Tetra Dead And Dying :(

[DJackson]

Hi guys,

I've been fish in cycling for pretty much three weeks now as per lfs instructions.
Every day, I was changing about 20-50% of the water, changing it to 50% every other day as the lfs told me to not change at all during cycling, so this was a compromise.

I understand now how a lot of lfs stores prefer to sell rather than give correct advise.

Yesterday all I was concerned about was not having any nitrite nor nitrates.

Today after getting back from work, one neon tetra is dead and therefore stuck to the filter. The other two are not interested in food and have white edges to their dorsal and side fins. This was not there yesterday at all.

The four x ray tetra seem in perfect health.

It's come on very suddenly and I'm at a loss.

I have four neons and four X-ray tetra up until now in perfect health.

I have two vallis (disintegrating now),, two java fern (doing well), some java moss, two other types of plants both of which are also disintegrating. My lighting is apparently enough according to the lfs. However all of a sudden they are dying off.
I used a fertiliser a week ago for the plants which is copper free.

The ammonia has always been kept at 0.25 with the highest being 1ppm yesterday where I did a big change tha brought it back to 0.25. Tested every day with API master kit.

Ammonia as of this evening post death - 0.5
Ph is 6.4-6.6 so possibly 6.5.
Gh is mid.
nitrites and nitrates both 0.

I will be doing a water change later today but I thought id also wait for advise in case I need to do anything else too.

I have noticed small strands of hair? Algae that appears as very small white strands from sections of plants (not inclusing the java fern) but does grow quickly so I have washed the plants manually carefully with each change for manual removal and monitored water quality religiously.
I haven't used any algae treatment as I want to wait for my tank to cycle before adding any additional chemicals.
I haven't blacked out the tank to address the algae yet.

I'm at a loss as to what's so suddenly going on with my neons! I feel terribly guilty really.

If anyone can help, please do!!

Thank you!!

Dx

 

[DJackson]

Just an update

Re tested all parameters and then did a big water change.
The only parameter of concern was the ammonia which was at 0.5.

In the process, I quarantined the remaining two neons and threw out the plants that weren't doing so well.
At examination, the ones that were yellowing - the root stems were pretty much disintegrated. They're gone!

Cleaned gravel as I do with every change, washed what I could down.

All the other fish are still perfect today as far as I can tell.


I think the neons either have fin rot or neon tetra disease.
The edges of the fins seem to correspond with fin rot, but this came on within the space of 24 hours so Im thinking ntd.
The spines of the two remaining ones are slightly curved to one side.

In hindsight, one of the neons had been hiding a lot the last few days so I should have noticed this behaviour.

I'm going to pop into my local store on the way to work today to seek some advise anyway. Hopefully they can give me some idea on where I can go from here to ensure the remaining fish stay healthy!

 

[fluttermoth]

It will almost certainly be the raised ammonia that killed your neons; they're very sensitive to poor water conditions.

You need to do much larger water changes to stop the ammonia creeping up that high. Best thing your LFS could do for is give you a donation of mature media from their system. Mature media and large water changes will do more to help than anything else.

 

[DJackson]

Just an update

Re tested all parameters and then did a big water change.
The only parameter of concern was the ammonia which was at 0.5.

In the process, I quarantined the remaining two neons and threw out the plants that weren't doing so well.
At examination, the ones that were yellowing - the root stems were pretty much disintegrated. They're gone!

Cleaned gravel as I do with every change, washed what I could down.

All the other fish are still perfect today as far as I can tell.


I think the neons either have fin rot or neon tetra disease.
The edges of the fins seem to correspond with fin rot, but this came on within the space of 24 hours so Im thinking ntd.
The spines of the two remaining ones are slightly curved to one side.

In hindsight, one of the neons had been hiding a lot the last few days so I should have noticed this behaviour.

I'm going to pop into my local store on the way to work today to seek some advise anyway. Hopefully they can give me some idea on where I can go from here to ensure the remaining fish stay healthy!

 

[DJackson]

Thanks fluttermoth,

I try to keep the ammonia at 0.25 if not below usually. It's never got to 0.5 before so I think that was down to the additional 12 hours before a change compared to usual.

Yesterday's water change was a big one at about 80% which brought it below 0.25 (yellow but bare tint of green) so I'll keep doing that every day.

As for the neons - should I put the two back in the main tank?

 

[fluttermoth]

Yes, I would.

 

[DJackson]

Thanks lfs store has suggested fin rot treatment so I will try them out with this and hopefully they'll be back on form soon..

Thanks for replying - its much appreciated!

 

[Llegmore]

Try out the fin rot treatment however it could be ammonia burn. My tetras got this in my fish-in cycle a couple of years ago, they've never recovered and still have white marks on their fins and some have curved spines, however they're perfectly happy little fish.

I'll be interested to know if the fin rot treatment works as it didn't with mine.

 

[DJackson]

Hi Llegmore,

That could certainly make sense
Especially since the other fish seem ok.
I've read that neons are very sensitive fish and don't do well in a cycling tank. The two neons are still not very happy and not moving around much even after another 90% last night.

Perhaps it'll take them a while to recover.

I'll keep you posted!

On the plus side, I'm acquiring a large piece of filter medium from a friends tank on Monday so with any luck it'll kick start some breakdown in between water changes

 

[DJackson]

Just a quick update for Llegmore:

I didn't use the fin rot treatment in the end as the tank is cycling and I didn't want to mess with the filter medium at this stage.

I quarantined the two remaining neons and did a 90% water change. I also removed any plants that were not looking their best and thoroughly cleaned the gravel.

I popped the two neons back in the tank. At this point they'd lost their colour and looked terrible. But miraculously they did survive. Their fins are visibly shorter but they are healthy and back to normal.

I think therefore as previously posted above it was probably ammonia burn. The ammonia was tested and has been every day - as well as water changes every other day. This is no different to usual but I guess any ammonia long term is going to have its affect eventually.

They are back to their happy shoally selves for the time being xx