Emergency: My Best Severums are Ill! Please help!

[BD8]

Suddenly my severums have come down with something. They were fine a few days ago, but now they are lethargic and sitting under the filter. They come out when the tank lid is opened or when I feed them. They are breathing hard too, but I have plenty of air in the tank, I am running a Rena 200 on full blast in a 30G tank with a Fluval 3 blasting out on top of the water.

I also had the water checked out at my LFS and the nitrates, nitrites, ammonium levels are fine. I have been doing a 25% water change every 5 days since 15 days ago when the water had very high nitrates. When the water had high nitrates/nitrites back then, I had had another severum for two weeks and he died after one of his eyes sort of bugged out.

The fish have darkened in colour, and they look like they have a few disintegrating/rotting scales if that makes sense, that are a whitish.grey colour.

I am currently treating the tank with Melafix. I am not sure what to do. Should I use Myzazin (can't spell)?- I have run out of it at the moment.

 

[Menagerie]

The dark color indicates stress. Do you have water test kits at home? You need to test the water more often--you may still have spikes in the water, but had vanished when you checked last.

The other fish that died, aside from the bug-eye, any other signs of illness? Was he darker in color before the bug-eye?

 

[BD8]

I have water test kits. Yes, the fish that died turned a darker colour after the bug eye. I wasn't sure if he suffered the bug eye from either the water quality or by bashing it. I didn't think it was the water at the time as none of theother fish were affected and he was beeing bullied by all tank members as he was new and hadn't settled in yet.

The severums are in a tank with a very defensive male Sajica that is bullying them since he has eggs in a pot with his mate. As there was no apparent physical harm, just fronting, I didn't think that would stress the severums which are about 8 times the body size of the sajicas. One of the severums (Ulrika) has been dark for about 5 days whilst the other severum (Nancy) has only been dark today.

The male sajica has only been in there for about a week, as he replaced another male sajica who was moved in to another tank. Could he have brought in the disease? - he seems to be fine.

 

[Menagerie]

There may not be disease. This may be a case of massive stress. I have seen some of my cichlids deteriorate almost in front of my eyes due to stress from other fish. The stress can lead to a breakdown of their immune system and then the fish is prone to infections. The best advice I can offer is to separate these fish from the bully with the eggs.