Heya all, first post, so hopefully I'm posting this in the right place....
We have a 150gal tank, and have always had a problem with nitrates (not nitrites, and yes, we've had the tank for a while and made sure to cycle it first). We've tried nitrate reducers (in liquid form from the store) and filter additives to our can filter, yet the nitrates never seem to lower one bit (currently around 160-180 ppm, which definitely ain't good). Nitrites are at 0ppm, and same with ammonia. The only other thing out of whack would be our alkalinity/pH, which are about 20-40ppm and 6.4 or so (fairly acidic) respectively. Relatively hard water too (around 120ppm), community tank, live plants, very few snails (try to keep the population down)...
Now for our problem, which might not even be related to these facts:
Lately we got a few black neons for our community tank, thinking they'd look great with our small school of cardinals. Unfortunately, one of the black neons passed away fairly quickly in the night after a couple days. A couple days after that, we noticed our rainbows (2 Australian and 2 Turquoise, all around 3-4 inches or so) starting to get sploches of discoloration, as if they were picked at by other fishes. It mostly seemed to be around their caudal fin, right at the base of it. This morning, one of each rainbow passed away (the bigger one of the pairs), and I'm really scared, because our surviving Turquoise seems to also be on the way out, which these discoloration sploches starting to develop on it as well. The fish we found dead had lost most of their coloration, and our Australians eyes were bulging out pretty badly (not before it died, but after we found it dead). It's not ich or anything, and we've treated for fungal infections, but doesn't seem to do anything (in fact, we've had very similar problems in the past with our cardinals, and after trying all different kinds of treatments, nothing was really solved and the infected ones eventually just passed away and we kinda left it at that). Thinking back, we did notice some bloating of the stomachs in the affected cardinals before they passed.
I'm maybe thinking NTD, but I've never heard of it developing in bigger fish like rainbows (but I've been known to be wrong many of times). In addition, I've also heard rumors that cardinal tets are immune to the disease, which makes me even more skeptical. *shrug* We at first thought it might be physical nipping from other fish, but it doesn't seem very likely anymore since the rainbows that passed are the bigger fish of our tank, and we have yet to see any nipping behaviour from any fish (during the day or night).
any ideas? we don't have a quarantine tank to put the infected in, should we consider one? the last thing i wanna do is euthanize our poor Turquoise... =[
If it might help, I can post pictures, too.
We have a 150gal tank, and have always had a problem with nitrates (not nitrites, and yes, we've had the tank for a while and made sure to cycle it first). We've tried nitrate reducers (in liquid form from the store) and filter additives to our can filter, yet the nitrates never seem to lower one bit (currently around 160-180 ppm, which definitely ain't good). Nitrites are at 0ppm, and same with ammonia. The only other thing out of whack would be our alkalinity/pH, which are about 20-40ppm and 6.4 or so (fairly acidic) respectively. Relatively hard water too (around 120ppm), community tank, live plants, very few snails (try to keep the population down)...
Now for our problem, which might not even be related to these facts:
Lately we got a few black neons for our community tank, thinking they'd look great with our small school of cardinals. Unfortunately, one of the black neons passed away fairly quickly in the night after a couple days. A couple days after that, we noticed our rainbows (2 Australian and 2 Turquoise, all around 3-4 inches or so) starting to get sploches of discoloration, as if they were picked at by other fishes. It mostly seemed to be around their caudal fin, right at the base of it. This morning, one of each rainbow passed away (the bigger one of the pairs), and I'm really scared, because our surviving Turquoise seems to also be on the way out, which these discoloration sploches starting to develop on it as well. The fish we found dead had lost most of their coloration, and our Australians eyes were bulging out pretty badly (not before it died, but after we found it dead). It's not ich or anything, and we've treated for fungal infections, but doesn't seem to do anything (in fact, we've had very similar problems in the past with our cardinals, and after trying all different kinds of treatments, nothing was really solved and the infected ones eventually just passed away and we kinda left it at that). Thinking back, we did notice some bloating of the stomachs in the affected cardinals before they passed.
I'm maybe thinking NTD, but I've never heard of it developing in bigger fish like rainbows (but I've been known to be wrong many of times). In addition, I've also heard rumors that cardinal tets are immune to the disease, which makes me even more skeptical. *shrug* We at first thought it might be physical nipping from other fish, but it doesn't seem very likely anymore since the rainbows that passed are the bigger fish of our tank, and we have yet to see any nipping behaviour from any fish (during the day or night).
any ideas? we don't have a quarantine tank to put the infected in, should we consider one? the last thing i wanna do is euthanize our poor Turquoise... =[
If it might help, I can post pictures, too.
/www.flippersandfins.net/pop-eye.htm
