Serious Problems - Lots Of Dead And Dying Fish!

[branjie]

Sorry to hear about your situation. Is your tank fully cycled? The swordtails are particularly hardy, but I wouldn't have thought the others would be up to a tank that is not fully cycled. What is the temp of your tank? Good luck, I know how upsetting it can be to lose your fish.

 

[MartinD]

Sorry to hear about your situation. Is your tank fully cycled? The swordtails are particularly hardy, but I wouldn't have thought the others would be up to a tank that is not fully cycled. What is the temp of your tank? Good luck, I know how upsetting it can be to lose your fish.

Tank's currently running at just below 29 degrees (82F) - yeah it's fully cycled.

Just have to wait and see what I find in the morning I think.

thanks for the encouragement though - it's appreciated

 

[branjie]

That tank temp is high. I would slowly get it down to 26 degrees. Good luck, my thoughts are with you.

 

[afishdude]

26 degrees

26ºC? thats really low. i keep mine on 29 alwase. you want to keep it high as cold water can make fish more lathargic and posable hurt themselfs.

26ºC = 78ºF and thats almost the lowest you can get for temps. and 30ºC (86ºF) bieng the highest.

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

30C is too high for most fish to be kept at for a sustained period of time, and 26C isn't that low at all...

 

[afishdude]

are you talking about cichlids or tropical community fish?

 

[MartinD]

UPDATE:

well, I took a sample of water into the LFS today and the results were good!
I got him to write down the results, but I forgot to take the sheet with me - I left in a hurry because was very angry.

Here's why - The meds i'd been giving the fish were wrong - it was sposed to be Octozin but I was giving them Protozin.
He told me that Protozin contains a lot of copper and that will be poisoning the fish. I should have been using Octozin.
And the best bit? I went into that store for advice when the fish first got whitespot and turning up the temp didn't work. The girl
behind the counter said that Protozin was the one to use.

Anyway, I left sharpish and very angry. I've done a 30% water change and put in some active carbon.

I'm down to the Gourami, Swordtail and a very ill looking clown loach - the other one died during the night.

Nitrate and Nitrite were at 0
PH was at 7.4 - he said this was a little high but I'm presuming this has something to do with all the dying fish and the meds that we'd been giving them.

 

[rabbut]

UPDATE:
it was sposed to be Octozin but I was giving them Protozin.
He told me that Protozin contains a lot of copper and that will be poisoning the fish. I should have been using Octozin.
Anyway, I left sharpish and very angry. I've done a 30% water change and put in some active carbon.

Sorry, forgot about that on an earlier recomendation. Copper is toxic to clown loches. You are taking the correct action to remove it though.

Nitrate and Nitrite were at 0
PH was at 7.4 - he said this was a little high but I'm presuming this has something to do with all the dying fish and the meds that we'd been giving them.

The pH is a little higher than ideal, but it is not high enough to caurse consern. All of your fish will addapt to that pH quite easily. Can you remember the results for ammonia? The NitrIte sounds good and correct, but I highly doubt NitrAte will be 0 in a tank with fish in. Are you shure you haven't got the NitrAte reading confused with the ammonia reading?
HTH
rabbut

 

[Spooky76]

The Nitrate being 0 would concern me a little.
The lfs might be pulling your leg. If you dont do weekly water changes anymore, I would expect that to be alot higher.

Carbon should be OK, will remove the meds from the water. If thats what your trying to do, do a 40% water change then add the carbon

How are the fish today ?

Is the white spot still on the loach ? In which case I would leave the temp high. I have used King British WS3 for white spot and had very good results with it. It will not damage your filters, but with scaleless fish like loaches, half dose is OK.

 

[MartinD]

The Nitrate being 0 would concern me a little.
The lfs might be pulling your leg. If you dont do weekly water changes anymore, I would expect that to be alot higher.

Carbon should be OK, will remove the meds from the water. If thats what your trying to do, do a 40% water change then add the carbon

How are the fish today ?

Is the white spot still on the loach ? In which case I would leave the temp high. I have used King British WS3 for white spot and had very good results with it. It will not damage your filters, but with scaleless fish like loaches, half dose is OK.

All the fish are dead now apart from the Gourami and the Swordtail.

They seem to be doing okay for the moment - both active and lively, swimming around as normal. However, they've obviously noticed that
something isn't quite right - I guess they're missing their old friends

With everything that's happened over the past 2 weeks with the tank, how long would you recommend letting the tank run in its current state before
thinking about adding new fish? I've also decided that any new fish I do get will spend at least 2 weeks in a quarantine tank before adding them to the main
community tank - I don't think I could go through watching all my fish die one after the other every day again. It was horrible

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

The QT tank idea is a very good one, and I'm sorry you've had such a bad run of luck with your tank so far.

As for how long to wait before adding new fish... of course wait until the remaining fish look healthy again, and give enough time to make sure that the biological filter wasn't damaged by any of the medications that you used. Sorry I don't remember which medications can affect your bacterial colony, but maybe someone else can clue you in.

In preparation for setting up a QT tank buy a second filter in advance (you can buy the tank/heater/etc later), and once you've finished medicating your main tank seed the new filter with old filter material and run them both on the main tank for several weeks. Filters are technically what cycle...not tanks, so when you are ready to set up a QT tank, and just move the filter over when you have fish to put in the QT tank.