One thing after another :(

[CV26]

We first decided to get a tank in August last year. Complete newbies but we felt like we'd done a good amount of research so off we went...

First up was a dodgy rock that caused our fishless tank to start cycling. Not the worst thing in the world as we eventually managed to complete the cycle. But completely baffling and worrying at the time as there seemed no obvious reason why it could have happened. We now believe that there was something decaying in one of the rocks.

Next were the dodgy guppies. About a week after they arrived we lost the first fish. After that we tried to figure out what illness had been introduced and started medicating according to best guesses. We lost 2 corys in the process before finally seeing a worm hanging out of one of the guppies just before Christmas.

We began treating for Callamanus using esha ndx. Over Christmas we took out all the gravel and sterilised it, and scrubbed down the tank. We had a bare bottom tank for a month to finish the ndx treatments then we rebuilt it last week. Despite trying to be really careful with the filter media all the meddling knocked out the bacteria so for the last week we've been doing daily water changes.

Nitrites get up to around 0.5 each day so we're just hoping it all comes right again soon. I have a bad back and OH is away with work now so I'm going to struggle with the water changes but they'll have to be done.

As if that wasn't enough, I've now seen two fish doing what could be stringy white poos. I'm hoping it's stress from the filter situation and all the upheaval. I hope it's not the worms or something else!

We also have a few platy fry in their own tank - oldest is about 2.5 months, youngest 4 weeks. The other day we spotted 2 with clamped tail fins. One was in a bad shape so we euthanised. The other went downhill the next day and died. Then a third one has come down with the same problem...although it still seems to be fairly lively. Tank levels are good so no idea what this is. Could they have picked up worms from the short time they were in the main tank with the others? Is it just genetic...if so seems a bit weird that they've all started to go over the same day or so? So sad as we were enjoying watching them grow up and we were going to keep as many as we had room for.

Argh...not looking for any real advice at all. Just needed a bit of a rant I guess. We didn't expect fish keeping to be a complete walk in the park, but this feels like we're cursed!

 

[Colin_T]

A dodgy rock that is contaminated with something can happen to anyone so you just got unlucky there.

Most imported guppies are covered in protozoans, gill flukes and intestinal worms. If the shops are good they treat the fish with salt when they first come in the clear up the protozoans and gill flukes and the fish have fewer issues. Unfortunately most shops don't do that. Locally bred guppies are usually much better quality and if you by a couple of females and put them in a well planted quarantine tank, let them give birth and then move the babies into your main tank, you can get a colony of healthy guppies that were born at your house and have very few issues. The females can remain in the quarantine tank until they die.

------------------------
If the fish have worms you don't normally remove the substrate to treat them. You just treat all the tanks at the same time. You treat once a week for 3 weeks to kill any adult worms and the young that hatch from eggs in the fish. If you only treat the tank once the fish can become re-infested from eggs that hatch after treatment.

------------------------
Deworming medications don't normally affect filter bacteria so I am unsure why your filter crashed. If you left the filter running continuously it should be fine. If you turned it off to replace the substrate you didn't have to. Normally you just leave the filter running and do stuff in the tank.

------------------------
Fish do a stringy white poop if they have intestinal worms or an internal protozoan or bacterial infection. Internal bacterial infections normally cause the fish to balloon up overnight, stop eating, breath heavily, do stringy white poop and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms.

Internal protozoan infections cause fish to eat a bit but not as much as normal. They become skinny over a couple of weeks and die after a few weeks of doing stringy white poop.

Intestinal worms cause fish to become skinny but they continue eating normally. If fish are heavily infested with worms they can look fat like a pregnant guppy.

------------------------
Clamped fins or tails are normally caused by poor water quality or protozoan or bacterial infections. If the water is good and none of the fish are scratching it is probably a bacterial infection. Doing a 75% water change and gravel clean each day will usually fix most clamped fin issues.

You can treat clamped fins with salt. You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that.

If you post pictures of sick fish we might be able to id the problem for you,.

 

[CV26]

Thanks for the reply.

I have some salt coming tomorrow. The remaining 4 fry seem ok at the moment, I didn't get any photos of the ones that passed away. Essentially their tail fins seemed to clamp up overnight, they had difficulty moving although side fins were fine. Overnight their tails then clamped further and also seemed to become shredded. They couldn't swim at all so ended up stuck to the filter grill.

Water quality in that tank is fine and has been consistent for some time (0A, 0Ni, <20ppm N, ph 7.6) and there are no signs of scratching.

*

On the main tank...I'm wary of doing anything else at the moment until we have the filter back. We have an Aqua one tank with the filter running across the whole back...2 sponges, cartridges, bagged media and a pump. We were as careful as we could be but I guess repeated medications over several months and heavy water changes just didn't help the bacteria. One of those things. Looks like we are winning though, touch wood - nitrites seem to be on their way down today.

We lost the first guppy at the end of September so the fish have been subject to both anti parasite and wormer meds (not at the same time) since then whilst we tried to figure out the culprit. As soon as we saw that worm just before Christmas we treated more specifically for nematode worms with the esha - that was one dose every 2 weeks with a 50% water change after 24 hours. They had the maximum of 3 doses over 6 weeks.

4 weeks was on a bare bottom - this was recommended by a reputable LFS. We probably had too much gravel in there anyway so after repeated fish deaths it seemed wise to make sure the worms literally had nowhere to hide. There were no signs of worms, no flashing, nothing suspicious going on in that time at all.

That ended 2 weeks ago and we rebuilt the tank one week ago with a lot less gravel. Now the swordtail and one platy have white poo...but they have been under a lot of stress with the meds, water changes, change of environment and now the nitrites. I want to give them a bit of a break in their normal environment before we try anything else right now. Don't want too many variables throwing up potential symptoms.

The only things that didn't get a cleanse and sanitise were the plants themselves and the filter media...if it is worms again it means someone in the tank was still harbouring one despite all the treatments or an egg/s managed to remain in the tank.

If it is the case I will be gutted. I feel very responsible for my pets, especially the fish as I am in control of their environment. It's been heartbreaking and exhausting trying to get them healthy again.

 

[Colin_T]

The fish with the clamped tails sound like they have/ had a bacterial infection. A broad spectrum fish medication that treats bacteria, fungus and protozoans should sort that out if it comes back. Salt can also help and you can use salt with medications.

------------------------
You can get round/ cylindrical sponges for internal power filters. These sponges fit over the intake strainer of most external power filters. They help prevent fish being injured if they are sucked towards the filter intake.

------------------------
Most intestinal worms infect fish through food they ingest. Daphnia, tubifex & blackworms are common hosts that carry worm eggs that infect fish. Some species can be spread through the water.

Tapeworm need a specific tapeworm medication (Praziquantel) and don't normally die if you use a round/ thread worm medication on them.

 

[CV26]

Thanks again. Will look into the bacterial med as we don't haven't anything like that in at the moment.

The fry tank (Aqua manta) has the same back section filter set up as the main tank, just on a small scale. The first section is the sponge. The grill slots lead directly into that sponge section so would leave the fry sitting on top of the sponge and unable to swim back out into the tank.

The pump is at the other end of the tank. We wedged another bit of softer sponge across the grill though so they remain in the tank rather than ending up in the main sponge section - poor things just didn't have the strength to swim away from the water draw like they usually would.

*
We've only ever fed flake, pellet or peas. But who knows what the guppies ate before they came to us.

We did use NT Labs gill fluke and wormer at first - I think that is flubenzadole. But the worm we saw coming out the guppy was consistent with Callamanus so we've stuck with that treatment plan since Christmas. Is it possible that there is another worm type affecting the fish?

*
We have some corys in a quarantine tank to replace the ones we lost. They seem perfectly healthy now and they'll be staying in the QT till March at least. Should we worm and de-parasite them as a precaution?

 

[Colin_T]

When you get a medication for the clamped fins, do not buy an anti-biotic. Get a liquid medication that treats bacteria, fungus and protozoans, or get something like Triple sulpha/ Tri sulfa. Anti-biotics will wipe out the filter bacteria whereas a broad spectrum liquid medication or the sulpha medication will kill a variety of fish diseases but not affect filter bacteria.

-------------------------
Fish need a varied diet and should get a dry food, frozen (but defrosted) foods and if possible, live foods. You can feed prawn/ shrimp to the fish. Buy some frozen prawn and keep it in the freezer. Take one out and defrost it. Remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube in tail), and throw those bits in the bin. Use a pr of scissors to cut the remaining prawn tail into small pieces and offer 1 or 2 bits at a time. Stop feeding when the fish are full and remove uneaten food.

You can also culture live foods at home and these can provide you with a clean safe food source. The following link has some info on culturing live foods for baby fish but daphnia and microworms can be fed to a number of adult fish too.
http://www.fishforums.net/threads/back-to-basics-when-breeding-fish.448304/

-------------------------
Fish can carry tapeworm and a number of thread/ round worms at the same time. This is why you need to treat them for tapeworm and round worms. They can have one or the other or both and most deworming medications only do tape or thread/ round worms.

I don't normally recommend treating fish unless they have a disease. However, I do recommend treating all new fish for worms and gill flukes while they are in quarantine. this stops the worms getting into the main display tank.

As a general rule you only need to quarantine tank for 4 weeks. If they get sick during that time the 4 weeks starts after they have been treated.

 

[Essjay]

Which country are you in? Different countries have different medications so it help to know where you are so we can suggest products.

 

[CV26]

Thanks Colin. If they stay healthy, the new fish will be in the QT for at least 2 months...more because we are due to go on holiday in the not too distant future and would rather have 3 (hopefully) stable tanks than 2 where we'd recently added the new fish. We don't want to get stung again with dodgy fish and the holiday just means it's less risky for us to have them in QT a bit longer. Will look at factoring in a worming course.

Essjay - I'm in the UK. The original gill fluke and wormer, and the anti-parasite were NT Labs meds. Then we began using Esha ndx as all signs pointed to Callamanus.

Esha do a range of meds and some can be used together which is helpful. One of the LFS uses it as their go to medication brand which is how we found about about it. It looks like the Esha 2000 will do as Colin as has suggested for the fry tank, and they have Esha gdex for flukes and tapeworms too.

 

[Essjay]

I was going to suggest those three eSHa meds if you were in the UK
eSHa ndx contains levamisole
eSHa gdex contains praziquantel
eSHa 2000 contains several ingredients and is claimed to treat "primary and secondary fungal infections, bacterial skin infections, skin & gill parasites, protozoan parasites, ulcers & wounds, finrot" etc

 

[CV26]

Thanks essjay - stocks are coming on Wednesday.

Original fry seem ok today...no new clamped fins so will keep an eye on them for now.

Main tank...well I now have 8 new fry (could be guppy or platy, not sure yet). Can I use medication with hours/days old fry in the tank?

I don't have anywhere to move the fry to - I don't want them to go in with the older fry just in case I cross contaminate.

 

[CV26]

So the Esha meds have arrived and I've put the 2000 into the baby tank. They were still all ok but better safe than sorry after the others went downhill so quickly, and the 2000 does say its good for fry health.

Nitrites in the main tank are on their way down still so I'll keep an eye on the fish for now and maybe try meds once things have settled down.

In other sad news and yet another reason to wonder if we're cursed...came down this morning to find our female swordtail on the floor . The gap between the front of the tank and the glass lid was only about 2cm but she managed to make the jump somehow. Have closed it up and will be more conscious of how the lid is placed in the future.

 

[CV26]

Just thought I'd share an update...

Baby tank - They've had a course of the Esha 2000 and all seem alright. No signs of the clamped fin issue that took their siblings.

Main tank - horrible week for us. Lost the fish that jumped out the tank and then the next day one of our two remaining Cory's died. Noticed he was breathing very rapidly and also had a reddish tinge around his mid section, was also very sluggish that evening. Next morning he was gone. . Putting it down to possible Nitrite poisoning due to the rapid breathing but really not sure.

The nitrites finally seem back at 0 today so fingers crossed we've overcome that battle. Will monitor over the next few days.

All other tank occupants seem fine at the moment...no sign of white poo either but might still do another wormer course once we're confident the filter is back. Worried about our solo Cory being on his lonesome, but we have 5 new ones in quarantine so won't be long before be has friends again.

Quarantine tank - touch wood, couldn't look healthier right now. They have had a course of the Esha 2000 and Gdex as a precaution.