Urgent help: my fishes are dying day by day

[piyush_10]

Hi everyone,
My fishes are dying due to unknown illness. I shifted them from.my old house to new house and thier water got changed from municipal water ( Lake water) to tubewell (boring water). After that they were fine for some days and suddenly they started sitting down and gasping . Thier fins got damaged (reddishness in fins visible) one of iridescent shark's eye got white and little blood in its eye. 3 of my butterfly koi has died. Size of shark is around 12 inch and one koi is 6 inch and one placo fish is 12 inch.
Earlier I used to treat them with oxytetracycline and it used to cure them. But now it's not working anymore. I contacted local vets and they advised to use erythromycin but it's also not helping. Can anyone Please help in saving the left fishes.

 

[MaloK]

Maybe your change in water supply made your beneficial bacteria colony recess drastically. They might not have acclimated as easily as your fishes.

Have you tested your current levels of ammonia and nitrite ?

Ammonia and / or nitrites can cause hemorrhaging blood vessels in the tail and fins of goldfishes, resulting in thin red lines or spots of blood. appearing in the fins.

 

[Colin_T]

Don't add chemicals/ medications unless you know what the problem is.

Oxytetracycline is an antibiotic that kills filter bacteria.
Antibiotics should only be used on known bacterial ifnections that haven't responded to normal treatments. Improper use and mis-use of antibiotics has lead to drug resistant bacteria that kill people, animals, birds, fish and reptiles.

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There is something bad in the water that is killing them. The cloudy eyes, creamy white film over body and fins, red in the fins is all water quality related.

Test the aquarium and tap water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. Post the results in numbers here.
If you don't have test kits, take a glass full of tap water and a separate glass full of aquarium water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the test. If they say the water is fine, ask them for the numbers.

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BASIC FIRST AID FOR FISH
Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week or until the problem is identified. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

 

[TNG]

Hi everyone,
My fishes are dying due to unknown illness. I shifted them from.my old house to new house and thier water got changed from municipal water ( Lake water) to tubewell (boring water). After that they were fine for some days and suddenly they started sitting down and gasping . Thier fins got damaged (reddishness in fins visible) one of iridescent shark's eye got white and little blood in its eye. 3 of my butterfly koi has died. Size of shark is around 12 inch and one koi is 6 inch and one placo fish is 12 inch.
Earlier I used to treat them with oxytetracycline and it used to cure them. But now it's not working anymore. I contacted local vets and they advised to use erythromycin but it's also not helping. Can anyone Please help in saving the left fishes.

I suspect it's the bore water. Do you use the bore water for everything including cooking, or cooking and drinking come from a different source?
I'd remove a large volume of water, say 75%, and replace it with municipal water. That could mean a (long) trip to your old house to fetch the water.

 

[piyush_10]

Maybe your change in water supply made your beneficial bacteria colony recess drastically. They might not have acclimated as easily as your fishes.

Have you tested your current levels of ammonia and nitrite ?

Ammonia and / or nitrites can cause hemorrhaging blood vessels in the tail and fins of goldfishes, resulting in thin red lines or spots of blood. appearing in the fins.

your change in water supply made your beneficial bacteria colony recess drastically. They might not have acclimated as easily as your fishes.

Have you tested your current levels of ammonia and nitrite ?

Ammonia and / or nitrites can cause hemorrhaging blood vessels in the tail and fins of goldfishes, resulting in thin red lines or spots of blood. appearing in the fins.

Hi thank you for reply
I live in small city,there is no facility to check ammonia level. I have kept the remaining fishes in hospital tank and keep doing alternate day water change. Very little improvement. At this time I'm clueless what to do. Just praying that fishes get fine.
Also some people in my vicinity told me that the water has high phosphorus level, but it's heresy, i don't know for sure.
I also brought some new fish for main aquarium tank, one of small is also showing red veins

 

[Ram419]

Phosphates don't really do anything to the fish. However, they do feed algae which can cause algae blooms.

 

[Colin_T]

It's possible there are other chemicals/ contaminants in the bore water. You really need to get the water tested by a company that specialises in testing ground water so you can find out exactly what is in the water. There could be poisons that affect you and your family, as well as the fish and other pets.

You could buy some test kits online or you might be able to find a water testing company that you could send a bottle of bore water too and they can test it and send the results back.

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What sort of filter is on/ in the aquarium?
What filter media/ materials are in the filter?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

Do you aerate the bore water before using it?
Bore water can be stagnant and have very low oxygen levels. This can cause problems to fish. Aerating the water for 24 hours before using it might help.

Adding some carbon (black granulated substance) might help. It adsorbs chemicals and heavy metals from the water and would make it safer if there is something bad in it.

Adding some Zeolite to the filter could help if there is ammonia in the water. Zeolite removes ammonia from the water and this is definitely beneficial to the fish. However, Zeolite does stop the beneficial filter bacteria from growing so should only be used for a short period (a few days) of time to remove ammonia from water. A test kit would allow you to check ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH levels and that would give you somewhere to start.