Puzzling persistant problem

[swozzie]

I have a problem in my tank that I can't seem to get rid of. See signature below for tank contents.

When I first got the tank going, I only had the barbs in there. Immediatley 1 of the barbs had a white bubble on his nose that kept bursting every few days and then coming back. I treated with Myxazin (bactericide/fungistat) and this cleared up.

At the same time, another barb had a cloudy eye. During the last 7 months I have treated with Myxazin (bactericide/fungistat), Sterazin (Parasiticide) and Protozin (Fungicide and protozoacide) and the cloudy eye still remains. I am assuming it is permanently damaged (maybe during netting) and is beyond treatment.

Sometime later I got some Clown Loaches and Otocinclus. This is where my persistant problem seems to have started. Basically the fish started flashing, rubbing themselves on the gravel/rocks etc. One or two of the barbs started this but it was very rare and I thought it may just be some kinda of territorial thing.

Then I noticed 2 of the barbs would occaisionally freak out swimming windly round the tank for 5 seconds rubbing against plants etc This is also very rare but the Otocinclus were doing it as well.

About 2 months ago one of the Otocinclus died. I couldn't find any reason for this then about a week later one of the barbs was very ill. He was sat in the pump current gasping for oxygen. He had a brown patch on his side and a thick white stripe above his eye! (I have noticed when the barbs look down they naturally have a thin white line above their eye but this was thick and extruding). He also seemed to have a scale hanging off some days later.

I immediatley started treatment with Sterazin (Parasiticide). Within a couple of days the white line vanished, he stopped gasping and seemed to be on the road to recovery. However, he still isn't 100% because I rarely see him eating (the barbs are usually very greedy). He was the biggest fish, now he is the smallest!

Now one of the loaches seems to flash also. He swims on his side banging his tail into the gravel. Maybe this is just him trying to knock up any debris to make it easier to find food.

There is obviously some problem in the tank but it doesn't seem to effect all the fish. Only 2 of the barbs, and 1 or 2 of the loaches but it seems to be getting worse. It seems to me to be a parasite problem but the Sterazin (Parasiticide) hasn't got rid of it. I don't know what else to try except doing a skin scrape and getting the microscope out but I can't imagine that working!

If anyone has any ideas they would be greatly received.


1. Water parameters. (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, PH, temp', Hardness etc)

Never had a problem with these yet
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate <10ppm
pH 6.8-7.0
temp 26

3. How often you do water changes and how much.

Weekly, 20%

4. Any chemicals and treatments you add to the water.

Apart from medications (see above)

 

[black angel]

hi sorry you have been having all this trouble. just reading through it and just wanted to know if you dechlorinate the water at all. if you dont then the chemicals in the water could account for a number of the problems you have been seeing.

 

[swozzie]

Yes I use Stress Coat (removes chlorine, neutralizes chloramines, detoxifies heavy metals).

 

[black angel]

ok. next question. when you have been using the meds have you switched the lights off for the duration of the treatment?

 

[swozzie]

No? Just removed carbon and my phospate absorber.

 

[black angel]

ok. the reason i ask, is that any medication that contains malachite green needs the tank to be dark if it is to work. protozin and sterazin contain this. if the uv light is on in the tank the meds become ineffective.
i think you should do a water change and use the one that looks the worst first and keep the tank lights off and try to put towels over it so it gets little light. feed as normal, but be sure not to frighten the fish too much. maybe have an hour each day without the towels/blanket so you can see how they are and feed them.

 

[swozzie]

Thanks, that's interesting - I will take your advice and try another treatment of Sterazin. I was thinking of doing a 3 day blackout anyway to get rid of the black hair algae that's been bugging me for the past 2 months!

You would have thought they would tell you this in the instructions, they do say switch of uv steralizers but I wasn't aware I had one of those.

Since it's a 10 day treatment you recommend I keep the lights off for 10 days? That isn't going to do my plants much good.

I will let you know the outcome.

Thanks again...

 

[black angel]

you may need to remove live plants. can you put them into an empty aquarium, or a bucket and move close to a window or a bright lamp?

 

[swozzie]

Not really, they are well established and some have big roots that go too far into the silver sand/deponit mixture that fertilizes them - this is covered in quartz gravel and unrooting and then replanting will make the tank a mess.

I'll just go with letting parts of them die off, I can easily remove this and since they grow very very fast in my tank anyhow they shouldn't take long to recover.

 

[black angel]

dont know if theplants can survive that long maybe give the tank complete darkness at night when main room lights are on. is the tank close to natural light.?

 

[swozzie]

The tank normally only gets a low amount of natural ambient daylight.

Since I have to dose Sterazin on days 1,3,6,8 and 10 my plan will be to keep an eye on the plants and possibly give them a 4 hour stint of maximum uv light just prior to dosing the Sterazin each time(if they look wilted). I will keep pumping co2 in there. Most of them are fairly strong leaved plants except one that suffers badly with no light but I got a new sprout appear from this one the other day which I will keep in my other tank in case I need to regrow the thing.

I did a 3 day pitch dark blackout a while ago on another tank and it destroyed all traces of algae! Most of the plants survived fine except one which looked almost dead but did eventually recover.

The plants grow like mad in this tank anyhow.

Besides I don't want to move them and then put them back in the tank risking reintroducing whatever is causing my problem in the first place.

See how it goes I guess.

 

[black angel]

plants can be sterilised too. if you want i can find out how? maybe taking cuttings is the way to go. i dont know if putting the light on for 4 hours would help the meds. the best thing would be to lift the blanket for a few hours and then lower it before the room lights come on.

 

[swozzie]

The room lights shouldn't be a problem, they don't emit uv. Ideally for the meds I just need to cover up in the day, uncover at night and put the room light on maybe for the fish to see something. Of course this starves the tank of uv and the plants won't like it but putting the uv light on for 4 hours before redosing shouldn't matter too much since 4 hours later I put in another dose of the med. Even if the reminaing med gets neutralised by the uv in that 4 hours (unlikely) then if shouldn't matter since I am about to redose and switch the lights off again anyway. Of course I am assuming that when you redose, then its because the old dose has worn out as opposed to redosing to add more med to existing med.

Alot of guesswork going on I know but since this has been a persistant problem I have to go down the route of zero tolerance for uv(while trying to keep plants alive), else if it doesn't work again I will never know if it was bad choice of med or bad implementation of treatment.

Still not sure about the med instructions mentioning only uv steralizers though.

Anyway I don't like the idea of steralizing plants, certainly if it involves taking them out. The black hair algae I have is under control now, in the sense that there is no new growth. Just gotta get rid of old stuff but cutting off badly effective leaves doesn't matter so much since new ones grow back so fast.

 

[black angel]

i would say that what you plan to do sounds good. i emailed waterlife myself and they said yes to turn off uv lights but the covering of the tank does not affect the meds, but its purely personal choice how you do it.
i agree the meds must wear off before the next dose.
all i can say now is good luck and i will check in next week for an update!! so post when the meds are over.

 

[swozzie]

Had this interesting email from Waterlife today...

Dear Mark,
Normal ambient daylight or even strip lighting will not degrade the medications that much. UV sterilizer deliver very high intensity light through a quartz sleeve to a narrow strip of water passing around the quartz tube.
Your fish are probably suffering from flukes we would recommend that you re treat with Sterazin but use the recommended dosage twice a day as it may be the bacteria in the filter which are biodegrading the medication.
Regards,
WATERLIFE.

I did 5 days of the 10 day treatment and the plants are fine. I am starting the double dose treatment today (fingers crossed).