I recently gave my brother-in-law my old 30 gallon tank for him to upgrade from his 15 gallon.
Long story short, he ignored most of my advice and things in the tank are not going well. He put his old fish in there, two mollies (one marbled, one "mickey mouse"), two neon tetras and a twig catfish. He also added 2 balloon mollies, 2 golden platties, 3 male guppies and 2 cories.
He lost the marbled mollie right away, then when his golden plattie had fry, all of those died as well. He told me he thought there'd been a pH crash (when I suggested a buffer and even offered to give him some of mine, he told me that "the Internet said those don't work"......
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Annnnyway, when I went over there last week the first thing I noticed was one of the mollies was flashing constantly so I gave him prazi to treat for flukes. Now he's out of town and I'm looking after the tank. I went over there today and here's what I found. One of the balloon mollies was dead with no obvious signs of illness and both the orange mollies look bad. The male in particular has clamped fins and seems to be struggling to swim, he's stiff almost. Also, the female has some black on her, not sure if this is natural or disease. I also noticed the plattie flashing once or twice, despite a full round of prazi. And the male guppies are really picking at each other and the other fish.
As for the tank, suprisingly all the perams were good. I was a bit mystified by the kH though. The tap water there is very very soft, but the kH in the tank was good - yet I don't think he used a buffer. The pH was 7.4. He's using a large penguine biowheel filter and salting 1 tbs per 5 gallons. He feeds flakes (through an automatic feeder) and shrimp pellets. The water is treated with Prime.
So, my questions are what else could be going on besides parasites? Should I try and antibacterial or antifungal med? Also, the salt. I know that livebearers do well in slightly brackish water, but what about his catfish?
Any advice would be good, I'm a bit stumped.
Long story short, he ignored most of my advice and things in the tank are not going well. He put his old fish in there, two mollies (one marbled, one "mickey mouse"), two neon tetras and a twig catfish. He also added 2 balloon mollies, 2 golden platties, 3 male guppies and 2 cories.
He lost the marbled mollie right away, then when his golden plattie had fry, all of those died as well. He told me he thought there'd been a pH crash (when I suggested a buffer and even offered to give him some of mine, he told me that "the Internet said those don't work"......
)Annnnyway, when I went over there last week the first thing I noticed was one of the mollies was flashing constantly so I gave him prazi to treat for flukes. Now he's out of town and I'm looking after the tank. I went over there today and here's what I found. One of the balloon mollies was dead with no obvious signs of illness and both the orange mollies look bad. The male in particular has clamped fins and seems to be struggling to swim, he's stiff almost. Also, the female has some black on her, not sure if this is natural or disease. I also noticed the plattie flashing once or twice, despite a full round of prazi. And the male guppies are really picking at each other and the other fish.
As for the tank, suprisingly all the perams were good. I was a bit mystified by the kH though. The tap water there is very very soft, but the kH in the tank was good - yet I don't think he used a buffer. The pH was 7.4. He's using a large penguine biowheel filter and salting 1 tbs per 5 gallons. He feeds flakes (through an automatic feeder) and shrimp pellets. The water is treated with Prime.
So, my questions are what else could be going on besides parasites? Should I try and antibacterial or antifungal med? Also, the salt. I know that livebearers do well in slightly brackish water, but what about his catfish?
Any advice would be good, I'm a bit stumped.
