My Fish Are Ill

[MeggyE]

hi, sorry for the long post but i need advicr
I'm relatively new to keeping fish,I have had the tank for 6 to 7 months andnthe only problem I have had so far is a bit of cloudy water right at the begining. the other night my guppy died but I didn't think much of this because he was a few months old when I got it and he was the first fish I had so I've had him nearly 7 months and from searches on how long guppies live I thought this was a normal age to live to. however I've noticed over the past week that one of my ram chillies has disappeared. I thought she was just hiding because out of the two she always his away in ornaments or in plants but after cleaning out the tank I can't find her anywhere and I can't find a body either. this afternoon I noticed that my male ram has a little lump just under his mouth and I thought I'd just keep an eye on him, but now it has grown bigger and a new one is growing. I have no idea what it is but he's hiding a lot more than usual.

can anyone think of what is happening?
I have a 50 litre tank, all tests on the water come up normal. I do a 15% water change once a week and hoover the gravel. I have 3 plants to help the water and nothing new has been added to the tank in nearly 2 months. at the moment I have 1 guppy ( sadley not 2), three platies, 1 molly( it used to be two but I had to give one away) a small loach, a few neon tetras and now only one ram chillid

any advice would really help as I don't know what to do.
I have also attached a picture of the lump on my ram, Its not the best qaulity .

 

[Nordk]

Is the tank cycled?
What are the exact water parameters?
Firstly, no fish has such a short lifespan, guppies are 2-3 years, any reports of less than that are from poor tank conditions or disease.
Secondly, your tank is overstocked. Minimum tank size for rams is 20 gallons (about 75 liters). What type of loach is it, as many species are shoaling and need groups of 6 or more, which requires a larger tank. Without knowing exactly what species, the tank size needed is hard to tell.
It looks like a parasite or another infection, a clearer photo would help for an exact ID. If possible, quarintine him and moniter your other fish for signs of infection, if you spot any, quarintine them too. You may have to treat the whole tank though, as it appears to have spread and claimed 2 fish already.
You'll need some parasite meds from your LFS, if you can't get any at the moment, (if I'm not mistaken it's somewhere around 3am in the UK right now) do as much of a water change as you can, leaving jsut enough room for the fish to swim upright, to remove what ever is floating around in there and prevent it from spreading. A 25% water change removes 25% of the nasty stuff, 50% takes half of it out, etc, and you want to remove as much of it as you can.
Go to the link in my sig, it's full of other info on other aspects of the hobby.

 

[MeggyE]

hi, thanks for replying
I didn't realise the tank was over stocked, I did ask the places that I got the fish from and they said i could have about 15 fish in there but obviously that's not true . the tank was cycled because my dad made that mistake when he first got a tank and warned me, the cloudiness at the beginning I found out was due to me cleaning the filter more than I should of. the loach is going to be a fish I have to get rid of. I dont know what it is as I got it off a friend when he had to give up his tank and its started growing very big. I was actually going to the pet shop today to see if they would take him anyway ( shame he's my favourite).
acourding to my test it says n02 is at 0, n03 is 0, pH is <6.4, kh is 50, GH ( I'm not sure what this is) is 125, and ammonia is at 0.
I'll do what you suggested this morning and go to my pet shop and buy some medicine. and then look at trying to get rid of some fish .

 

[Nordk]

You're welcome.
Stores typically aren't the best source of advice, and stocking depends on the size of the adult fish by species.
What test kit are you using? If it's a paper dip-strip, you should replace it with a liquid kit, and either way make sure that you get something that measures ammonia. Your nitrate (NO3) is unusually low, though that's a good thing unless it's a misreading, which is what a reading of 0 typically indicates.
Remember to do constant water changes starting 2 times a day and redose meds until it starts to subside, once the external signs of infection have gone, you can go down to one change a day and keep it up for a week after the fish appears to be cured. If you feed them pellets you can also soak food in a mixture of meds and water (the same you use to top-off the tank) so it gets inside them faster than swimming around in it.
Keep monitoring your other fish for signs of infection, and keep in mind that meds can kill the cycle, but you can kick-start it by putting some mature media in the filter afterwords. A large water change followed by adding carbon to your filter for a week or 2 will remove excess meds after you've finished treatment.
 
Hope your fish recovers, even with the bumps he looks like a very beautiful ram.

 

[huc1115]

change your water about 70% or your all fish will die for sure in a next 2 weeks 

 

[MeggyE]

just an update, i have done a big water change and have been adding a general medicine to the tank because i'm still not sure what it is, and the lump on my ram has already started looking better than it was. so far it has not appeared on anymore of my fish so hopefully i managed to catch it in time.. i do use a dip paper test and the measurements jump from 0 to 50 so it's probably somewhere between the two. 
thank you for all your advice, hopefully i caught it in time

 

[Nordk]

You're welcome. You really should pick up a liquid test kit, they're infinately more accurate and the bottles last longer than a container of strips. Just remember to keep redosing and changing the water until a week after all signs of infection are gone.
Just out of curiousity, was this the loach?

 

[MeggyE]

no it was one like this one, a plecostomus

i took it to a pet shop because thy said they would try and re home him. when i took him there they said they can grow on average to about 20 to 25 cm long, but they said in some places they have grown to about 40. i only got him about three months ago and he grew from about three cm at the most to just under 9cm so i thought i had better re home him.