Sparkling Gourami on tank bottom, dead next day

Hi everyone,

Long time no see! If anyone is around to help me with issues in my 20g long, I would greatly appreciate it. Problem in short: since 2 days ago, fish (Sparkling Gourami and maybe others) hover over gravel and then die the next day, no other symptoms.

Tank size: 20g long
tank age: 4 months
pH: 6.2
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 10
kH: 10
gH: 150
tank temp: 75


Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior): I see the sparkling Gouramis getting pale and hover on the bottom. They don't lie on the side but sort of lie upright. They try to get up for food, swimming slowly, weakly and disoriented toward the surface and then sink down again. Are dead the next morning. Were doing fine for 3 months. Lost two so far.

Volume and Frequency of water changes: Normal schedule is 25% biweekly. Have been doing 25% daily for the last 3 days, since Gouramis started showing symptoms.

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank: Planted tank with Ada Aquasoil (hence the low pH), adding The 2h Aquarist zero plant food as written on the bottle every 2 days. API stress coat for water changes.

Tank inhabitants: 5x sparkling gourami, 3x pseudomugil getrudae, 3x celestial pearl danio, 3x otocinclus vittatus, 2x nerite snail

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration): Never had a fish die before I made the new additions of 2 Badis Badis (Chameleonfish, not scarlet badis) and 5 pseudomugil gertrudae about 3 weeks ago. One getrudae had jumped out, I put him back but he didn't make it. Second one died within 2 days of arrival. Badis badis died within 4 days of arrival. Then nothing happened for two weeks - now the Sparkling Gourami start dying. Fish are introduced with drip irrigation over 1h, and no, I don't have a quarantine tank.

I thought it was obvious that the new additions brought a disease to the tank. Went to the fish store and the same batches of fish where I got mine from have been doing great for multiple weeks, alive and happy, owners told me they didn't show any signs of disease.

I had a school of 8 Danio choprae that I switched out for the Badis and Gertrudae, so there was no significant increase in bioload.

I noticed that KH was low and was concerned about ammonia spikes and PH swings. Tested the water daily and never saw any. Still got Seachem Alkaline and Acid buffer this week and started to add them for KH increase.

Do you guys have any thoughts? Would really love to save these Gouramis that I had for several months. Thanks so much in advance!

Hedgely

Sorry to hear of your loss. Hopefully, someone like Colin_T will drop by soon, he is our local guru with problems like yours.

Utar said:

Sorry to hear of your loss. Hopefully, someone like Colin_T will drop by soon, he is our local guru with problems like yours.

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Thanks Utar! Happy to see that people are active here.

Hedgely said:

Thanks Utar! Happy to see that people are active here.

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Your welcome and hope you can figure out what is going on with your fish dying.

I was able to snag a picture of that helps. He is the smallest one of the bunch.

video of fish?
pictures of all remaining fishes?

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Stop adding plant fertiliser for a few weeks and see if it helps. If the plants aren't using all the fertiliser, you might be overdosing the tank and poisoning the fish.

Make sure you don't have any soaps, creams, residue from hand sanitiser, etc, on your hands when you feed the fish or work in the tank.

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Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Add salt.

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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, Bettas & gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate (1-2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will not affect fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

These guys are very sensitive to water quality, I agree with @Colin_T , Stop the ferts. and try to stabilize the pH

Hi guys, thanks so much for the reply. I will definitely stop the fertilizer (FYI it's the kind with no nitrogen, so it only has potassium, magnesium and iron. I'll still stop the treatment!).

Here are some pictures of all the remaining fish. The fins of the Danios were nipped but the culprit is no longer in the tank and I can see the fins healing.

Is it just my imagination or have some of them red gills?

Here is a video of the guy. You can see the pseudomugils in the video too which escaped my pictures...
Am I just getting paranoid or am I seeing red gills and big eyes?

The Otocinclus and danios definitely have more red than normal around their gills. This is probably caused by something in the water and not a disease.

Just do big daily water changes and gravel cleans (if you can clean the gravel) for a week and see how they go. If they continue to look red in the gills or keep dying after a few water changes, post more pictures.

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I can't see the video, it's there but small and has a heap of buttons over the screen. YouTube is the best for videos. Upload it to YouTube and then copy & paste the link here.

Did that work?

I'm concerned about the tap water now. On rainy days we have some rust in the tap water, it's actually yellow. In that case I let it run until clear and then do the water change. But could there still be something in it? Also weird that it didn't affect anything for 4 months.
I know one of my fish stores is offering RO water. I don't know how to use that but would that be an option?

Video worked. In future if you hold your phone horizontally instead of vertically, the video will fill up the entire screen instead of just the middle.

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If your water is supplied by a company, it should be safe and relatively free of chemicals. If it comes from a well or rainwater tank, it might have something in it or it might be fine. Doing daily water changes should show something. If it's the tap water they will go downhill really fast after a water change. If it's the tank water, they should get better after a water change.

I would be more inclined to think it is something getting into the tank and not the tap water.
Do you use buckets specifically for the fish, or any bucket around the house?
Does anyone else use your fish buckets for anything?

It might be the fertiliser just built up to a point where one of the ingredients was too much for the fish and pushed them over the edge. Again, the water changes should dilute anything in the tank.

Use Seachem Prime instead of the Stress Coat.

Colin_T said:

Video worked. In future if you hold your phone horizontally instead of vertically, the video will fill up the entire screen instead of just the middle.

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If your water is supplied by a company, it should be safe and relatively free of chemicals. If it comes from a well or rainwater tank, it might have something in it or it might be fine. Doing daily water changes should show something. If it's the tap water they will go downhill really fast after a water change. If it's the tank water, they should get better after a water change.

I would be more inclined to think it is something getting into the tank and not the tap water.
Do you use buckets specifically for the fish, or any bucket around the house?
Does anyone else use your fish buckets for anything?

It might be the fertiliser just built up to a point where one of the ingredients was too much for the fish and pushed them over the edge. Again, the water changes should dilute anything in the tank.

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Thanks again Colin. What you said about the tap water makes sense. It didn't necessarily get better with the water change (status quo), but also not downhill, so I think there's something in the tank.

As expected, the gourami was dead this morning. He definitely had quite protruding eyes. Is that also a symptom of poisoning?

I'll keep up with the water changes and gravel clean and keep you posted.

Slaphppy7 said:

Use Seachem Prime instead of the Stress Coat.

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Thanks for the input! Did you have bad experiences with stress coat, or why is prime preferred?