Name This Disease! (Advice Needed)

[Aequora]

Well. I made the mistake of bringing home a new fish. I've been SO careful for the last half year with my half-black green/blue guppies that I was pretty smitten with myself. I had two gorgeous males with nearly identical colors/patterns and five, nice, dark, large bodies female relatives of the same color. I was looking around for a female to add to the batch to slowly work in even darker bodies on my strain, and so I searched for a long time and found what I was looking for. I brought her home and quarantined her for a week, then put her in my main tank with my female stock. I came back the next day and she was dead-but had given birth to seven TINY fry. They were all alive and doing well (as my females never did have a taste for fry). I counted my loss as a stress related death, since she had prematurely given birth and it was prone to happen to fish from this store source.

I cleaned the fish out, scooped the babies into a net and went about my business. That night I noticed one of my female’s head was cocked as far back as it would go and that her mouth was agape. She was unable to eat and the position of her head so far back made her gills appear to stick out. She was swimming frantically, but that swimming (within a few hours) turned to an inability to direct herself as she swam. I watched in horror as each of my breeding stock females took a hit and died of the same symptoms. My entire tank (Save the new fry in the net) had been wiped out in less than twenty four hours.

I didn’t manage to take any pictures at the time it happened, and I’ve since drained the tank and sterilized it for the sake of not having to encounter this thing. The fry are all happy and healthy in a new tank (and all their neighbors aren’t suffering from the same mystery symptoms). I rarely have diseases in my tanks, so call me inexperienced, but I drew a picture below of what they looked like at their worst. Any ideas?

As you can see. The head is as far up and back as it can go on a fish, the mouth is agape, and the eyes on the actual fish were a bit cloudy. The first thing that came to mind was maybe some kind of gill disease or even popeye? But the eyes weren’t swollen and it was too late before I could have gotten anything to help them. =\

 

[WILDER]

Poor things. Never heard anything like it before. R.I.P.

Any sores in the mouth area.
Was the mouth bright red, with any redness to the tummy area.
Did the mouth look swollen or rotting away.
Any whiteness to the mouth, or bleaching.
Were the any signs of flicking and rubbing, excess mucas, darting, erratic swimming or laboured breathing.
Did the gills look red and inflamed, like they were bleeding, or pale with excess mucas.

You didn't issolate the new fish for long enough. I would wait at least a month.

 

[Aequora]

There wasn't any of that in the fish. They would start to show signs of that head tilting within an hour of one another and their mouth would be extended and immobile. They weren't swollen, but I could have sworn I caught one looking a little glassy eyed or foggy, that's what made me think it was perhaps popeye.. but like I said, I don't run across many diseases in my tanks, so I am very inexperienced when it comes to spotting them and treating them.

After the fish would get that head-tilt and mouth agape look, they'd swim around find up until half and hour before they died. They'd start losing control of their direction while swimming. I wouldn't call it frantic behavior, just an inability to control their fins.

I just decided to bleach the tank as a last resort and let it air out for a week before I even try to start over with the water. =___= Too much hassle and I'd hate for anything like this to happen again. I need a new game plan now that I've lost all my breeding females.

 

[WILDER]

To be honest I haven't a clue to what desease it could be.

So the mouth wasn't a bright red colour.

Did you add the lfs bag water, as wondering if a toxin get into the tank.
Was there any signs of darting or turning upside down.