Sick Pearl Gouramis

[darylv]

We recently bought five new pearl gouramis three days ago. Today, all lost their appetites and just now, one started spinning crazily and swimming in small circles. There are no external signs. We removed him into the hospital tank where he lies on the bottom and doesn't look like he will last very long.

Any idea what this is? I have a bad feeling that the same will soon happen to the rest of them. The water seems to be okay at 6.8 ph.

 

[WILDER]

I agree not sounding good at all, what's your location, there is a desease called whirling desease, but you don't hear of it much, i will leave you a link to it to see what you think,also it could be ph shock need to no water stats in ammonia,nitrite,nitrate,and ph, what was the ph of the lfs to your tank and how long diid you climatise them for.

 

[darylv]

I'm going to check ammonia, etc. and post back in a hour but there is one moe detail. One more of the fish has died and he had dark splotches mostly on his head and sides (one more of the dead fish had them too). They don't seem to be an external infection and he didn't have them a few hours ago. Also, the fish seem to die very quickly within half hour with the first sympthoms other than the loss of appetite.

What do you mean by climatise?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

When you buy a new fish you need to acclimatise it to its new conditions by letting it sit in its transport bag in the tank for 30minutes, slowly adding small amounts of water from the new tank into its bag every couple of minutes.
Being transported from location to location is very stressful for fish and if they are not acclimatised properly they can experience temperature and ph shock which can kill them.
If you did not acclimatise your fish adequetely this is most likely why they are dying.

 

[darylv]

Thanks!

check: ammonia and nitrites are 0; nitrates *maybe* slightly above 40. Not enough for a shock I think.

no chemicals (very little dosage of Ick Guard to protect loaches)

the fish which was there before is totally fine (but they are not gouramis)

and to make it really mysterious, LFS fish seems to be fine, so it is something on our end.

 

[WILDER]

What was the ph of the store to your tank, and how long did you float the fish in the bag for.

 

[darylv]

We think the cause may be that we didn't release the fish properly. If this is the case, is there anything we can do? Also, any other ideas about what may be causing the deaths will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the help so far and we are deeply sorry if this is the case.

 

[WILDER]

If you didn't climatise them properly and the ph was quite a difference, it sounds like they died from ph shock, and there is nothing to be done, if they get over a week they might survive the rest of them.