German blue ram died, Why, Help

[MammaKitty]

I brought home a pair of rams 18 days ago. They were doing great for 14 days and on day 15 when I woke up to feed them breakfast 1 of them was hiding in the floating plants, he would not come out to eat which was not like him all day he was having these symtoms,

Heavy breathing, Stops eating, Discoloration(he was much darker) Gasping at the water surface.
(water was ok i did test)

When I got up the next day he was the same so I called the fish store I got them from, they said mabey he had somthing internal going on. They told me to start treating with Kanamycin which I have so when I got off the phone I proceeded to get the meds and all of the sudden he started to swim erraticly for about 2 minutes like he could not breath (neither could I watching him with tears in my eyes) then he just fell to the bottom and died. WHY???
Water perameters are, still

Ammonia- 0 , Nitrate - 30-40 , Nitrite - 0 , PH - 8.0

I want to make sure this does not happen to my other fish and kill my whole tank if it is going to infect everyone. Has anyone ever had this situation?

 

[black angel]

Sorry your ram died. The only thing i can think of is maybe ph shock. Did you ask what ph the rams were in before you got them?

 

[MammaKitty]

They said there ph was high also it seem as though all the fish stores around here have a high ph. So what is the best way to lower without using chemicals, which i really do not want to use.

 

[Ferris]

Sorry to hear about your loss, it's never easy.

I would't reccommend changing your Ph because every time you do a water change, you have to try and get it back to the same level, this could cause more harm than good.

Also you shouldn't need to change it, all of your local fish shops should have the same Ph as you so if the fish are OK there, they should be OK for you. This could just have been the stress of the move or stress caused by one of his tankmates, you may just have been unlucky. Is the other one OK?

 

[Raechal]

The high nitrates could have caused the death as well because blue rams need really clean water. Sorry for your loss, I lost a few blue rams as well.

 

[pendragon]

pH shock is a bad thing anyway you cut it, but a couple of thoughts:

1. The fish probably didn't die of pH shock after 18 days unless the aquarium water underwent a drastic change. If the LFS aquarium water is very high and yours is very low, the fish would've passed on long before now if pH shock had been the culprit.

2. Accept these words of wisdom: unless your pH is so unbelievably high the fish can't survive in it, just let it be. If acclimated properly and slowly (as all fish should be) all but the most sensitive fish will adapt to whatever your pH is. Adjusting pH for a "perfect fit" for your fish sounds like a great idea, but most experienced fishkeepers - and take it from one who learned the hard way - will tell you: just let it be.

3. While high pH shouldn't kill your fish unless it becomes high very suddenly, ammonia in high pH water will if your tank is not properly cycled. The same small quantity of ammonia becomes tens of times more deadly as pH rises even 1.0 point. High pH is sometimes wrongly blamed for ammonia poisoning in an uncycled tank.

Is your tank properly cycled? If it isn't, the ram's death was probably tied to that. Rams are pretty sensitive to nitrites and nitrates.

Hope that helps.

pendragon!

 

[MammaKitty]

Thank you to all of you who replied to my post, I am not going to alter my ph at all I am not experienced enough to do that and I truly think it will be fine, the other ram is doing fine (from what I have observed since the other has died he has not been acting any different. I will be going to get him a mate this weekend or sooner if I can, so he does not get lonley. I do weekly or bi weekly 25 % water changes (vacuming small sections of gravel each time) I love my Fluval 304 filter that thing is the bomb for fish poo poo , I do not think 30-40 ppm for Nitrates is high is it ? That is what its supposed to be and there is absolutly no ammonia or Nitrite so I believe my water perameters are good right ? also when I was aclimating them I floated for almost 1 1/2 hrs puting a little of my water in every few minutes with the lights out and even put a couple of drops of stresscoat in the bag also, that is the correct way i believe. any comments or info appreciated. TY

 

[WILDER]

Heavy breathing and gasping can be a sign of gill flukes, was the gill area red and inflamed, and was the fish flicking on objects.

 

[pendragon]

I do not think 30-40 ppm for Nitrates is high is it ?

Well, it depends somewhat on your definition of "high", but yes, it's a little higher than you'd like it to be, especially since Rams are known to be very nitrate-sensitive. Folks will tell you different things about where you want your nitrate level to stay, but most answers will fall in the 15 to 25 ppm range. The lower the better, of course, but you have to balance fish safety and practicality. If it requires more than a 20% water change once a week to keep the nitrate level at 25 ppm, you're probably overstocked for your tank volume (although you don't really appear to be based on your sig).

I think it's entirely possible that sensitive fish could have problems at 30 to 40 ppm. But I also think it's possible that whatever happened to your poor ram may have been something else entirely.

pendragon!

 

[MammaKitty]

So to get the Nitrate level down just do more water changes ? I will check it(Nitrate) again tonight being that I did do another 25% the day after the ram died.

 

[MammaKitty]

I did not see him flicking on anything or any inflamed area's but the other one has a small spot near his gill area(looks a little pinkish) I have been watching it to see if it got worse he is not having any symptoms at all though. Do you have any good pics to look at ? and what could little tiny white pots on the gills be there is 2 or 3 of them on my Dwarf blue gourami but thought it was Ich at first so I treated it right away never spread or got worse (that was great) then was told it was anchor worm(because of the way 1 of my tetras died) so i treated for that but the spots are still on the gourami (these treatments were done before I got the rams)

 

[WILDER]

There is definately a parasite, finding out which one is harder, i would of said the little whitespot on the gill would of been whitespot, try and get a med for a wide variety of skin and gill parasites, or take the affected fish to the lfs and ask them to do a gill scrape to find out which parasite you are dealing with.

 

[Jezah]

Blue rams are sensitive...period. They tend to die with even the slightest change in water chemistry. Something as simple as you reaching your hand into the tank, and having soap residue on your skin....can kill them. Sorry...but its the truth. Bolivian rams are much hardier, though not as colorful.