Am I helping my fish correctly? Advice please

[Pibble]

I mentioned in my intro post that I recently acquired a 45 gal tank... about 3 months ago. I wanted to do everything right because lfs advice here seems kinda bad. Seems I only made problems though and this is making me sad... need to fix it. To start, I did a fishless cycle for 2 weeks. Water looked good, everything at 0, but I forgot the ammonia source I learned that after getting fish, so I went fish-in. I've been doing 50% water changes with gravel suction to keep the ammonia down every other night, sometimes every night, but it gets REALLY high (2ppm). I don't feed very much at a time, and once a day. I neutralize with ammo lock each change. Right now my ammonia has been about 0.50ppm and I get conflicting info from sites that say that's the safe limit, others say it's not (so I don't know!). My nitrites stick at 0 and never reach a large spike, and nitrates are at 5ppm. I use stress zyme and stress coat each change also, and last change I did was with filtered water from a brita sink filter. I thought things were going well for a while (~2 months) so I got 3 cardinal tetras and 3 gold barbs on sale for $5 the other day. I was going to go back and get 3 more cardinals, but they seem to have velvet or really small ick that happened overnight. Then the barbs a few hours after the cardinals got white outlines on their fins. Then a platy... All 5 platies are staying at the top of the water hovering over my internal filter being lethargic. They still eat though, but not as much. I dosed aquarisol because I have corys, and kanamycin because I don't know what the outline on the fins are, but I'm concerned it's fin rot and kanamycin happens to be laying around here since I've had good results from it in the past. I raised the temperature to 85 degrees but my thermometer says 80. It used to be 76-77 degrees. The water feels warm, but I don't trust the floating thermometer since an incident I had a week ago... But that will take too long to describe. Anyway, no improvement, only spreading spots and fin outlines on several fish and it's spreading fast. I separated the cardinals last night because though they shoal with my neons and glowlights, sometimes they keep to themselves and pick, so they were loosing finage. I went back to the store to get more cardinals figuring they were stressed the other night with only 3 of them, and they all had velvet at the store and outlines on the fins. I think they were carrying it because they looked wonderful and healthy when I got them, and it's the same thing in my tank as at the store now. So, I didn't buy them and the cardinals remain separated from each other. Am I doing things right with the treatment? I need advice, and a tank crash would make me really sad. I would have isolated to a sick tank, but I don't have another cycled tank and it's spreading too fast anyway. My ghost shrimps died already and I don't want more to go. I feel like I jumped the gun on a few things. Filter is Fluval 4plus with sponge pads, no carbon. pH is 7.0. I have an amazon sword and java moss to keep the nitrates down. I recently bought some Flourite substrate, but it's still in the bags because I think I did things too quickly and should wait on it, but it has good minerals in it. I don't think I'll add it until things are sorted out, or could it actually help with the water quality issue? Will the aquarisol help and what about the white fin outlines? Sorry I described this in a very lengthy way, just wanted to get all the details out. If you need a photo let me know and I will take one.

*Update: Just lost a gold barb to this. And it's definitely fin rot, along with what I'm pretty sure is velvet. It spread to my Diamond Tetras now. I have 5 Diamonds, 5 platies, 3 cardinals, 3 cory cats now (one died), 6 albino neons, 6 glowlights, 2 gold barbs left, and 6 cherry barbs.

 

[Supergummy]

Hi, sounds thing aren't going to well. You need to keep the treatments up. Must people recommend edging having a quartile tank any case this happens. I don't think you can stop the spreading unless you remove the fish.

 

[Delapool]

Do you have ich at all or fin rot, etc?

Unless you have ich I'd reduce the tank temp as a higher tank temp will speed up bacterial infections and ammonia will be more prevalent (as apposed to safer ammonium) in the water.

Edit - the ammonia should be 0 in a cycled tank which on timing I think it should be. So perhaps not enough filter media, or a mini-cycle from new fish or meds have killed off some bacteria or you have ammonia in tap water. Bit of a tracking down exercise I'm afraid.

 

[Pibble]

Thanks. I had actually raised the water temperature because the Aquarisol bottle said to do so. I don't know about velvet's temperature susceptibilities, but within the time that I posted and now, both diseases appear to be gone already. There was no ick present and I lost the other 2 gold barbs in the process, but the cardinals look well and the other fish. They also have their appetite back and the platies are active again. I continued to do 50% water changes redosing medicine by 50%, and my ammonia has lowered to 0.25ppm today. I do have a small amount of ammonia that shows up in our tap water from time to time, so I started using filtered water. I will cut back the temperature since there was no ick, however I'm worried to cut it below 75, since the other incident that I didn't explain was how I broke the tank heater while I was sick and had to get a new one because that seems to be what killed a cory cat before any diseases from the pet store arose. I was using another heater until I got another, but it didn't seem to be big enough to warm my tank. It keeps my fiance's molly tank warm though. Should 75 or 76 be okay? Also, should I really expect that the fin rot and velvet are cured since there is no visible sign of it, and discontinue treatment this soon? Thanks for the advice. Oh yea, and I do need a better filter. I only have sponge pads that came for free with my filter and tank. I was hoping to get a bio wheel or a canister. Which do you think is better?

 

[Delapool]

My bad - I saw 85 and thought that sounded high. The 80 could have been ideal. First article has 82 listed under treatment. Second article under life cycle says they will die within 24 to 36 hours so possible. I'd finish off the treatment completely just in case.

Filter is really preference, you can get good results with either. I like canister filters for the volume of ceramic bio-media they can hold. It does sound like you need more biological filtration to cope with the ammonia either way.

Aquarium Fish Disease Velvet - Oodinium pilularis

Velvet Disease, Symptoms, Causes And How To Treat It

 

[Pibble]

Thanks Delapool. I was busy for a while, so it was hard to get time to respond. I seem to still be completely rid of disease and have continued treatment just in case. I went ahead and added 1/3 of my new substrate, which my amazon sword seems to love. I plan on getting more plants soon and I decided to add substrate slowly just in case added stress on the fish would cause them to get a relapse in disease. My temperature is currently at 80, and I was hoping the substrate would cultivate more bacteria to handle the bioload of ammonia. It does seem to stick around 0.50 ppm now, rather than 1ppm with continued water changes. That is an improvement at least. I think I will look into getting a canister filter - another reason being that I don't have much space between my tank and the wall, as a bio wheel will hook on the side. One question though, since I do have at least some beneficial bacteria in there, should I perhaps float the unwashed filter sponge pads from the Fluval upon getting a canister, or is there some other method to keep the good bacteria? I don't want new tank syndrome, though it seems I have had a wee bit of it already. Also how long should I do this (or another method) until the good bacteria will be thriving in the new filter? Thanks

 

[BBradbury]

Hello Pib...

Here are the steps for cycling a tank with fish: Use 3 to 4 small, hardy fish for every 10 gallons of tank size. After the fish are in, it takes a couple of days for ammonia to build up in the water. You should have a reliable test kit and test daily for traces of ammonia and nitrite. When you have a positive test, remove and replace a quarter of the tank water with pure, treated tap water. Just test daily and remove the water when needed. When you have several daily tests with no trace of the above toxins, the tank is cycled.
Plan on this process taking a month.


Hope this helps.

B