Kill Them Now, Or Let Them Die Naturally?

[ellena]

So, I am having a bad time fish-wise at the moment. An ongoing problem in my tank of endlers with mystery disease. It had been quiet for a while until a few weeks ago when another one got it. I got back from holiday on friday to find another one has it and a further fish has something else, white patches on him. If they both die, that would only leave 4. I had plans to move them to a larger tank, along with their media, but it needs containing I think.
I'm in the middle of moving house, so I really can't be bothered with setting up new tanks etc. A fish hasn't recovered from this disease yet, so I think the tank is pretty much doomed
To top that, I had a dwarf gourami, also waiting to go into new tank. I asked a neighbour to feed all the fish while we were away, he's done it before and been fine. It was clear he had overfed them though as there was uneaten food in the gourami tank and my betta tank. I did a water change, but the gourami was dead yesterday. I haven't tested the water, but I'm fairly sure the ammonia will be high.
At this rate, I will only be taking my betta with me to the new house and starting afresh there.
So, what do you think I should do with the endlers?
Just remembered, on the plus side, when doing the water change on my betta tank I found a glass shrimp which had been missing, presumed dead. He didn't look great though, I'll start a thread on the invert. forum about him...

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Is it not worth netting them and taking them to a trusted LFS for their opinion? I understand you must be quite hectic with move preparations, but surely your pet fish who depend on you entirely for their well-being deserve ~1 hour of your time for diagnosis by someone experienced and then ~10 minutes a day for medication treatment?

I worried myself silly (to the point of having nightmares, getting up in the middle of the night for two hours or staying up way past my normal bedtime) about my new Opsarius over the last week and ended up (surprisingly easily) netting them into a transport bag (them put inside two dark bags to sedate them a little) and took them back to the sellers, who reassured me they were fine.

 

[ellena]

I have spent ages trying to diagnose them! The thread I posted a link to has gone on for months with wilder's advice and others. I have tried to get a post mortem done on them to no avail. If it was just ich or something, I would obviously medicate and look after them as best I could. But I can't treat this 'cos I don't know what it is. I've tried 3 different worming meds as the first ones got really thin and then died. The last 3 have got really fat though, and not dropsy-no pineconing and you can't tell they're fat from above. Stats are amm 0, nitrites 0 nitrates 10-20 and have been for ages.
If I took them to a LFS, they wouldn't have a clue and would just try to sell me a ton of stuff I didn't need

 

[hamfist]

My guess is that they just don't like your water, whether it's hard, soft, acid or alkali, whatever.

Personally, I have found that I just can't keep pygmy cories, red eye tetras, rams or Stiphodon gobies in my water. In the end they just all fade away, succumb to disease and die. I think all long-term fishkeepers should try to be aware of what species seem to do well or badly in their water.

Sorry, that doesn't answer your question at all, but might help you in some decision-making in the future.

 

[spectrum]

It depends on how much pain and discomfort you think they are in. If you feel that there is not hope for them and that putting them out of their misery is the right thing to do, then do it, with either the ice or 'bash them on the side' method (Never tried it but bashing them on the side is supposed to be the quickest and least painful way of killing them? read that somewhere)

 

[ellena]

Type of water was suggested at one point, but I had replies from people who were keeping endlers successfully in similar water to mine. neutral pH, high gH, low kH.