Problem help?

[Daisy May]

Hi
I have a problem. Over the last 3 days 4 of my fish have died, or are looking unwell i use RO Water, because the water in my area has very high phosphates, and is very hard, i cant understand why they have died, my tank has been set up neally a year, i clean it out every other week take out 25% of the water, and i only feed them once a day, this seems to happen every so often, 2 or 3 die at once, then everything is okay again after that, i bought 2 little angel fish last week one of thoughs died at the weekend, so maybe he had some disease, one of my Gouramis, died, i hadnt had him very long either, i put my ram, and my rainbow fish upstairs, because they where looking a bit under the weather, i put some salt in the water, the Ram has picked up but the rainbow fish, is up the top of the surfice gasping for air. Whats wrong. Can anyone help.

 

[Feargal]

Moving this to Tropical Emergencies...

 

[Feargal]

Daisy May,

It will help if you can post the following when asking for help.

1. Water parameters. (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, PH, temp', Hardness etc)
2. A full description of the fishes symptoms.
3. How often you do water changes and how much.
4. Any chemicals and treatments you add to the water.
5. WhatTank mates are in the tank.
6. Tank size.
7. Finally how experienced are you in keeping fish.

It sound's like the Angelfish may have had a disease as you say though.

 

[Daisy May]

Here are your answers to the Questions

1. The fish seem to be on the surfice of the water gasping for air.
2. My tank size is 240 litres 45 gallons.
3. I do a 25% water change every 2 weeks, i take out 10 gallons.
4. I have Angel Fish, Rosey Tetras, Rainbow Fish, Swordtails, Platys, Harlequins, a Gourami, a loach, a white cloud mountain minnow, a molly, and a guppy i have about 26 fish in all.
5. Im not to sure about the ammonia, nitrates, ph etc, im going to take a water sample to my lfs see what they say.
6. I have been into tropical fish keeping for just over a year, so im still very new to it.
Hope this helps, and solves the problem. Please help.

 

[Davy Reynolds]

I'd love to see the results of the water tests.
Rams usually like top quality water so I'd expect them to get first.
Disease is a posibilty but I'd like to see the water results first

 

[wetwetwet]

HiYa Daisy May,

As said getting the water parameteres is essential in trying to establish what could be wrong. Even when your lfs have tested it, it would be worth investing in your own test kits and monitor your water regularly especially if the fish behave abnormally.

Without this information its very difficult for anyone to offer practical advice.

Untill then stepping up the water changes may help.

Btw do you add anything to the RO water?

 

[Dragonslair]

Hi DaisyMay,
What a shame it seems that we always welcome newbies onto the site with problems. First of all a very warm welcome to the site, and the very first words I must stress to you is: DON'T PANIC. This makes a bad situation worse. How long have you had this current setup? You tell us you've been fishkeeping for a year. So is this setup a year old? If so what have you done in your daily routeine to cause this change?
Fish gasping at the surface is usually not a good sign. It shows that they are choking to death. There are several causes to make this happen. The first is that they are getting insufficient air being diffused into the water. In other words they can't breathe. Do you have an airstone(s) and is it working. Are your filters in good working order? If the first two answers are yes, then you must look to the water quality. In a lot of cases a high output of ammonia can cause this affect. In essence the fish are beig killed by their own excreta.
What is the temp. of your water. Too hot and the oxygen is depleted and fish gasp on the surface. This act by the fish is un-natural to them and they only do this in emergency's. Fish with the exception of anabantids cannot breathe atmostpheric air. What your fish are doing is performing an osmosis function with their gills at the surface of the water. You need to remedy this emergency fast before you lose your inhabitants. My other learned friends may have some other input for you.

 

[Daisy May]

The fish seem fine, now, the ram has picked up, i think because i bought 2 little angel fish, last week, 1 of them must of been diseased because 1 died at the weekend, i know Gouramis dont like to much oxygen, and i have plenty of oxygen in my tank, i have a air stone, and a air pump that comes out of the filter, i have a Juwel aquarium, with all the different filter pads (biological filter) i clean them in the aquarium water when told to do so in the instruction booklet, as i say, it seems to happen when i buy new fish, they must bring disease into the tank, 2 or 3 die at once, i am doing all the right things, i feed the fish just once a day, i use ro water, and put minerals in the water, could this be a problem, the ro water. The only reason i use ro water is because, the water where i live is very hard, and it has high phosphates so algae builds up in days, the gravel goes all brown and horrible.
Hope this helps can someone help with my problem.
Lastly the tank has been setup for a year.

 

[Alien Anna]

Hi,
I don't think RO water is to blame personally. However, I wanted to mention FYI that brown "algae" is to do with low light levels as well as high phosphate and nitrate. If you have live plants, you might want to think about improving the lighting in the tank.

I also wonder if you had an undetected fish death of one of your smaller fish, or some snails die off? A rotting corpse could easily have pushed your ammonia up.

Also, what water were the angelfish kept in in the shop? Is it possible they just use conditioned tap-water there? Many shops in hard water area prefer to get fish acclimated to the water, rather than the other way around. They might sell RO water, but do they use RO water in their tanks?

Actually, this is a good argument for keeping your water parameters as close as possible to your LFS's: when you get new fish, your lovely pH balanced, softened water kills the ungrateful blighters who've got used to alkaline liquid rock!

 

[adeyc]

to be able to corectly identify the problem we do nee the water test result. All th info posted is good though. it may be a case of different water, or the fish being poisoned. if you have plenty of water surface movment you will have enough O2 in the water. as it's from the disturbance of the surface water that alows O2 to disolve into the water.

As for the new fish dieing. How are you introducing them to the tank? and ask your lfs for there water parameters as already mentioned.

 

[Rose]

Have you cycled your tank? Do you know what cycling is? Reason why I'm asking is I ran across someone a couple of days ago with a tank that had been set up for 6mo and never cycled the tank and was always having fish dye in it. So I'm just checking. The other thing is how much are you feeding them and how often? I'm leaning towards a poisoning of some type. Rose

 

[adeyc]

Again "the evil twins"©® are telepathicly linked. lol

 

[Rose]

:laugh: :laugh: :hehe: