Flashing, Darting, Swimming Backward

[mctavish132]

Tank size: 60 gallon
pH: 7.6
ammonia: 0ppm
nitrite: 0ppm
nitrate: 10ppm
kH:?
gH:?
tank temp: 84F

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior):

Flashing/scratching on decorations has been going on for months, my parrot fish and balloon molly will always have these spasms and scratch on everything for a few minutes then completely stop for a couple days, then start up again, as if it is only irritating them every once and a while.. Before today the parrot fish and the molly were the only fish with this behaviour, until I just noticed my black widow tetra flip out spasm, scratched like crazy and darted around for a few minutes and was fully swimming backwards then stopped and has been acting normal for a good 45minutes now. the scratching never has any relation to my water changes, and is usually a day to 2 days after the water changes I notice these spasms. Other then erratic behaviour, the only thing i can notice is the molly always has really long stringy, sometimes white poop, and what looks like tiny microscopic black specs all over her, but cant tell if its just part of the coloration or not.
My parrot fish has 4 much bigger black specs(looking alot different) under his scales they are completly flat and not protruding at all, These specs have been on him since i got him 4 months ago and have not changed since. It also seems as if he is slowly getting more pale. there are no other visible signs of any sort of parasites, or bacteria that i can see. There is definitely something causing my fish to be very irritated though, but it is not constant, seems to go away and come back all the time.

Volume and Frequency of water changes:

Every 2-3 days, a 25-50% water change (changes done with tetra aquasafe)

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank:

activated carbon in 2 of 4 filters. (cartridges)

Tank inhabitants:

-1 Blood Parrot Chiclid
-1 Angel Fish
-2 baby clown loaches
-2 Corycats, 1 albino cory
-1 Black widow tetra
-1 Pleco
-1 Baloon molly
-1 red tailed black shark
(as my stock get bigger, i have a 350gallon to move them into eventually)

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration):

A bundle of Java fern a couple of days ago, not properly rinsed before put in the tank, but fish symptoms happenlong before i added this.

Exposure to chemicals: = 0

This is a photo of the black specs on my parrot fish, was wondering if anyone could identify these, and if they have any relation to the scratching/unusual behaviour ?(the specs are much darker for real then they are in the picture)



Why are my fish flashing? what should I medicate with, if anything? anyone have any ideas?

 

[Prime Ordeal]

The first thing I notice is that you're using tetra Aqua safe as your dechlorinator and this doesn't detoxify ammonia. If you have ammonia in your tap water (test it without any dechlorinator added) then each time you change water you will be adding ammonia and I would expect that sort of behaviour from your fish in that situation. Did the flashing start when you started using Aqua safe?

The white, stringy poo is a sign of internal bacteria or parasite infection.

And lastly your temperature is set way too high. About 77f would be better.

 

[mctavish132]

Thanks for the reply. The only other de-coordinator Ive used is "Jungle start right", and it was a tiny bottle I finished faster then I could notice a difference, and other then that Ive only ever used tetra aqua safe and Ive always had this issue. I just tested my tap water and it says somewhere in between 0 and.25ppm but looks more like 0 (API LIquid Test kit), but im still going to get a better de-chlorinator anyway. What would you recommend? I don't have a LFS, only a small walmart, so most likely im gonna have to order it. I'll start slowly lowering the water temperature now. (it was only that high temporarily, because im quite sure theres some sort of parasite in the tank.) If starting with a new ammonia detoxifying water conditioner and the problems persist what else could i be dealing with here? because this wouldnt solve the stringy poop, and would a very slighty higher level of ammonia(if any) after water changes cause the fish to scratch all the time?

 

[Prime Ordeal]

I think you'll find that just swapping to a better dechlorinator as soon as you can will stop the flashing. Try Seachem Prime, it's about the best in terms of value for money and is a decent dechlorinator/detoxifier as well.

If you have even a small amount of ammonia, as you appear to have, it can lead to all sorts of problems such as the flashing and enabling internal bacterial infections to get a hold. Ammonia should always be zero and when you have even a tiny amount in the source water you must use an ammonia detoxifying dechlorinator to neutralise it until the filter can take care of it naturally.

Get a medication that specifically treats for internal bacterial infection and treat the whole tank.

What makes you think you have a parasitic infection? I would expect all the fish to be showing symptoms (such as the white, stringy poo)by now if it was parasitic in nature.

Also, another thought occurred to me. Mollies are susceptible to lack of electrolytes in the water and that could also be affecting the parrot fish. You need to test for general hardness (GH) to get some idea of whether it's adequate or not but you should be able to get some idea by going to the website of your water authority where that information should be available.

 

[mctavish132]

So i just did a gravel vac, and noticed that i sucked up some long red squirming nematodes from my substrate, and im really starting to freak out. I always see my molly with long stringy red poo, but never actually looked close enough to tell if it was a worm or not. An internal nematode infection would explain the white stringy poo aswell. I also drove for 2 hours to a fish store today and picked up some prime, after a 50% water change, a couple hours later i notice my parrot fish scratching very persistently again. After the water change i tested all water parameters

Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 5

So this cancels out the possibility of it being due to my water quality. Now that i know i have nematodes in the tank, how can i effectively get rid of them? I am now quite positive that this is what is causing the irritations to my fish.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

OK, the worms are most likely bloodworm larvae (do you get midges in your area?) or another detritus worm, they aren't a parasite.

The changeover from one conditioner to another can cause temporary flashing so you need to give it a few days.

As I mentioned previously long discoloured poo can be internal bacteria or parasite related. If it were a parasite I would expect at least a few of the other fish to have contracted the same parasite by now and be showing symptoms. I'd also expect to see some wasting of the molly, so I still think it's an internal bacterial infection.

The flashing could be caused by skin flukes but you say it's been going on for months and again I would expect all the fish to be flashing by now.

You really need to know what the GH of your water is (actually TDS would be better but that's costly to measure). If you get a GH/KH kit, like the API one, that will at least rule out low electrolyte levels as being the cause of the flashing. Or you could very gradually add a small amount aquarium salt (so as not to affect the more sensitive fish), as a temporary measure, to see if the behaviour changes.

What do you use to test your water with and what do you feed your fish with?

Do you add anything else to the tank apart from food and dechlorinator?

 

[mctavish132]

Ok while thats a relief i really hope they are just bloodworm larvae, even so, how do i get rid of them? They creep me out and look disgusting. Im taking another trip to my LFS tommorow so i will pick up KH and GH test kits, and post back the results. I currently test my Ammonia,Nitrite,Nitrate with individual API test kits. I feed my fish algae wafers, shrimp pellets, freeze dried tubifex, freeze dried blood worms, Tetra Jumbo Carnivore sticks, and 6 different kind of flakes including spirulina flakes. I have never fed live food before. I dont add anything accept for de-chlorinator. would it be a good or bad idea to just get internal parasite, and internal bacterial flake food medication and just treat for both just incase? Or would it be to much medication for the fish if i am treating for both?

 

[Prime Ordeal]

When you treat for internal parasites it's usually a good idea to follow up with an anti-bacterial to kill off any secondary infections caused by the parasite damage in the gut, so you could treat for parasites and then treat for bacteria. It's generally not a good idea to mix medications.

The worms are free food for your fish so I doubt you'd ever see them above the substrate or they'd be snapped up quickly. Other than that you need to give the substrate a really good clean as it's the detritus in the substrate which allows them to thrive.