Tank Sicknesses Spreading

[The Equillibrium]

Overnight, I lost 4 neons, 3 without a body. That was probably the doing of the angels and is not too bad a prooblem. Over the same night, one of my four healthy elephant noses grew thin, has white growth all around his mouth and nose, has erect scales, and a strange copper colored area where the yellow electric organ is supposed to be. The fish's nose seems broken or as though it has been bitten, because it hangs down lazily, rather than being up and probing the ground. He swims tired, and breathes fast. This all apparently happened over one night.

Yesterday, I saw nibble marks on an angel's fins so Iadded a dose of Pimafix, and a dose of Melafix. Just now, I added one of Pimafix and on of Coppersafe(which the old and probably experienced owner of the fish store was extremely insistant could treat "pretty much anything")

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Can you update your aquarium info in your sig/profile as it does not include elephant nose fish and neons in with angelfish etc please?


What sort of substrate do you have in the elephant nose fishes tank and what sorts of foods exactly have you been feeding them and how much (if anything)?

What your elephant nose fish are suffering from sounds like a separate problem from your angelfish depending on certain things. A full list of the fish you have in the tank etc would be very useful .

 

[The Equillibrium]

I updated my signature yesterday, but i'll paste it here:

46 gallon-FW Planted(live)
Fleourescant Lights-30w
Magnum H.O.T. system w/ bio-wheel
200 watt heater
8 neons, 7 mollys, 1 oto, 3 Angelfish, 5 golden Wonder Killes, 4 elephant nose fish, 4 wordtails


I have had the elephant noses for about 8 months, and they eat maily frozen bloodworms. I have soft sand in the tank, but recently the sand moved away exposing the gravel beneath on a part of the tank. I feed a wide variety of frozen foods, but the vast majority of the elephant noses' diets are bloodworms. I do 50% changes once a week. This is a well established tank, over a year old. The sick nose is now lying half in a cave and breathing heavily. The copper area has now turned red and looks like a wound. I added my last dose of Melafix today.

Okay it just died, but I noticed the remaining three noses are less territorial and sharing caves...

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

How are elephant noses towards each other? Usually they are quite territorial/agressive towards each other unless kept in a very large group in a very large tank. You should really only have one elephant nose fish per tank in a tank of your size, as otherwise they will stress each other out (which will make them more susceptable to diseases and health complications and stuff etc).

Feeding the elephant nose fish almost solely off frozen bloodworms is not very good for them, as the lack of variety in the diet means they don't get as much nutrition in their diet and can make the fish weaker to diseases and parasites and stuff. Elephant nose fish use their eletronic sensers in the wild to locate worms and things living in the mud (as such living organisms also give off signals, which the elephant nose fish detect- elephant nose fish thus have a hard time locating dead food sometimes, because it does not give off any signals) so they can catch and eat them. Live foods are often the best for elephant nose fish. You should try feeding the fish other foods (preferably live) like tubifex, blackworms, artemecia, daphinia etc...Also going down to your local pond to catch live larvae and worms can be very good too for your fish.
Feeding the fish after the tank lights have been turned of is best, since elephant nose fish are shy and primarily nocturnal fish and most active at night.

How deep is the substrate? If i were you, i'd take out the gravel from the sand by using a net to sift out the sand from the gravel, as the gravel in the tank really has no benefet to any of your fish in the tank, while on the other hand the soft sand is very important for the elephant nose fish.

 

[The Equillibrium]

I may try and remove the gravel as you said, and add more sand. My elephant noses when I first got them as a group of 6, were very shy. I have about enough hiding spots for them, so they all followed each other in a long line of follow-the-leader at night. They eventually settled I guess because the came outside a lot more often. Today, not to sound naive, they seem to have very little trouble locating anything. I feed my fish frozen bloodworms, krill, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, and occasionally tubifex worms. The favorite of ALL my fish by far are the bloodworms. The food is available to the noses, but the choose bloodworms. When it is feeding time and the cubes of food break apart and worms fall everywhere, the noses can pick it up from the water column, or the floor with seemingly little or no difficulty. I watched them a few times and found that each nose gets about 8-10 worms per feeding.

After they settled in, the noses were very mild to everyone, including themselves. They would occasianally push one guy out of their cave, but the were very mild from what I've seen.