tank too small?

[medcase1]

i have 4 red tailed tinfoil barbs approx 5-7 inches long each and 1 7-9 inch gold nugget pleco in a 45 gallon tank. the pleco never shows any signs of sickness, but the tinfoils are losing there scales and turning red, with ulcer like sores, ots an ongoing problem. the ammonia level is fine, the nitrate and nitrite levels are good too. i use softened well water. i use a hagen aqua clear filter 200, with ammonia, carbon and foam filters. i use 2 7 inch bubble stones and 1 in tank heater set at 75 degrees, i change the water weekly 50% at a time, and clean the gravel weekly.any ideas?

 

[piranha45]

well, there's no doubt that a 45g is way too small for those tinfoils already, but I have no definite explanation for why they are developing those ulcer-like sores, if your water params are all perfect and your doing excellent water changes...

 

[platypus]

Hi,

Couple of things - when you say you add softened well water, do you mean you add the water straight in without conditioning it? It may be that even this water contains some chlorines and choloramines, which would certainly stress your fish out and could cause the scales problem.

When you say you clean the gravel every week, how thoroughly do you do this? It is possible to do more harm than good if you're too over zealous with gravel cleaning. This is because a lot of beneficial bacteria lives in the gravel, so if you clean it out once a week you'll actually be wiping out all that bacteria, and potentially causing your tank to cycle again. So that's something to bear in mind. Cleaning out your filters in tap water can also wipe out your bacteria, have you ever done that?

Also, any extra information you could give us - particularly your exact ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels, and how long your tank has been set up - would be really useful.

You could try having a look at this website, it has pictures of fish diseases, maybe there'll be something there you recognise.

Hope this helps!

 

[guppymonkey]

Is the well water naturally soft? I have heard that some water softeners are mainly supposed to be for cleaning and laundry use have chemicals in them that can hurt the fish.