Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fish Health => Topic started by: fishcake76 on October 10, 2014, 09:13:38 AM
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Hi all,
This morning I discovered one of my female phantoms floating at the top of the tank, gasping. I quickly checked my water parameters and my ph, kh and gh were all much higher than usual.
Normal reading:
PH - 6.8/7
GH - 17gd
KH - 3/6gd
Todays readings:
PH -7.6/8
GH - 21+gd
KH- 10gd
I replaced 6 litres of tank water, 2 at a time and then waiting half an hour for the tank to settle with RO water to bring the ph, gh and kh down. The ph and gh went back to normal but the kh is still reading 10.
She is now swimming about again, albeit struggling to stay up right and occasionally floating back to the surface and her anal fin looks to be cloudy around the edges. I've taken a (very sad - please forgive me if you find this in bad taste.) photo of her in case any of you can see something i'm missing.
EDIT : she is now floating upside down. I have decided to euthanise her.
So, bizarre things or relevant factors i've noticed apart from dying fish and water test results.
Film on waters surface- this was here before the water change and formed again afterwards, it disappears if the water is disturbed.
Full tank clean two days ago
Last time i did a water change one of female phantoms died two days later.
Can't understand whats going on!!!
Any ideas???
FC76
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I'm sorry you had to make the tough decision to euthenase :-( I'm sure others will suggest something helpful but since it seems to be occurring around water changes I would ask...
How do you do your water changes? You mention RO water so how many parts to normal tap water etc? And are your readings normally consistent?
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This tank clean and the last were a case of removing everything except fish, siphoning gravel, replacing water and ornaments.
This time i also cleaned the filter in tank water and gave the ornaments a scrub because i wanted to move some to my bettas tank. I scrubbed everything, including the bog wood as this has what i think are snails eggs on and rinsed with tap water, my logic being that as i was going to refill with tap water it would make no difference. Perhaps this had an effect on the water quality??
I always add some quick start according to bottles instructions and some esha optima at water changes too.
I don't normally use RO water in the big tank and just refill with tap water as this has always given me consistent readings. i only added the RO water today because of the high PH, GH and KH.
All the other fish are fine, in fact since the water change the glowlights have started spawning again!!! They've been doing this a lot recently!!
FC76
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Did you test for Ammonia and Nitrite?
Did you use a de-chlorinator in the tap water?
With all that cleaning, scrubbing and syphoning you could've removed too many of the good bugglies and you had an ammonia spike. This would be even more likely if you used untreated tap-water in your cleaning.
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Hi,
I've now had to euthanise another female phantom with exactly the same symptoms. Her tail and he anal fin also looked ragged and cloudy. Could it be fin rot??? The minnows were terrible fin nippers and did their share of damage whilst in the tank.
Ammonia 0 nitrate 20 and nitrite 0, so all normal. Yes I used dechlorinator, always do just forgot to mention it!
Only other things i can think of are that i have had loads of hair algae (green) in both tanks and am struggling to remove it. But that shouldn't effect the fish should it?!
:(
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a third female now looking as though she is struggling to stay upright. Will report back in due course. Just wish i knew if it was disease or water or......?
Seems odd that it is just the phantoms that are effected!!!
FC76
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Hi Fishcake,
Bearing in mind, unlike Sue, I know nothing. I wondered though, it sounds as if you have had a really good clean, moving ornaments as well, so like Colin suggested, maybe a few too many bugglies got cleaned away, but I also thought that perhaps you unleashed a little toxic pocket or two. Sometimes, little areas of toxic gas can build up in your substrate or under rocks etc that aren't moved out often. If that were the case, perhaps your little phantoms are a bit more sensitive to it.
Just a thought....I'm very sorry that you have lost some of your little pals, and I hope that everything settles down again soon.
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Funnily enough Resa i wondered about this too. If i'm honest i hadn't cleaned the tank for about a month (my M.E often leaves me without the energy to do it) and there was a nasty whiff when i had lifted some of the hollow ornaments out. :-[ :-[
FC76
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Sounds like a possibility then :( On the plus side, if it was that, at least you can remedy that and everyone else should be fine.
It must be awfully difficult for you sometimes if you have M.E. I had a friend back in the UK who suffered with that, and I remember how exhausted she got.
It may help with your water cleans, if when you do them, you hoover the surface and then deep clean one area and maybe one or two ornaments, then next water change you do the same again but moving to a different area for the deep clean? It might help prevent any problems collecting and maybe make the water changes a little less daunting for you.
Anyway, I hope everything is happier in your tank very soon. :)
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Hi FC76 sorry to hear about your fish, it sounds a lot like what happened to my tank really. I unfortunately lost all my fish because of it. What I would advise is every time you do a clean to just push the ornaments down in to the subtrate and maybe run your siphon in to the subtrate and move it around to disturb it and not get any build ups! Hope the rest of ur fish are ok!
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Hi Rich,
Yes i read your thread about your fish, tough times for you mate. :( I have now bedded the ornaments in the gravel and will endeavour to do more regular gravel stirring!!! It's a steep learning curve this fish keeping lark, isn't it!!!!
::)
All the rest of the fish seem fine this morning so hopefully that's the end of that saga!!!!
FC76
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Yeah it did suck I was left alone for a few days to sulk but the tanks back up and currently in a cycle that's going well now. Glad your fishes are doing ok though! Hope you don't have any more losses! By the way if you have a heavy planted tank like I will be having they you could try those long wooden skewers for bbqs to disturb the subtrate if you didn't want to disturb the plant roots!
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I had an ornament like that once. It was a wood shaped piece of plastic, but hollow with a few tiny holes scattered about over the surface. When I lifted it out I smelled hydrogen sulphide (bad eggs) so I binned it and since then have made sure any cavities in decor have wide openings so that water can flow though easily.
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Some people (including me) use Malasian Trumpet Snails to burrow around in the substrate and churn it about - hopefully eliminating any toxin build-up. The MTS don't seem to disturb the plant roots. You hear a lot of horror stories about MTS taking over the tank.... but this is a sign of over feeding the fish. I only see 1 or 2 now and again.... plus some little tracks in the gravel in the morning... and my gravel has never looked so clean. I'm afraid I hardly ever disturb the gravel or even hoover the top of it - I let the crypts feed on any detritus that builds up and the MTS seem to do the rest.
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In a well planted tank the plant roots themselves should spread throughout the gravel and prevent any build up of nasties. Any large objects, be they ornaments or wood, should really rest on the bottom glass, not on top of gravel as it is the gravel buried underneath objects that tends to become anaerobic. Of course, in my opinion (which I've expressed several times before) so-called ornaments are the garden gnomes of an aquarium and should be binned.
However, the symptoms you describe sound more like a disease to me than water problems, though poor water quality may have made the fish more susceptible to infection.
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i found this website/link and thought it interesting. Seems to describe what happened to my fish (and Rich D).
http://www.fishyportal.com/cgi-bin/pub/diag?c=v&id=60
FC76
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Yeah Steve gave me that idea and the more research I did the more it made sense. It's something I will endeavour to not let it happen again!!!
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Well, i've now lost one of my glow lights to the same symptoms. Water tests have shown that the PH,GH and KH have all shot up again, so Ive done another water change (with RO water) and decided to treat is as though it's a disease so have dosed with esha 2000.
I now have a very unhappy otto who is charging round the tank as though he's desperate to escape. I'm assuming this is the effect of the treatment and can see two possible courses of action. 1) I leave him to it and hope he'll settle down or 2) I move him into my Bettas tank with mega-careful acclimatisation.
What do people think?
FC76
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If it was me I would keep him out of the Betta tank as he/she could have caught what the others have and then your introducing whatever it could be in to your Betta tank.
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Just when you think it couldn't get any worse!!!!!!!!! :vcross:
Another phantom has died. Same symptoms except one- she seemed to have paralysis in her fins on her right side??!
Again though, this death has coincided with a water change two days ago but i can't workout what is causing the fish to die???
As stated in my last post i treated for 3 days with esha 2000, and then did an incredibly small water change (all my energy levels would allow) of about 3% - yes that does say three (6 litres from a 54 litre tank). Used tap water with nutrafin betta plus water dechlorinator in.
EDIT - my maths is atrocious, that should be 11%, I think!!!?? )
Yesterday morning the poorly girl was hiding and fin clamping, but i thought this could be due to the fact that because i have lost so many female phantoms i only had two left and she and the other one were getting badgered by the boys quite a bit ( checked very carefully for typos there!!!! :)))
Then yesterday evening she was looking much worse and had started gasping but was still sitting under the filter and had a sort of white slimy patch, that i thought was maybe a wound where the male had nipped her, by her right gill and her fins on the same side were paralysed. I popped in some esha Optima and about 1/3 large almond leaf and this morning she was stuck to the water inlet on the filter and when i freed her she floated to the top. I then euthanised her but before doing so observed if her fins were still paralysed, which they were and the white slimy patch had gone.
I've looked on fishy portal and it has given me these suggestions (http://www.fishyportal.com/cgi-bin/pub/diag?c=d&symptoms=82&symptoms=33&symptoms=107&comment=&name=&email=)
Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions???
i'm at a loss and scared to do anymore water changes!!!
FC76 :(
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Looking at the diseases in the link -
Unless you are feeding some very cheap unbranded food, you can probably rule out lack of vitamins.
Fish TB has other symptoms you haven't reported, and is quite rare in freshwater aquariums - though not unknown.
Osmoregulation problems are usually when you keep fish that like very hard water in very soft water. It is not common the other way round. Black phantoms are not hard water fish.
That leaves the three parasitic infections. I have not heard of Gyrodactylus before, though I have heard of costia and velvet.
I would think that Gyrodactylus is unlikely as the link says it gets into aquariums "with feed taken from ponds and not quarantined for 10 days" - unless you've been doing that.
Flagellates are protozoa aren't they? Both costia and velvet are caused by flagellates. If they are protozoan, eSHa 2000 should get rid of them, according to their website.
But......
Since the problems occur after a water change, could it be your water conditioner? I've just googled it and found people making comments about it leaving white swirly things in the water thought to be caused by the aloe vera it contains.
You are using the correct dose of the conditioner? Hagen's website says 5ml per 2 litres.
In your circumstances, I would try a different water conditioner. If you want to try something that contains only thiosuphate (to remove chlorine) and EDTA (to remove metals) you could look at API Tap Water Conditioner. That's the one I use, and it doesn't have anything to 'stimulate the slime coat' etc. But it is quite hard to find in shops, I often have to buy it on line if we don't go to the not very local shop that sells it.
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Hi Sue,
I have only used the nutrafin water conditioner once. Before that i was using waterlife's Haloex.
I'll get some of the API though as i need some more anyway.
Any other ideas????
fC76
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The only other thing that comes to my mind is the water itself, since the problems start after a water change. Have the suspect water changes been on the same day of the week? I ask because a local shop once told me that several of his customers had fish die after a water change, all done on Saturdays. One of the victims contacted the water company and they said they did something on Saturdays. Depending on how garbled it was when it got to me it was either flushing something through the pipes to prevent limescale build up or to remove limescale build up. Does your water company do something similar?
American water companies are known to add extra chloramine after exceptionally heavy rainfall so fishkeepers then have to use extra dechlorinator.
:-[ Basically, I don't know what the problem is, I'm grasping at straws :-[