Fish Deaths And Reoccuring Troubles

[koinukun]

Hey guys, long time no post I'm afraid.
I've got quite a few problems I disparately need help with at the moment so this might get quite lengthy.

Ok, I have a 40g aqua one tank with and angelfish (about 5" now) 5 Lemon Tetra, 6 Harlequins 2 Keyholes and 1 Bolivian Ram that has been up and running for over 6 months now.

1) First issue is I think my angel has now reached that time in his life where harlequins look like dinner. He chases all the little fish quite frequently now. I noticed on 2 of the smallest, more streamlined ones they had sore patches that looked like bite marks. The fatter more board bodied harlequins are fine, as are the lemons. I quarantined the two sore ones and their wounds have cleared up quite a lot. My question here is should I get rid of the harlequins, as they seem to be most appetising to the angel?

2) Second problem was with the 2 keyholes. One had what appeared to be popeye or something similar and the other became VERY skittish and timid. I know keyholes are notorious for being shy, but mine never were, so this behaviour was very unusual.
A long story short, the paranoid on died randomly one morning, even though he was eating and appeared fine apart from his skittishness. I have the other keyhole in quarantine and his eye has greatly improved. I haven't used any meds, just very frequent water changes and his condition has improved by a lot. I know popeye can be caused by some sort of internal troubles. A few months back both keyholes had a nasty case of camellanus worms which I went to the vet to get Levamisole for. That cleared up but perhaps there was some damage left inside from the parasites? Medicated food is VERY hard to come by where I am and he still doesn't have much of an appetite.

3) My Bolivian Ram is pretty much dead . This happened just a few days ago I noticed him looking very poorly. He appeared more greyish in colour and a bit wobbly. He didn't swim very far and seemed to strain to do so when he moved anywhere. I checked my water and found my ammonia to be 0.1!!! I have no idea how this happened so I did a large waterchange and he seemed to pick up a little. That was 2 days ago and today he is very ill. And my water had a reading of 0.1 ammonia again! Nitrites were nil. I did another large water change and put him in the quarantine tank. He has picked up a little but he can't stand upright and has lost control, lying on his side or trying to swim but spiraling all over the place. Is this dropsy? Ammonia poisoning? All the other fish in the main tank are unaffected.
Could the rise in ammonia be a result of the algae rid I put in a few days ago? I have a problem with brown algae so got something to get rid of it. It's virtually gone but now I have more green algae than before

My current water stats are:
ammonia 0ppm
Nitrites 0ppm
Nitrates 5ppm
pH 7.2 (my pH in my tap is 7.4 and a few days after waterchange the tank is just neutral 7. It's 7.2 now as it's just after water change)

Any help is greatly appreciated! Sorry for the lengthy post.

Thanks.

 

[LauraFrog]

What is the algae rid? I have used simazine in cycled tanks before and stuffed up the filter. Don't put simazine in a cycled tank. I do use it in unfiltered fry setups, it doesn't hurt fish but bacteria don't like it. If you must use it, put zeolite in the filter until all of the med is gone and you have re established the cycle. I wouldn't risk it with delicate fish like rams in the tank.

0.1 ammonia at 7.2 is not enough to kill a ram. It might make him uncomfortable, as in still and gasping at the surface, but the sort of symptoms you're describing (and the fact that he's basically dead) would not be caused by this much ammonia. If there is an ammonia problem, lower the temperature by a few degrees as this will reduce your free ammonia, but at 0.1 it's so low that I honestly don't think it would have done much damage.

Sounds like you have to choose between the angel and the harlequins. They do this sometimes when they get big. 5" is about the right size to start nipping small fish. If you get some badly injured, melafix is good to help heal open wounds.



Right. First the ram.
No balance and difficulty swimming sounds like a swim bladder problem, but that doesn't explain the loss of colour. It's possible that something else has caused his swim bladder to deform or blow up, and that that something has also caused colour loss. I know of some people who have cured swim bladder disease using antibacterials. For something this serious if you want to try something I'd recommend going after it more aggressively. Try antibiotics or sulfa drugs.

The keyholes.
Popeye is bacterial. Some antibiotics clear it up pretty fast in most fish. Fish that panic for no reason often have parasites or internal bacterial infections. Or fish TB. I never buy them because of the risk of TB. I hate fish TB. Suddenly becoming paranoid, out of character behavior for the fish, suggests internal bacteria because it can take hold fast and you'd already treated for parasites. It is possible for parasites to cause internal damage but if that was the case I'd expect him to have died by now. Is he skinny/did he put condition back on after the parasites were gone or not?


Possible theory, which could well be wrong:
Several fish had minor complaints (parasites/possible internal damage, popeye) which weakened their immune systems slightly. They became infected with internal bacteria. These multiplied and a slight ammonia spike provided the conditions for them to spread to the ram, which is more delicate than harlequins or lemons and became sick.

Personally I'd put all the sick fish in hospital tanks, treat with tetracycline and cross my fingers. It's hard to know what's wrong with the ram because a lot of diseases can cause eratic swimming in their terminal stages, but if it is just a swim bladder disorder caused by internal bacteria tetracycline could cure him. Popeye will probably be cured with tetracycline. The other keyhole might be.
I'd also ditch the harlequins or the angel, or else contain the angel with a divider, because if one of them gets badly hurt it will provide the ideal breeding ground for more bacteria.

Keep us posted. And listen to Wilder for heaven's sake because a lot of that was speculation.

 

[koinukun]

Thanks so much for your relpy!

The algae rid is called "AlgaeFix" and the active constituent is "poly(oxyethylene(dimethylimino)ethylene (dimethylimino)ethylene dichloride)"...which is what is says on the label and is a completely different language to me

As far as the angel and harlequins are concerned I'll get rid of the harlequins, as I've very attached to the angel and he has heaps of personality.

With the keyhole, he's improving day by day now! He's getting his appetite back which is a relief. Since he had the worms he never really put much body weight back on but he did have an appetite before this popeye business. I don't feed him much though, 1 small meal a day. Should I give him some more? I was wondering if live foods would get him some more weight, like mosquito larva or black worms or brine shrimp or something. Is that a good idea?

Sadly the ram didn't make it which was very upsetting as I'd had him since the very beginning...
I put him in the quarantine tank (I only have 1) with the keyhole and I checked back on him in about 1/2 an hour and found the keyhole had torn him to shreds! He was in such bad shape that I thought it best to put him to sleep.

Thanks again for your post Laura!

~koinukun

 

[LauraFrog]

Aw, RIP. I hate putting fish to sleep!

You'd be better off asking somebody else's opinion on what and how much to feed the keyhole, because there is a possibility that live food could introduce something else when he's already a bit poorly. But live foods are really good for conditioning fish as long as they are not fed exclusively. The best diet for most fish is a combination of dried or processed foods (flakes, pellets etc.) because they contain vitamins, minerals and other things that are hard to get, and live food which just seems to be really good for them. If you hatch and grow on your own brine shrimp it should be fine but most people don't recommend feeding other live food to sick fish because of the chance of it introducing disease.

I'm not good enough at chemistry to reverse engineer that AlgaeFix. I don't think my chemistry teachers could do it. Way too many brackets for me. The only bit that stands out as something other than an obsure list of chemicals is dichloride. Chlorine kills bacteria, that's why they add it to pools and municipal water supplies. Try adding enough chlorine neutraliser to treat the whole tank every time you add the algae rid. It can't do any harm and if it is chlorine causing the problems that might allow your filter to recover.

Good luck!