Unidentified problem

The February FOTM Contest Poll is open!
FishForums.net Fish of the Month
🏆 Click to vote! 🏆

Wishful

Fish Fanatic
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
Messages
94
Reaction score
0
Location
Hampshire, UK
Hi
Recently we had to euthanase one of our Silver Tip Tetras because he hadn't eaten for weeks. He appeared to want to eat, but couldn't actually manage it. We treated for parasites and internal bacteria using Sabbactisun and Parazoryne initially and then Interpet Internal Bacteria. The water quality has stayed completely normal. He just continued to lose weight, displaying no other symptoms except a raised respiratory rate.

Now we have a Boesmani Rainbow that has started to display the same behaviour. She appears to want to eat, but cannot seem to take anything in. She is showing a raised respiratory rate and is clamping her fins. She seems to find it difficult to swim, having to use her whole body and her pectoral fins are working hard constantly. She does seem to have a little damage to her scales on one side and she now has a small whiteish lump just forward of one eye that has appeared today. The Silver Tip never showed any particular external symptoms except a small whiteish patch over the top of his head that seemed to come and go. Generally both fish seemed and seem to have lost colour and 'don't look right', there is no flashing or general sign of irritation. Again in both cases they seem to have a very slow reaction to the other fish in the tank.

We water change at least every two weeks, water checks keep coming back fine, the pump is working normally and everything else in the tank looks normal.

We have been treating with Melafix the last week because one of our Danio's had a damaged fin, probably the the cause of rough play with the other Danio's.

Please could someone advise on the best course of action. We are afraid that we keep putting medication in the tank without really understanding the problem.

Thanks

Wishful
 
Can you post test results in ammonia,nitrite,nitrate,and ph, what size is the tank, how many fish and which type, the white patch sounds like columnaris, the lump. I will leave a link for you to take a look at, do the gills look inflamed and red as with the heavy breathing thinking of gill flukes.
 
I once had abreakout of columnaris that only affected one of my boesmanis and had some success with myxazin from waterlife maybe also step up the water changes to weekly

wilder - just a suggestion - but if you want to add links you can allways edit your first post ....



www :)
 
Right thanks, will do.
 
Hi Wilder - thanks for the links - very interesting links.

We've been watching her closely over the last day and the outward signs have disappeared again, well that is the mark on her side and the lump forward of her eye. Her colour still seems odd, although sometimes she is pale and sometimes dark, but never right.
Her gill movement is still very rapid and she seems uncomfortable. She still isn't eating and swims around, but is lethargic. When she is still she has now started to bump gently into the glass occasionally.

We've just run another set of tests - still the same:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
pH - 7.5

It's a 27 Gallon tank containing:
2 Bengal Danios
2 Boesemani Rainbows
2 Leopard Danios
1 Zebra Danio
1 Kyathit Danio
3 Pristella Tetras
3 Black Phantom Tetras
2 Silver Tip Tetras
2 Rosy Tetras
1 Gibbiceps Pleco

We read about columnaris but can't see any of the cottonwool like symptoms. We also considered flukes, but neither she, nor the Silver Tip showed any sign of irritation, no flashing or shimmying. We are very reluctant to start treating for anything until we are reasonably sure that we have diganosed correctly. We tried Internal Bacteria treatment for the Silver Tip but that was unsuccessful and we are sure that she is suffering from the same thing.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated. I'm sad to say that if she carries on being like this in the next 24 hours I think we may have to think seriously about euthanasia - can't bear to see them suffer :-(

Thanks for any help at all

Wishful
 
We've just run another set of tests - still the same:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
pH - 7.5

these readings make me think the tanks not cycled or your tests are bad.

you shold have a nitrate reading of some kind.....
 
Do you have live plants in your tank, also what's your reading in your tap nitrate, the fish dosn't sound good I think you will lose it, red gills your nitrite isn't high so it isnt that, if its breathing fast it could be a gill parsite with the red gills.
 
You're right NickT, I asked my other half who does the tests and the Nitrate is at between 5 and 10 (he did one this morning - there was a negligible reading the other day). Our tap nitrate is at about 5. Unfortunately when I asked him before I misinterpreted his answer which was basically - nothing to worry about.

We did a 50% water change yesterday, but sadly we lost our little lady rainbow overnight :rip: We also went down to the LFS to ask their advice and we're going to go in again today to have a full range of tests done on the water - just in case our tests are wrong, and also to test for things we can't see.

We do have live plants Wilder, but we try to make sure that there isn't a lot of leaf debris around. We took a bit of water down to the LFS yesterday (not enough doh!) and they did a phosphate test on that because I said we had a lot of algae, but that came back very low as well. What did you have in mind when you asked that?

I'm just praying that we don't lose anymore to this unknown whatever it is.

Wishful
 
Well - it looks like our tests weren't telling the truth. We took water samples to our LFS today and their results, done using the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals test kit were as follows:
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrites - .25 ppm
Nitrates - 80 ppm
pH - 7.6

We realised yesterday that our gravel needed a deep clean. I read a little while ago that with a planted tank it was best to leave the gravel alone. Now I've learned differently. It looks like the gravel clean we did with our water change yesterday may have been the last straw for our rainbow - I feel terrible about that. :-(

We've now put something into the filter to remove nitrates and will reduce the feeding and do water changes over the next week to try to bring the nitrates and nitrites down.

The LFS suggested that we check the date on our Nutrafin test kit, but it says it's good until June 2007! We did another nitrate test tonight but it still shows 5 mg/L which is nowhere near the danger level. Apart from that we don't really understand how the ppm result relates to the mg/l result, but even so it isn't showing any problems - if anyone could clarify that I'd appreciate it. Needless to say we'll be investing in a new test kit.

Hopefully this is the basis of the problem with both our poor little lost ones and we won't see anymore. At the moment, none of the others are showing signs. We are watching anxiously. If anyone has any views we'd be interested.

Regards

Wishful
 
I would recommend some daily water changes as you have a high reading in nitrite,and nitrate, if you had alot of waste in the bottom that wouldnt of helped,check filter also one of your sponges might need a rinse, clean filter head to make sure it isn't mucked up with fish waste, do you over feed your fish.
 
Thanks AngryPlaty and Wilder. Useful to know the relationship between mg/L and ppm.

Our LFS gave us a plan for water changes etc and have also told us to only feed every other day until everything returns to normal. We were told to do another water change tomorrow and, although we did do a filter clean the day before yesterday, we'll do another with tomorrows water change as well as doing some more of the gravel. We invested in a smaller gravel cleaner - the one we had was too big and made it very difficult to get into the smaller places in the tank.

We're also planning to start changing the filter pads gradually. I put a message on the hardware forum the other day asking how regularly people replace their filter media but haven't had many responses. The current pads are nearly six months old. We'll just change one at a time.

Personally I think we were overfeeding a bit. They were fed twice a day, about as much as they could eat in a few minutes. I think it should only be once a day after everything is sorted. We did another nitrate test last night and it was still showing as being fine!

I'm happy to say that none of the other fish are showing any signs of difficultly.

Thanks again for any contributions...

Wishful
 

Most reactions

Back
Top