Overcrowded and now possible fin rot....

[Kimlafeiet]

Hi everyone,
I am in a bit of a pickle here. I am a newbie, and got my first tank about 4 months ago. Baby Biorb, cycled, and stocked with 4 male guppies. About 2 months ago, I upgraded to a 20 gallon, cycled, moved the 4 guppies and added 2 mollies, 1 dwarf gourami, and 2 golden dojo loaches (both barely 2 inches, and will move to a larger tank this spring). Everyone has been doing great, water tests perfect, weekly water changes, gravel vaccume, etc.
Last week, I got a school of 6 von rio tetras. I did not qt them first, a mistake I am now realizing. Within the first couple hours, one of them died, then another 2 the next day. 2 days later everyone was looking lethargic, so I did a water test and panicked.
Ph 7.8 (normal for what I get from the tap)
Ammonia 4ppm
Nitrite 3ppm
I did an immediate water change of 50% with prime. This morning, one of the guppies was dead, and his tail looked like it had been completely shredded.
Rechecked levels, ammonia .5ppm, nitrite 1ppm. Did another 20% water change with prime, and moved the 3 tetras and 3 guppies into the biorb.
When i came home from work tonight, two of the guppies look like thier tails are either being nipped, or rotting away. Still mostly there, but looking shorter and uneven. Also, my gourami has a split in his tail and i think it may be doing the same thing.

Does this sound like fin rot, or could it be stress from the ammonia and nitrite spikes?

Did I throw my tank into a new cycle by adding those fish? If so, what can i do to keep the levels down? I precycled both tanks fishless, so I dont know what to do to fix this.

Also, I have some jungle labs fungus fizzy tabs for fugus infections, etc, and it says it will work on fin rot, but I have the 2 scaleless loaches in there. Would that treatment kill them (or my beneficial bacteria)? Those are my 2 favorite fish and I would be heartbroken if they died.

Please help, any advise would help at this point. I feel like I make such a dumb mistake with these tetras and now I am paying for it...big time.

 

[Vienolac]

Hi everyone,
I am in a bit of a pickle here. I am a newbie, and got my first tank about 4 months ago. Baby Biorb, cycled, and stocked with 4 male guppies. About 2 months ago, I upgraded to a 20 gallon, cycled, moved the 4 guppies and added 2 mollies, 1 dwarf gourami, and 2 golden dojo loaches (both barely 2 inches, and will move to a larger tank this spring). Everyone has been doing great, water tests perfect, weekly water changes, gravel vaccume, etc.
Last week, I got a school of 6 von rio tetras. I did not qt them first, a mistake I am now realizing. Within the first couple hours, one of them died, then another 2 the next day. 2 days later everyone was looking lethargic, so I did a water test and panicked.
Ph 7.8 (normal for what I get from the tap)
Ammonia 4ppm
Nitrite 3ppm
I did an immediate water change of 50% with prime. This morning, one of the guppies was dead, and his tail looked like it had been completely shredded.
Rechecked levels, ammonia .5ppm, nitrite 1ppm. Did another 20% water change with prime, and moved the 3 tetras and 3 guppies into the biorb.
When i came home from work tonight, two of the guppies look like thier tails are either being nipped, or rotting away. Still mostly there, but looking shorter and uneven. Also, my gourami has a split in his tail and i think it may be doing the same thing.

Does this sound like fin rot, or could it be stress from the ammonia and nitrite spikes?

Did I throw my tank into a new cycle by adding those fish? If so, what can i do to keep the levels down? I precycled both tanks fishless, so I dont know what to do to fix this.

Also, I have some jungle labs fungus fizzy tabs for fugus infections, etc, and it says it will work on fin rot, but I have the 2 scaleless loaches in there. Would that treatment kill them (or my beneficial bacteria)? Those are my 2 favorite fish and I would be heartbroken if they died.

Please help, any advise would help at this point. I feel like I make such a dumb mistake with these tetras and now I am paying for it...big time.

Sounds like to me you overloaded your BB and started a new cycle.
Then ammonia being 4ppm was probably your biggest killer.

You said you are using prime so that is good as it removes ammonia and detoxifys nitrite also helping with natural slime coat

And since you did the test just a few hours after adding them, it's possible the tank was not properly cycled.

Probably no reason to use the fizzy tabs. Just do lots of 25% water changes maybe one ever few hours to help with ammonia and nitrite untill these levels are low like .25 am or lower.

Maybe get some bacterial supplement to help boost it. Or get some substrate out of your old tank and add that..
Really that's my opinion. Hope maybe it helped

 

[librarygirl]

I agree, the ammonia is likely causing the fin rot. Keep testing the water and do water changes as needed to keep levels down. Remember that if nitrite is 1, for example, a 20% water change won't knock it down much. A 50% water change would be better. Also most dechlorinators only detoxify ammonia and nitrite to a certain point (usually 1 ppm) so the rest would still be toxic to fish. If you moved the guppies to another tank that isn't cycled they'll have the same problem there as well; more if the tank is smaller as the toxins will rise more quickly. What filter do you have on the 20 gal? Upgrading to a larger filter or adding a second one might be a good idea to give bacteria more surfaces to grow on now that you have more fish.