Neons Are Dropping Like Flies!

[freshy]

Hi guys,
I hope someone can help. I've been keeping keeping only four fish in my 10 gal. (40 l.) tank for months now, 1 whiteskirt tetra and 3 female guppys, , so, I decided to re-populate it and make it more lively as it once was.
ON Saturday I did a 20-25% waterchange, got rid of a very worn out plastic plant, and cleaned it up a bit. Scraped the inner glasses from algae and vaccumed the gravel.
On Sunday morning I went and got 6 neons and 2 pepper corydora.
Well, today is Tuesday and the corys are fine, but the neons keep dying on me. I'm down to only two now. I'm not sure they'll make it by tomorrow. It's VERY frustrating, to say the least. This afternoon I left three neons, apparently in good health, and now I come back from the movies and one is dead. The dead neons look pale, their bright red streak looks washed out and on this last corpse, I noticed some red mini-spots on his belly area, although I'm not sure if its blood or not.

PH is 7.5
Temp. 27-28 celsius
Ammonia is 0

and at the moment I don't have test kits for nitriteas nor nitrates.

Thanks in advance for any advice or help you may give me.

 

[LauraFrog]

If the ammonia is zero you're probably not going through a cycle spike. Neons are gutless due to mass production for the aquarium industry. What you're describing sounds a bit like neon tetra disease, which is incurable to my knowledge. I'm no expert though, I have never kept neons.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

What sort of test kit are you using? (liquid chemicals or test strips?)
Did you test the water every day since adding them or just now? If so what were the readings?

Compared to the amount of fish you had in the tank in the first place you've added quite a lot of fish to the tank at one time, this means the filter may be struggling to keep up with the bio load (waste produced) by the fish.

As Laurafrog say's neons are very delicate nowadays, even a slight blip in ammonia when you added the new fish could have triggered whatever disease they are suffering with. I suspect that there was a slight mini cycle after adding the new fish, could have been over within a day but if it went unnoticed it could have been enough to trigger this problem.

 

[freshy]

Thanks for the replies guys. The last two neons are still hanging on and look in good health so far. I'm using a Hagen Ammonia Test kit. Since I had just made a waterchange I assumed my levels were fine and only started testing after the deats. The mini-cycle theory does make a lot of sense. I'm hoping it is not some nasty bacteria in my tank.

 

[Colin_T]

neons are notorious for developing bacterial infections. The fish fade and lose colour and die within a day of developing the symptoms. Neon disease causes similar symptoms but isn't very common. If the water quality is good then it is probably a bacterial infection and should respond to most medications. Waterlife Myxazin should work but see how they go. If no more die in the next few days don't worry about it.
Try to quarantine new fish before adding them to your tank.
When you buy new fish check the tank for any bodies. If there is one dead fish in the tank don't touch them. If any fish in the tank look unwell, don't buy them. Healthy neons should be swimming around in a group and have a bright blue & red line. Their fins should look clear and not clamped up. If there are lots of neons in a tank and a couple are hanging up near the surface, or hiding in a corner away from the others, there is probably a problem with them and you should avoid buying any at that time.

 

[LauraFrog]

MW's theory makes perfect sense. The neons are mass produced. Meaning basically that they are bred from inferior stock - inbred parents - and then grown on much too fast, in poor conditions with the lights on all day, overfed, then starved to slim them down for the trade. Then they go through quarantine facilities and get put through malachite green, methylene blue, oxytet, acriflavine, formalin and every other foul thing. Finding healthy ones is rather difficult. Now that you've got two I would wait a week or so until everything settles down and then add more one at a time, one per week for a few weeks until you have a school of them. And add myxazin.

 

[freshy]

Well, so much for the mini cycle theory. Apparenty there is some nasty bacteria. Sadly another neon bit the dust and now one of the corys is swimming erraticaly, or upside down and doesn't look well at all. I live in Mexico City so right now is 11 pm but I'll try to get some of that myazin tomorrow. In the meantime I'm trying Aquarisol. I'll see how it goes. Damn! I feel so bad and so stupid for bringing them into the "tank of certain death". I guess my previous fish had turned into immune mutants or something.
Thank you for your help,

 

[Colin_T]

To work out the volume of water in the tank
measure Length x Width x Height in cm
divide by 1000
equals volume in litres

When measuring the height, measure from the top of the gravel to the top of the water level. If you have big rocks or driftwood in the tank, remove them before measuring the height.

Before you treat the tank do a 50% water change and complete gravel clean. This will reduce the gunk in the tank and allow the medication to work more effectively. It will also lower the pathogen count in the water and mean there are less nasties around to infect the fish.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating otherwise it will absorb the medication out of the water.

Make sure any new water is free of chlorine and has a similar temperature & PH to the tank.

Check the directions on any medication before you get it. Some will say to use a half dose if you have scaleless fish in the tank. Scaleless fish are catfish, loaches and eels. The corydoras are scaleless so get a medication that can be used with them. Waterlife Myxazin is fine for them and so are the sulpha based drugs like Wardley’s Triple Sulpha.