Here's a decent article on the nitrogen cycle as it applies to fishkeeping, that should help make the water chemistry a bit easier to understand. Everyone who keeps fish really ought to understand it as it's very helpful, any time someone refers to cycling, it's this cycle they're referring to.

It's very possible for fish to have two or more diseases at once, wild fish are loaded with parasites and a lot of aquarium fish are wild caught. If you can get pictures of your fish it would help in figuring out the diseases. If any of them have ich, it's very easy to spot, they will have little white spots all over. It's also easy to medicate, you should be able to find a bunch of medications for it at the store. If you're medicating the tank, make sure that you take out any activated carbon in the filter, most cartridges use it and it will remove medication from the water.

Isolation is a very good idea if you have the space for it, some clean plastic tubs or buckets that haven't been used with household cleaners can be filled with dechlorinated water. If you can get an air pump, some airstones and airline tubing, that would be great to run in the buckets. Just do some water changes daily to keep them clean, and if you can keep them dark it will cause less stress on the fish.

Hopefully your fish all survive, I've got my fingers crossed! At the very least now you'll be able to prevent this from happening in the future, good luck!