Slowly loosing fish

[austinsheeler]

Hey guys. I'm slowly loosing fish one by one. I just lost another one yesterday. The tank is clear. All the fish seem healthy then one gets sick and dies within 2-3 days after. There is plenty of air good filtration rocks and homes for all. 75 gallon tank. One of my fish actually almost had fry but swallowed them at the last few days. once I see a fish sick I try to get them out into medication tank. Big tank is treated with api aquarium salt and i started using stress zyme. My nitrates were a little high. Towards the 40pp range but for almost 2 weeks now I have been changing the water every day about 20-25 gallons. I missed 2 days in a 2 and a half weeks period I think. The floor is black sand and it's from an old tank setup. I'm trying to get it out soon waiting for a sifter. On top of the sand is the white dolomite. I feed the fish 3-5 times a day. The eat omega one small pellets for cichlids and tetra min flakes every feeding except the last feeding is frozen brine shrimp. There is one plecka algea eater in the tank doing fine. He's smaller than all the cichlids. In a few weeks maybe 4 or 5, I have had 3 fish get sick. The first one was the only one to make it and was treated with the api salt and some melafix. The other two were also but died almost immediately after transition to the media tank. Which was a fresh 5 gal bucket at the time. Now the first one is back in big tank doing well. Almost all her fins back. Just missing a small portion of her tail now.

Anyone have some advice or watch I should do. The tanks been set up almost a year. Fish are all the same from the first few weeks.

Also I now have a liquid test kit. I test once a week although wasn't sure how accurate it would be cuz of so many frequent water changes. Should I keep changing the water should I do anything else? Help!!

 

[Convict2161]

75 gallon cichlid tank?

 

[austinsheeler]

Yes 75 gallon

 

[Convict2161]

Yes 75 gallon

Are they showing signs of anything? Clamped fins, mouth rot, fin rot?

40ppm of nitrAtes isn't that bad. How's your pH?

 

[austinsheeler]

No everyone seems to look healthy a little tear here or there in the fins but they seem to heal pretty quick so I feel like that's from other fish or rocks or something else. The ones that are get sick however look like they are decaying while alive. Their fins start to breakdown and their scales are grayed in some places. Idk if it grows on their what. But as of right now they all look good. Except the one that just died looked healthy this past weekend so I'm stumped. I will check pH in the morning again but it was in the good range. If I change water every day about 20-25 gallons will this affect the tests?

 

[Convict2161]

No everyone seems to look healthy a little tear here or there in the fins but they seem to heal pretty quick so I feel like that's from other fish or rocks or something else. The ones that are get sick however look like they are decaying while alive. Their fins start to breakdown and their scales are grayed in some places. Idk if it grows on their what. But as of right now they all look good. Except the one that just died looked healthy this past weekend so I'm stumped. I will check pH in the morning again but it was in the good range. If I change water every day about 20-25 gallons will this affect the tests?

I wouldn't change the water everyday. We're not sure what were really dealing with yet. You mentioned "decaying" does it look like open sores? The best way to put it is... Does it look the the flesh eating disease?

Also you said your treating the tank with meds? If so you don't want to keep doing water changes. Also make sure your not running carbon when treating the tank with meds.

It could be a parasite or bacterial. Maybe even a hyper dominate fish. Any big guys or overly aggressive ones in the tank? So the fish seem to stay in one spot leaving the rest of tank for certain tough guy? I had a hyper dominate male that killed 20 fish at night for like a week before I figured him out and re homed him to my LFS where he's not so tough anymore.

 

[Tbox]

3-5 feedings a day seems a bit much. You also give them frozen brine shrimp every day? Stick to just the omega pellets, and flakes. I feed my mbunas once a day and they are looking good. Don't let the fish convince you they are hungry and need to eat ASAP.

 

[Convict2161]

3-5 feedings a day seems a bit much. You also give them frozen brine shrimp every day? Stick to just the omega pellets, and flakes. I feed my mbunas once a day and they are looking good. Don't let the fish convince you they are hungry and need to eat ASAP.

Was just gonna touch on this next. Once every day is fine. I feed my guys NLS sinking pellets every day.

Also fish acting hungry is a good sign. That means there healthy. If you walk by the tank and there just there and pay no mind is when I'd be carefully looking over my tank.

 

[austinsheeler]

Wow really feed them once a day ok cool that will save on food. Thanks for the tip. As far as meds... I give them appropriate amount of api aquarium salt and I added some stresszyme to the tank I think on Wednesday. Okay I will slow down water changes. Someone told me to change water every day for a week on here. And I don't have any super aggressively acting fish. I did but that was about 5 months ago. A rusty colored cichlid that was 5 bucks killed over 100$ of my fish . And yeah on the most recent fish that died it did look like a flesh eating disease kinda. But he was the only one of the 3 that got sick. And he died 3 days after I noticed him not eating and hanging out. But no open sores or anything. Just his scales looked like they were decaying or disappearing on his sides and top of his head. Fins were a little beat up but not gone and no one was bothering him in the tank at all.

 

[Tbox]

Yeah nix the frozen brine shrimp altogether too. What's in your aquarium right now? Gotta pic of these fatties

 

[Convict2161]

I wouldn't bother with stress zyme IMHO.

 

[austinsheeler]

Okay the ph test is hard to tell what the color is cuz they are so close. I did a high range pH test and it looks to be around the 8.0 level but it's difficult for me. I did a water change on Wednesday or Thursday of about 20 gallons.

 

[austinsheeler]

ok sorry it took so long got a lot going on with my internet service.. anyways heres a few pics of the "fatties" haha..

 

[austinsheeler]

there is a peach orange colored fish in one of the pics who has died last week. she died in a few hours just like my most recent fish but it was different. seemed like he couldnt breathe. he was floating around aimlessly with his mouth wide open with no control of where he was going. the bubbler tossed him around like a rag doll.

 

[austinsheeler]

this is all of my fish i believe. there is also a plecko algea eater thats not in the pics

 

[austinsheeler]

the fish that died most recently that i was talking about originally in this post for some reason i never got a pic of. but it was yellow and had grayish stripes going from top side to under belly stripes. this is the one that died and is a mystery to me.

Actually I just noticed he's in the last set of pics. He's in the first one and you can see his head and that's about it

 

[Tbox]

Good looking fish Austin. The horizontal striping on a few will become vertical again with their new diet Don't over compensate that 1 feeding now. Less is more in your case.

 

[austinsheeler]

Thanks and what do u mean by don't over compensate? Like don't over feed that one feeding? Sorry I'm just trying do better and I'm afraid of loosing any more fish. There's an all black one with white tipped fins and I think it's some kinds zebra fish. Not sure I can't remember. He and one other fish has a little ripple under his belly. I took a pic but I'm not sure if you could see it. Is that from over feeding possibly?

 

[Tbox]

You may feel if you only feed them once a day that you need to give them a surplus amount to make up for the other feedings they will no longer be receiving.
Can you make a comprehensive list of tank size, filtration, names of all fish, water parameters, pwc's.
it's all good to know. Other more knowledgable people on here will see other corrections that could be made. You will stop losing fish very soon!

 

[austinsheeler]

ok i have a 75 gallon tank with 13 fish currently. Im not sure of all of the names of fish but i will discribe them as best as possible. theres a few pics of them earlier in the post

yellow lab

red zebra

albino fish that is tinted blue now

plecko sucker fish

damasoni

frontoza? im not sure about this name but its black and white striped and the go from top of fish to under belly. and he seems to have a large bump where his brain would be on his head. he is supposed to be like this too theres nothing wrong with him.

parrot fish? hes blueish purple with pinkish fins

kobalt zebra? this one is all black with a white stripe on the tip of his top fin
theres a beautiful metallic blueish purple fish with blue fins that fade to yellow

peacock fish. hes mostly red with black and purple checkerlike spots all over him

brown fish with some fading stripes that go from top to bottom of fish

black and yellow fish thats very bright in color like a bumble bee

white/silver with yellow fins and gray stripes from top to bottom of fish

I just tested the water levels and i did a high range ph test wich came out as 8.0. ammonia levels are at 0 ppm. Nitrite levels are at 0ppm. And Nitrate levels are around 20ppm. I tested the water a few days ago and all of the levels were the same except the Nitrate levels were slightly higher at 40ppm. Im not sure but i was doing very frequent water changes to clear out what was in the tank.
I have a power head moving some of the water around. I have a rena filstar xp3 filtration system. I just cleaned the filter out on 2/10/13 and cleaned all the brown debris out of the pipes.

The floor of the tank is black sand from my old freshwater tank of just some amazon fish from petsmart. they ended up all dieing when we lost power last year in the october storm for over a week. I could not save them and on top of the black sand is white dolamite. I also have some Holy rock in the tank along with some pvc pipe for homes with other various rock types.

Looking for help on why my fish keep dieing 1 at a time. 3 fish were sick in the last 5 weeks. 1 i was able to save which was the brownish fish . treated her in a seperate tank with melafix and api aquarium salt. I did the same with the other 2 fish but they did not make it. All the fish that got sick and died looked fine up to the point of a 2-3 day timeframe of when they died. I was over feeding the fish and now we have brought that down to once a day. I feed them mostly omega one cichlid pellets. The tank cant be too bad because i just had my red zebra have fry in her mouth. Except a few days before she would have spit them she swallowed them. It was her first time so im sure she will try again.

Any suggestions on how to improve my tank or what do i need? also the 75 gallon tank is treated with api aquarium salt. No water treatment is used upon water changes. I have city water. thanks for all your help