Tank Going Downhill Fast After 4+ Years

[Blubble37]

 

Shrimp can live with carbon. They will die with any traces of copper in the tank. Your nitrate is a little high in my opinion. Anything under 40 is ok.

 
In my opinion 40-80 is fine, when it gets over 100 the problems start, this is in my experience though, so if yours is different i respect that

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guppy swimming in a downwards curve, hiding in tank, rapid breathing

skeleton platy, very very thin, funny looking gills like in patches theres a c
oating

To be honest, it does look very much parasitic, if the parasite remains in the water and you buy new fish then it'll infect them too, the flat tummy indicated the paratite to me, often with parasitical infeactions you get this as the parasite eats the fish from the inside, making them succeptible to other diseases like finrot etc, unfortunately, if all of your fish are showing symptoms then it's likely that they'll all go, the sand could also be a problem as there isnt much if any flow of water through it, anerobic bacteria etc as before mentionned by daizeUK
 
if the sand is for the cory, i keep my cory's in fine gravel, nowhere near as small as sand but not very jagged either, never had a cory die from barbel infection, all my cory's are fully barbeled, the only deaths have been from old age and a rather ill looking cory i took from school to treat (and long term keep as my school seems incapable of looking after their own)
 
would you be able to give me the flow rating and make of your filter also?

 
My filter is a u3. on the top spray function with full bubbles. its rather strong current and the fish have learnt not to directly swim at it
 
 
after all of the posts of suggestions to get cories. i purchased two yesterday, an albino and a peppered.
 
so now i have
 
1 guppy
3 cories (bronze, albino +peppered)
2 tetras
2 shrimp
 
as soon as i added the new teeny cories, my existing bronze one was mouthing the albino's underside for a long time, almost like the T position ( i ended up researching..  )
 
noticed today my black neon tetra of 5 years looks alittle "washed" out. the striped don't look as vibrant as they once were.
 

that's fair enough c: as long as you've got a decent flow and good surface agitation then that sounds fine, the U3 is also a pretty good filter from what i've heard about it. how often are you doing water changes and about what %?

 

[emilythestrange]

once a week at 20% roughly.. i thought this was enough as this is what ive always done, and im never really stocked to the limits.

 

[Blubble37]

Yeah that amount is fine, wasn't doubting you, just curious, the more info you have etc

 

[snazy]

It's not going to hurt to try more water changes weekly. It's no set rule, it's what works best for particular tank/filter/fish combo.
At this stage you'd need to try to make sure water quality is as good as it can get.

 

[Blubble37]

It's not going to hurt to try more water changes weekly. It's no set rule, it's what works best for particular tank/filter/fish combo.
At this stage you'd need to try to make sure water quality is as good as it can get.

+1 you can never do too many water changes c:

 

[emilythestrange]

how many do you do then?