when bad stuff gets into your aquarium...

[Magnum Man]

So, a long time ago, I applied for an aquarium curator position for a new Cabelas store ( back, before they were bought out by Bass Pro Shops ) I never heard back from them, I assume, because of my lack of college education in aquariums??? but this store had not been open for more than a year, and had 4-5 large floor to ceiling aquariums, that they had game fish in... being as they sell bait, they just fed the minnows, and all of their fish had a horrible parasite problem... continuously dumping buckets of minnows into a closed environment, it didn't take long, before they had a major problem... so yes, I have a bichir, that has the need to kill.. . aquarium feeders are still problematic...

but I have had a tank before, that we are pretty sure got TB in it ( no bait fish to blame ) and required sterilization, and waiting for the last of those fish to die, before it could be sterilized

I used to have a lot of plecos, and giant oto's, in one tank ( actually 2 tanks ) but most of those died off, and I suspect some sort of bacteria, or parasite, that went though the bottom feeders, as I lost all my Cory's from that tank as well, while the non bottom feeders survived... that tank has been running over a year, with no problems with any non bottom feeder... but admit I'm hesitant to add another... perhaps it's something that came in on one of the giant Oto's, as they are not a staple in aquariums...

anyone ever gotten something in your tanks , that came from feeder fish, or possibly from something unusual???

I still have a few plecos, and cory's not in those 2 tanks , and one really nice worm line pleco, that's in the tank, that is getting more yellow acara, with hopes of breeding... I'd like to add it back to one of my old problem tanks... hoping a year, is enough time to allow it to thrive in that tank... thoughts???

 

[emeraldking]

I had a problem once by giving my fish live tubifex that was in this small plastic pouch. I just shouldn't have used the fluid of that pouch. A number of guppies have died from the fluid in there. The other fish were all still okay. The fluid was a bit milky.

At my former place when I had my birthday, I got this koi of 25 cm in length from my brother as a gift. I told him to put him in one of the rain barrels which I've kept in my shed. Instead of following up what I told my brother, he accidently put him in my bigger pond. For the next day, I had a serious number of my koi dead. And then I saw my given koi swim in there. So, I already knew what was going on. I got him out of there and put him in one of my rain barrels which I've used to quarantine new pond fish. Sadly, I had to scoop 12 dead koi out of there, ranging from 20 cm till 60cm.

 

[Boundava]

So not with freshwater, but I had a smaller saltwater tank with a venomous scorpion leaf fish along a wrasse, clown and goby, bubble anenome, brittle sea star, emerald crab and cleanup snails. The scorpion fish died and over the next 48 hours the remaining fish followed suit.
No one I spoke to thought the venomous scorpion fish could do that upon death.
Worst thing was I had to tear the whole tank down, soak my live rock and redo the tank. Even then my fish kept dying, and saltwater fish aren't cheap. I wound up redoing the entire tank again, buying new filter tubbing and putting purigen on the filter. I ran the tank with new live rock for 4 months before I put another fish in there and it lived!

Very expensive problem I solved by making it up as I went along.

 

[GaryE]

I used to wander feeder tanks, because for a short period, I passed through the northeastern US regularly. I had noticed they got their feeders from Florida, and in with all the physical wrecks, there were occasional bluefin killies (Lucania goodei). I was eventually able to build up a breeding group, but during the quest, I probably looked closely at 15 to 20 lots of feeders.
And that bluefin tank was permanent quarantine for the life of the bought fish
I saw tuberculosis, ich, velvet, internal bacterial infections and fin fungus on the feeder livebearers. The native killies weren't ill, which was interesting as they were clearly from the same pond system. But that's what feeders bring you, unexpected benefits... if you're a vet wanting to study common fish problems.

With my multiple tanks for many years, I introduced disease with non feeders a few times, until I started rigidly quarantining. Then I just bought the occasional disease. I was sent some fish by a friend, and they carried a parasite I still haven't identified. It was somewhat like velvet, but silvery and fatal to hardwater livebearers. I was sloppy, and lost a dozen species to that one. It was tough to cure. So now, even if I'd trust you with my life, I won't trust your fish with the lives of my fish. Everything gets isolated for 6 weeks minimum.

 

[jaylach]

So not with freshwater, but I had a smaller saltwater tank with a venomous scorpion leaf fish along a wrasse, clown and goby, bubble anenome, brittle sea star, emerald crab and cleanup snails. The scorpion fish died and over the next 48 hours the remaining fish followed suit.
No one I spoke to thought the venomous scorpion fish could do that upon death.
Worst thing was I had to tear the whole tank down, soak my live rock and redo the tank. Even then my fish kept dying, and saltwater fish aren't cheap. I wound up redoing the entire tank again, buying new filter tubbing and putting purigen on the filter. I ran the tank with new live rock for 4 months before I put another fish in there and it lived!

Very expensive problem I solved by making it up as I went along.

Not including water changes did you add salt to the water to just top off the tank? When just topping off a salt tank it has to be remembered that fresh water should be used for this. Water evaporates, salt does not. Over time, if adding salt water to top off, the salinity becomes too high killing the tank.

 

[Boundava]

Not including water changes did you add salt to the water to just top off the tank? When just topping off a salt tank it has to be remembered that fresh water should be used for this. Water evaporates, salt does not. Over time, if adding salt water to top off, the salinity becomes too high killing the tank.

Salinity was not a problem, I have a hydrometer and a refractometer and the salt concentrations were in range. What I believe happened is that the toxins from the scorpion fish somehow were embedded either in the silicone or the live rock or the substrate and something about it kept killing the fish. My corals weren't happy either. I have to redo the tank multiple times and basically start from scratch, though I loathed getting rid of all of my live rock. I even upgraded my tank from a 20 long to a 38 gallon, feeling the 20 was tainted.
I believe that the Seachem Purigen is what got it out of the system, but even then I ran the tank empty for 4 months before I even tried with guinea pig cheap fish to make sure that the tank wouldn't kill them.

Not keeping scorpion fish in a community tank again. I currently have a leaf fish in a 13 gallon with an ever growing population of pulsing zinnias, a pitho crab, some acans and a flower anenome. He gets fed feeder minnows as the stinker won't try anything dead like shrimp. If and when he passes there isn't anything else in the tank that he will affect.
A clarification, the scorpion fish was not a leaf fish but also called a goblin fish. The site I bought them from said they were brackish, but I never had luck with them in my brackish tank with my gobies. So when I broke that tank down I decided to move the last one in with my saltwater fish and he did very well with my other fish. I think the problem happened when he passed and was predated on by my CUC overnight. I think they released his venom and it continued to work after death, getting soaked up into the live rock and affecting all the other live fish in the tank.

 

[Magnum Man]

sometimes bad stuff can be filled with good intentions...
I had piranha when I was a kid, and back then I fed chicken livers... which was a great food for them, at that time 50 years ago... I've always been an inventor, and did out of the box stuff, even as a teenager... I blended a natural soap, that would be similar to Dawn dish soap, today ( of coarse it wasn't invented yet )... that would rinse clean, for pulling down, those tanks, as the chicken livers, and piranha themselves were dirty, and back then , I did 100 % water changes every 2 weeks, and washed the tank and gravel with this soap, rinsed it well, and refilled the tank, and poured a 5 gallon bucket of water. with the fish in it, directly into the tank... after a good feeding one day, the water was all "bloody" from the chicken livers, getting eaten, it usually cleared a half hour later, and my little brother saw my bottle of soap, marked "aquarium cleaner", and dumped a 1/2 bottle of it, into the aquarium, to "clean" it...with the fish in it... a half hour later, the under gravel filter had bubbled up suds 6 inches deep over the whole floor in the room, of coarse there was no saving the fish by that point...