Two Dead Fish This Morning Help

[andytdi]

Dear All

I am new to fish keeping. my tank has been up and running for about 5 months. It's a 65ltr tank with the following fish

4x Neon Tetra
2x Wagtail Platy
2x smaller Platy don’t know what type
2x Bristle nose cats

I clean the tank weekly and change about 50% of the water, I clean the filters each week in the old fish tank water.

I treat the new water to remove chlorine and the like and have had no problems until recently. (Last week or so)

One of the small Platys started to hang near the top of the filter pump and not swim about to much but about the middle of last week seemed to pick up again and was swimming round as normal although did look a bit slimmer than before. then last Friday i noticed one of the Wagtail platy acting very similar. Just hanging round by the pump where the water is still.

This morning the Red Wagtail and the small white platy are floating belly up. I have taken them out of the tank into a bucket with some clean treated water but they are definitely dead. My wife says the Red Wagtail looks like he is loosing his colour and the white one seems to have small patches of raised scales. (This fish is only about 2.5 cm long so is quite hard to see).

The only other thing I have noticed is the two cats seem healthy but almost look like they have fury patches on the skin. These patches almost look symmetrical so I don’t know if that’s what a bristle nosed cat should look like.

My wife has checked the water this morning and the readings are below

PH 7.5
High PH 7.8
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0.25
Nitrate 0


Any suggestions would be gratefully accepted, as I don’t want any more dead fish.

Thanks

Andy

 

[noshybabs]

Has anything chaged recently? any new plats or anything like that? Or do you feed them live food like Bloodworm that comes in those bags?

I wouldnt clean the filter that often, only clean it if it becomes blocked.

 

[breezer40]

Sounds like a couple of things going on here. Firstly are you sure those tests are right? I would expect to see some nitrates and the nitrites should be zero. It might be a good idea to give us some answers to these questions first as treeting the cause of the problems is as important as the treatment itself.

Have you added fish recently?
What is the Temperature?
What filtration/aeration is in the tank?

 

[andytdi]

Has anything chaged recently? any new plats or anything like that? Or do you feed them live food like Bloodworm that comes in those bags?

I wouldnt clean the filter that often, only clean it if it becomes blocked.

Nothing has changed recently. I feed them flake, algae wafers and occasionally frozen bloodworm.

Just been reading some more posts. The small white Platy did look like she had a curve to the spine if you know what I mean, she didn't when we first got her but just over the last week and she was a bit thin in the belly.

Thanks

Andy

 

[noshybabs]

I recently lost a silver dollar tetra and 2 sword tails to what ever this is, they swam up to the intake on the filer and hid there for a few days and then just seems to wast arway and die?? One of the sword tails seemed to loose control of her tail and her spine became bent like described here? I never found out what it was, it stop as quicly as it started?

 

[andytdi]

Sounds like a couple of things going on here. Firstly are you sure those tests are right? I would expect to see some nitrates and the nitrites should be zero. It might be a good idea to give us some answers to these questions first as treeting the cause of the problems is as important as the treatment itself.

Have you added fish recently?
What is the Temperature?
What filtration/aeration is in the tank?

As far as I know the readings are correct my wife tested it this morning.

We have not added any fish recently not for about 3 months
The temp is 26 deg
Filtration is a Fluval 2+ I also have an air pump with a bubble curtain attachment.
This air pump would be the most recent addition about 5 weeks ago.

I vac the gravel on a weekly basis using a siphon vac and I recently got an electric one that filters through a sock as it's only a 65 litre tank so the siphon takes too much water.

Thanks

Andy

I recently lost a silver dollar tetra and 2 sword tails to what ever this is, they swam up to the intake on the filer and hid there for a few days and then just seems to wast arway and die?? One of the sword tails seemed to loose control of her tail and her spine became bent like described here? I never found out what it was, it stop as quicly as it started?

This is prety much wat has happened to me.

 

[noshybabs]

I dont know if its relevant but at the time this happened my tank had reached arounf 26-27 degree's when it should be around 22-24.

Youor tank seems to be about that temp. I dont know but maybe thats the reason? Im sure someone will correct me if im wrong.

 

[andytdi]

What temp should the tank be ?

I thought it should be about 26 deg

 

[noshybabs]

I suppose it depends on your fish, hang on il check the livebearer section and see what it says about Swordtails and Platty's

Platy's like temp of 24.4 to 26 so you right on the limit there.

 

[andytdi]

I'll try turning my heater down a notch then and see what temp it settles at.

 

[jalittle]

in my tank i have a couple of guppies and a bristle nose cat i have the temp at 24 and every body likes it

 

[black jack1]

Nothing has changed recently. I feed them flake, algae wafers and occasionally frozen bloodworm.

Just been reading some more posts. The small white Platy did look like she had a curve to the spine if you know what I mean, she didn't when we first got her but just over the last week and she was a bit thin in the belly.

Thanks

Andy

A bent spine could be a sign of fish TB. I don't know much more about it maybe someone else can shed some more light on this. Watch out for the same signs in your otehr fish.

 

[andytdi]

Fish TB Can you treat this ?

Will it affect the rest of the fish ?

 

[xoedusk]

Daily water changes of 25% to get that nitrite down until you figure out what's going on.

 

[andytdi]

Just got home and had a look. Most of the red on the Wagtail has gone!! I presume this is just because it's dead and has been for over 12 hr also eyes are all puffy but again prob just the fact its dead because they were not like that yesterday.

All the other fish look fine zipping round the tank and eating as usual.

Thanks

Andy

One more thing I just thought of Over the last three to four weeks we have had what I would describe as a brown algae on the gravel and ornaments in the tank although last week there seemed to be none or very little.

Could this have anything to do with it? And what could cause these algae.