Help, Please!

[Spidergrrrl]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone out there can help me. I have a 12 gallon tank with one male betta, seven Corydoras Habrosus (used to be nine until yesterday) a couple of ghost shrimp and some random snails. It's running an eclipse filter system and has a ton of plants (all doing fine). I am dosing the plants with Flourish and Flourish Excel at half-strength.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed one of my cories acting strangely - flashing (I think that's the term - when they jerk around, looking like they're trying to scratch something or shake something off?), swimming off-balanced. I noticed that one particular fish had red gills, so I checked my water parameters and everything seemed fine: pH: 7.6, ammonia/nitrite: 0, nitrates: 20ppm. My KH is 7dKH. Not sure about GH - the readings are off the chart. Not sure if it's because the readings are just that high, or my test kit is not good.

Since I didn't see any other visual symptoms of anything wrong, I didn't do any kind of dosing. I did my usual water changes - 10% once a week and things again seemed fine. Then I noticed yesterday that two of my fish were on the brink of death - just lying there, gasping. I lost one of them yesterday, and the other one this morning.

Now I've noticed one of the remaining seven is also starting to flash.

Any ideas what this could be?

Thanks!

 

[Sp00ky]

have you added anything new to the tank since before the first death?

 

[Spidergrrrl]

All I did was another partial water change yesterday (10%).

 

[jollysue]

Red gills are a danger sign and can be water issues, a bacterial infection, perhaps a parasite or all three. I would post for help in the emergency forum or pm Inchworm or Wilder.

With a Cory tank I would usually just start keeping very clean water. Cories seem to me to be incredibly resilient. But with a Betta whose fins are always in danger and best treated with salt which is a no no with cories, and with the pygmies which I found to be less resilient than regular cories, I would get help from the experts.

Nitrates could be lower, though I am no expert. More water changes.

Flicking is a sign of parasites and/or water issues.

 

[Spidergrrrl]

jollysue,

Thank you for the reply. I did another partial water change this morning and things seem to be somewhat better. It's interesting that you mentioned pygmies being less resilient than the regular-sized ones - I've kept regular sized cories in the past and not had a problem with them.

I will post this in the emergency forum as I think it would be worse to try and treat something without having any real idea what may be going on.

 

[jollysue]

 

[Coryman]

A couple of points here I feel need to be said. Firstly let me dispel the myth about Corys and salt. It is total Bunkum, Rubbish, or any other work that is safe to say here, that means whoever started the old wife's tail about Corys and salt, is talking garbage. The only Catfishes that do not like it, or have a reaction to it, are the "Naked" ones and not all of these react badly to salt. Salt is a very good treatment to irradiate many parasites, but it needs to be at the right strength (4oz per imperial gallon), it is the same in reverse with marine fish, treating them in soft fresh water. It starts to get complicated from here on so I will not delve any further, there are marine biology experts out there that can explain far better than me. There are three so-called pygmy Corys, C. habrosus, C. hastatus and C. pygmaeus, all three will tolerate the salt dosage I have mentioned, albeit not for a great length of time, may be a minute or so. However adding a little half a teaspoon per imperial gallon, to the tank water will do them no harm what so ever. To give you an actual example, I treated a 10 gallon (IMP) tank with 2 lbs of rock salt to irradiate an infestation of leaches. I had caught and moved all the fish, or so I though, but to make sure there would be no more leaches I left all the furnishings in the tank and it was some ten minutes after the salt went in and dissolved, that I discovered three C. pygmeaus were still in there. They were duly removed and suffered no ill effects at all, one was a large female and she went on to produce many fry and lived to the grand old age of 12 years. The fact that you have snails, friendly ones I take it, I would not add any salt.

OK enough about salt. Personally I think that 10% water changes are not enough, better than none at all,but I would recommend at least 30% every week. I would like to know the parameters of the mains water you are using and the size and type of substrate. with a pH of 7.6 and a hardness off the scale I think there is something not quite balanced. With Corys that small (1 inch body length) the substrate needs to be very small and here I would recommend well washed, fine, smooth grained sand, kids play sand is good and cheep. The trouble with the normal gravel for tiny fish like your C. habrosus is that food particle get trapped between the particles and the small Corys are not big enough or strong enough to move it, the uneaten particles decompose and produce pockets of poisonous gas and the gravel turns black. You can easily check if this is happening by gently stirring the gravel with a long cane and any gas will bubble up.

I would also stop adding the plant fertiliser until the problem is sorted, as this may also be a contributing factor.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[paulf]

Got a feeling your test kit is maybe not right, I would check it again, prefeably with a different test kit just to be safe.

I am not convinced the ferts are doing any harm at all, I used to use them both until I realised how much it was costing so I wouldn't personally stop using them, flourish is trace and excel is only carbon.
Nitrates is fine at 20, I add nitrates to keep it at 15-20

 

[jollysue]

What a blessing to have you to help, Ian! If I may address you as such? I have treated a Cory with a bad case of cotton fungus that was a secondary infection (I suppose) from a nasty plague of columnaris. A combination of Mela/PimaFix and salt baths (the last one I increased the dose until the Cory passed out and died, because the fungus was not responding after several days of treatment; Rocky Balboa revived in my hands and his clan has now given me my pepper fry) finally stopped it. He lost one of his dorsal fins.

So I know that they can be treated with salt baths. I am just not clear if they can have a constant addition of salt as is used with Betta.

Thank you sooo much for taking your time here.

I think the idea was to stop the additional ferts until the tank regained it's health. It wouldn't hurt to stop for now.

I'm sure you are right about the nitrates, Paul. But Coryman is right about the substrate, I think. My next question would be does the tank need a good vacuming? Because is is surely possible that there is a possibility of bacterial nastiness in the substrate. When cories get sick I find a thorough cleaning is always in order. As a matter of fact my first rule of sick fish care is lots of water changes and tank cleaning. Clean water is the first issue. The fact that her cories perk up when she does a water change is a possible sign. I am with Ian on bigger waterchanges. If there is a parasite or bacteria water changes will reduce the load of bad guys in the tank.

 

[paulf]

What a blessing to have you to help, Ian! If I may address you as such? I have treated a Cory with a bad case of cotton fungus that was a secondary infection (I suppose) from a nasty plague of columnaris. A combination of Mela/PimaFix and salt baths (the last one I increased the dose until the Cory passed out and died, because the fungus was not responding after several days of treatment; Rocky Balboa revived in my hands and his clan has now given me my pepper fry) finally stopped it. He lost one of his dorsal fins.

So I know that they can be treated with salt baths. I am just not clear if they can have a constant addition of salt as is used with Betta.

Thank you sooo much for taking your time here.

I think the idea was to stop the additional ferts until the tank regained it's health. It wouldn't hurt to stop for now.

Hes only a bearded brummie but a nice guy I assume you can call him Ian as thats his name

I am going to be the first to disagree with Ian on here as every one else wont stopping adding the ferts might not hurt to stop as far as the fish are concerned, but it will make the plants suffer and like I said, flourish and excel wont harm the fish at all, I used to use them both all the time and there was never a problem with the fish. If you are careful, you can double dose excel to kill algae as there is a ingredient in it that kills it.

Corys are ok with salt in small amounts, but why add salt to a betta tank??

 

[jollysue]

There are some maladies that Betta are prone to, like fungus and fin rot. The salt traditionally is recommended. I have found an improvement in my long term Betta health by adding it routinely. It is one reason I don't recommend Bettas in community tanks. Their treatment is a bit different than other fish.

BTW, I think I missed the "everyone else won't" disagree with Ian bullet! I am trying to make nice for disagreeing with him! and that very openly!

I think what we need now that we are all aquainted is a clear recommendation for Spidergrrl

 

[paulf]

There are some maladies that Betta are prone to, like fungus and fin rot. The salt traditionally is recommended. I have found an improvement in my long term Betta health by adding it routinely. It is one reason I don't recommend Bettas in community tanks. Their treatment is a bit different than other fish.

BTW, I think I missed the "everyone else won't" disagree with Ian bullet! I am trying to make up to him for disagreeing with him!

Was just trying to help with the betta, they are something I have never kept.

Disagree with Ian, its fun , he might be well known for what he does, but he is only human

ok, the disagree bulletin didnt get very far

 

[jollysue]

I meant to say that I kinda jumped on Ian in my thread on the long fins. I wanted to make nice, so he knows it wasn't personal, and he can feel at home and not worry about offending me. Also I was glad someone stepped in to help with the call for help. I am not supper well experienced, but I don't want anyone to walk it alone. So I do what I can.

 

[paulf]

I meant to say that I kinda jumped on Ian in my thread on the long fins. I wanted to make nice, so he knows it wasn't personal, and he can feel at home and not worry about offending me.

I noticed If you had offended him you would know, hes a big boy

Also I was glad someone stepped in to help with the call for help. I am not supper well experienced, but I don't want anyone to walk it alone. So I do what I can.

Doing what you can is better than doing nothing at all and you taught me something about bettas, my salt for my chips (fries ) will get used up if I keep bettas, so I will stick with discus and corys

 

[Spidergrrrl]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the replies.

Coryman - I will up the water changes. I'm still a fish newbie, so I'm still learning what's appropriate. I didn't want to do anything too drastic in trying to improve conditions. As for the substrate - it's mostly gravel, with sand in one corner. The gravel is small and smooth, but I do try to drop food onto the sand instead of the gravel. The shrimp are pretty good at scavenging and there are MTS stirring things up.

I will try and net the cories to give them a salt bath.

jollysue - I do vacuum the gravel where I can when I do the water changes, although it's a bit difficult - I have a lot of plants in the tank and too much vacuuming would uproot them. Maybe I should consider moving the betta into a separate tank?

Paulf - it is entirely possible my GH kit is kaput - it's a few years old and I don't know what the shelf life is like. I will buy a new test kit tomorrow.