Need advice to get my aquarium healthy

[astonerii]

I have the following setup and want to get my aquarium healthier than it seems right now. Thinking going with RO water might be the path.

The base items
75 gallon AQUEON aquarium with a glass canopy.
Aqueon Quietflow canister filter 400 Gph (100-150 gallon)
Canister filter is filled with bio media Seachem Matrix with some filter floss and large pore filter foam.
The QuietFlow comes with 2 polishing units
Undergravel filter with 4 attached tubes, it is being fed in reverse flow from the canister filter.
CO2 inline difuser feeding into one of the undergravel tubes. I currently have it turned off
1/2"-3/4" river rock

Decorations

Large ship
8 betta logs
glass cup style plant holders with suction cups near the top

Plants
Amazon swords and Anubias

Fish

13 female betta
4 baby clown pleco's about 2 inches (max 4 inches when grown)
1 baby albino pleco about 3 inches (max 6 inches when grown)
1 standard pleco about 6 inches (max 24 inches when grown) Plan to turn over to petco at some point... Bought by error
2 cory catfish
5 mystery snails

Planned fish

Want to up the total bettas to 30 or so. Increase cory catfish to 5 to 8. Ditch the large pleco. Maybe add some shrimp for additional cleaning.

Currently using city water. It seems pretty clean, but fish continue to get sick. So planning to go to Reverse Osmosis and will need to remineralize.

The plan I have for the RO is to hook it up to the shower hose when needed and otherwise store it.

The advice I am looking for is what needs to change with my setup, what chemicals do I need for the fish/plants for remineralizing the RO water, any additional supplies?

What should the water quality look like? Currently the Ph is 7.25, no amonia, nitrite or nitrate, no heavy metals, no chlorine, water hardness is very low

 

[Naughts]

Why do you feel your tank is unhealthy?

Photos may help to show what is amiss.

 

[Byron]

If you are on municipal water (as opposed to a private well) it is very unlikely the water itself is the cause of fish "sickness." You need however to tell us what "sickness" actually means. And what are the tap water parameters (GH, KH, pH solely for the tap water itself) and conditions (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate--I assume if these are zero in the tank they are zero in the tap water too (?).

The CO2 may be an issue...the named plants don't need this, and it is one further complication in water chemistry. RO may or may not be advisable--the fish named are all soft water so no problem with RO on its own, but again, this is not advisable unless there is a real serious issue with the source water.

Is the substrate river rock gravel or larger? This is a cause of issues for bacteria, and cories cannot be kept over gravel without issues.

 

[StevenF]

In addition to the above please tell us were you are or provide a link to your local water quality report. We might recognize something in the report that might explain your issue.

 

[astonerii]

In addition to the above please tell us were you are or provide a link to your local water quality report. We might recognize something in the report that might explain your issue.

EWG's Tap Water Database: What's in Your Drinking Water?

Look up your local water system to find out which pollutants might be of concern, and find suggestions on the best kinds of home filters to remove those chemicals.

www.ewg.org

 

[astonerii]

If you are on municipal water (as opposed to a private well) it is very unlikely the water itself is the cause of fish "sickness." You need however to tell us what "sickness" actually means. And what are the tap water parameters (GH, KH, pH solely for the tap water itself) and conditions (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate--I assume if these are zero in the tank they are zero in the tap water too (?).

The CO2 may be an issue...the named plants don't need this, and it is one further complication in water chemistry. RO may or may not be advisable--the fish named are all soft water so no problem with RO on its own, but again, this is not advisable unless there is a real serious issue with the source water.

Is the substrate river rock gravel or larger? This is a cause of issues for bacteria, and cories cannot be kept over gravel without issues.

The sickness is Ich 2 times now over a period of a month and 2 dropsy victims, although we had another dropsy victim on the original aquarium set-up. We cleared it up once by the 25th January, or so we thought we did (we used the 86 degree aquarium temperature and maintained for 10 days after the last visible spot on the fish along with 1 tablespoon of salt per 10 gallons of water). And then by February 1 we have ich again. So apparently it did not all die out or something.

In the first episode, Sol also came down with Dropsy, pretty bad, we have her in a quarantine aquarium (10 gallon) and she made it through by last weekend and we were planning to move her to the main aquarium this weekend, but that aquarium is sick now... And it seems that the main aquarium now has a second Dropsy victim, Fire Star had a weird white poop and her scales are starting to protrude slightly. We only have to 2 aquariums, so I am at a loss as where to try to treat Fire Star.

The medicines we have available at this time are. I am currently not medicating either aquarium as I was told the increased temperature will fix the ich and the hospital aquarium has a healthy fish in it now.

API general cure which is a powder
Friz Maracyn Oxy which is supposed to attack gram negative virus and bacteria
Imagitarium Bacterial infection remedy which I think is for gram positive virus and bateria
Imagitarium parasite remedy which I am not sure what it is supposed to kill, I used it in the old set up for the dropsy victim which died.
API super ick cure which I have stopped using, it did not seem to work well and destroys the aquarium rubber by coloring it blue.
API pimafix
API Melafix
Kordon Ich attack 100% natural Ich treatment which I have not used yet.

Willing to get what ever will work

Tap water:

16 in 1 test strip unless otherwise specified. mg/L unless otherwise specified. Alternates are API liquid, Dr meter Ph, Salifert Carbonate, Milliard 7 in 1
PH (16 in 1) 6.7 (Milliard) 6.4-6.8 (Dr Meter) 9.06 (API) 6.4-6.8 (Dr. meter was just calibrated, so not sure why it is so far off.)
Ammonia (API) did not test... gah!
Nitrite below 1 very light (milliard) 0
Nitrate below 10 very light (milliard) 0
hardness general 25-50 hard to tell
chlorine total 0-0.5
chlorine fee 0-0.5 (milliard) 0-0.5
bromine 0-1
iron 0
chromium 0-2
lead 0-20 weird? Is very light so probably less than 10
copper 0
mercury 0
fluoride very hard to read but between 0 and 50?
carbonate root 0 (Salifert) 0.6-1.2 changed very fast... (milliard) 0-40
total alkalinity 0 (milliard) 0-40

The CO2 was very light when I was running it, 1 bubble per 5 to 6 seconds and I had one of those bulbs you put in the aquarium to see what the CO2 was and it never changed from strong blue. It is currently off.

The river rock is larger, it is 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch with a few smaller or larger pieces.

For the aquarium the Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate is 0.

 

[astonerii]

Well, the fish that we thought had dropsy died of something else. SO FAST! The white poop was very consistent translucent white and got thicker as it was expelled, perfectly round, could have been a parasite she was expelling?

Parasites? She had a bloated belly. The rest of the fish do not exhibit the bloated belly. I ordered some worming medications. Praziquantel and Levamisole. Should get Prazipro monday and Levamisole maybe middle of next week.

 

[Byron]

First off, I am not going to advise on the possible "disease" aspects because my experience with disease is (fortunately) very minimal. I can make a couple suggestions though, and then other more qualified members like @Colin_T can specifically deal with symptom issues.

Ich is due to stress. The parasite has to be present, but fish can deal with this (if they couldn't, there would be no fish left in the habitats) unless they are under stress. Stress is directly responsible for about 90% of all aquarium fish disease issues. The fact that ich was eradicated and then came back within a month is a certain sign of severe stress. Assuming it was ich (or the very similar Velvet).

We must always be aware that adding medications, even if they are necessary, will stress fish. The substances dissolved in the water enter the fish with the water, getting into the bloodstream and internal organs. Aside from other issues this may cause, it always is stressful. There were some eight medications listed, and in my view some of these are worse than useless, aside from causing further stress. I'll leave that for Colin. Just be aware that fish respond best to clean water, not medications.

I don't see anything dangerous with the water data, but again Colin or Steven may have more.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Before dealing with the specific info from the OP, I would suggest doing this before ro/di, UV or blindly medicating. Do a big water change (properly dechlored) and the run a big bag of quality carbon on the tank for a while. It may help and it will do no harm.

Not all meds in the water end up inside the fish in terms of the blood and organs. Some must be fed to be effective. I use Flubendazole on occasion for that reason. It can get inside the fish from the water without it being fed or injected.

Flubendazole is useful for controlling intestinal parasites, especially most of the protozoa, some nematodes and gill flukes. Flubendazole is active through adsorption into the fish’s skin and gills. The drug does not have to be eaten to be effective. This makes the drug useful for
treating fishes which have quit eating due to irritation from infection of the throat and gut.

I cannot even begin to offer a diagnosis of the fish here. What I do know is using most of those meds either mixing some or using them one after the other is more likely to do harm than good.

Fritz Maracyn Oxy is mainly for fungal infections. They actually identify which ones. On the other hand, the info offered on the potential for it to treat bacterial infections looks pretty sketchy and ambiguous to me. Notice that it doesn't list any specific bacteria on which it should work? I have used this product since before Fritz bought Mardel when it was called MarOxy. I never used it as an antiobiotic. I have better options when that is needed.

I also have had and used an RO/DI unit now since 2012. But I keep wild altums which I brought into a tank at pH 4.2 and moved up to 6.0 over 6 months. I may also use the ro/di to help trigger certain species to spawn. It is not a simple thing to use. You need a pretty good understanding of water chemistry or you can have serious issues pretty quickly. I mix my putre ro/di 11/9 with my excellent well water which is pH 7.0 and TDS at a maximum of 83 ppm.

Drinking water is generally OK for fish as well.

Also, fish which get ich and then are "cured" develop an immunity to ich for a while. Science has known this for some time. What is not known is how long that immunity lasts. This fact has led to the search for an ich vaccine. I can show you many research papers on this.