I miss my fish

[ladynaoko]

some of you may know about the deaths I've been having in my tank.
The deaths were due to velvet.... and an eel from a place I'll never EVER go to again.

Because I wasn't able to change my water for ages (as I was medicating the tank for the velvet), the nitrate levels rose to stupid heights during the week (0.8 ). I asked the lfs what I should do about it and I was told "do a 10% change today then do a 25% change on Saturday (today)". So I follow his advice...

This morning I wake up to find three fish dead - the rest of my Black phantom tetras... and my baby Duke (pleco). I loved that fish to bits..

I took their bodies to the lfs so their expert could look (since hes there on weekends) and check them for disease for me. He told me the fish were 100% healthy and the nitrite had killed them, he tested my water for me and it was still 0.8. I told him what I'd been doing and he told me that I'd been given stupid advice by the employee and I should have been changing 25% of the water every other day. Needless to say he got rather annoyed at the employee who'd given my the advice - that guy knows how much I spend on stuff for my fish and he knows how hard small-growing plecos (clowns, King Tigers, Zebras, Bristlenoses etc etc) are to get down here and the price people have to pay for them.

I've lost half of my fish in around a fortnight now, if I loose any more I'll be on the verge of leaving the hobby - I've had so much bad stuff going on and only spending time with the fish is making me happy - seeing them all dying like this is breaking my heart.

 

[Cheese Specialist]

Aw, I am sorry to read about what has been happening.

I do have to wonder why you could not do a water change during treatment. I always change the water, but I simply add the meds back in that I have taken out.

I think your tank msut have been overstoked for your levels to get into that state so quickly. I can leave my tanks for weeks without having those sorts of problems.

What fish do you have left?

Edit: Sorry just saw your sig

 

[ladynaoko]

My nitrates have never ever been this high before.. I think they got so high because I trusted my dad to feed them this week because I've been in college until really late. I checked the bloodworm pack and instead of feeding 1/4 of a cube every other day he was feeding an entire cube of bloodworm EVERY day. But somehow there was no ammonia in the tank...

I won't change the water if I have meds in because i have really really bad double vision. This sounds stupid I know but the meds i was using warned about overdosing and because I find it hard measuring small amounts of chemicals I find it easier to treat the tanks then clean it in a week. Until now I haven't had a problem and I usually only clean my tank once a week anyway so the only thing I can think of that made the nitrites that high was him overfeeding them that much

 

[kaztrekie]

sorry to hear about your fish

i lost most of mine a couple of weeks ago to velvet disese i only have 3 mollies and a simese left

i thought it was white spot but it turned out the fish i bought (from the place i`m never buying fish from again)
. came in with both so i was treating whitespot not velvet.

needless to say many fish died including my gold nugget pleco(fav fish)

hope your tank is soon back to normal and don`t give up on the hobby it just takes time .

i now have a spare tank so any new fish can go in here instead of main tank first and stop this happening again.

good luck.