HELP..Healthy looking fish dying on me!!

[Petal1980]

Hey guys. This is my first post..found this site searching for ideas as to what's going on with my tank. The past 2 days my fish are dying off like nobodies business. I have a 125 gallon freshwater. It's been up and running for 3 months with filter and sand and plants from previous tank.. it was taken down and moved from one house to another so basically just refilled.

Again it's 125 gallons

6 dalmation mollies
1- 2" Pleco
4 Cory
12 female guppies
6 male gup pies
4 tiger barb
12 neon tetra
6 neon danios

Woke up 2 days ago to a dead fish (guppy)
Yesterday woke up to 2 dead fish (tiger and molly)
Today woke up to 1 dead fish. (Tiger)

Currently have one male molly sitn on the bottom breathing slowly

Did 25% water change this morning

Testing water day and night to watch for changes

Use liquid API test and Prime with water changes

Day of 1st death

0-nitrites
Maybe .25 ammonia...slight yellow green tint
PH 7.8
Nitate 20
Temperature 78 degrees

Day two deaths
Everything the same

25% water change and

PH 7.8
0 ammonia
Nitrate dropped to 10
Nitrites 0

Water seems pretty darn good.. fish don't look diseased. Seem perfectly active and eating and healthy but waking up to dead ones..

Last Saturday I did add 6 new fancy guppy but I did not add store water from bag. and while there bought some frozen blood worms for treats but that's the ONLY changes to my tank.

Please help as I'm racking my brain.. I've had aquariums for about 20 yrs and never had loss in this way with no visual disease and levels decent.

 

[Autumnsky]

My first though would be illness brought in from the Guppies. Are any more Guppies looking ill/ dead?

Any cleaners, polishes, bug spray, hands that touched things and not washed before...? And got into the tank.

So sorry you are having this happen. Welcome to the community though.

 

[Petal1980]

No.. that's the thing. None of them look sick. They seem well and happy. As far as outside contamination there's been nothing. I have my glass lids then over that a giant custom wood top covering it all. No polishes.. fumes..etc. I'm the only one that cares or feeds them so noone else has been near.. that's what's puzzling me about it all. I'm stumped.

 

[Autumnsky]

At the moment I can't really put any thing together. Possible Columnaris, the one which is a slow killer not the blazing fast killing one. That would be my only other guess. Possibly stressed induced from the move??? Any indications of spots or cotton on the dead ones

 

[Autumnsky]

Sunscreen? I know you said no but sometimes we forget we use something all the time, wasp spray, yard ferts or weed and feed - dust upper arms not washed off.....ants. If not, no need to answer back, just trying the jog the memory.

Are all your test kits current - not expired? My test strips I used long ago had one section which was in accurate and caused me to lose almost a whole tank of fish.

This diseased maybe but dead Guppy. Can you go back to the store where you go the Guppies and see /ask if there were many other Guppy deaths? I lost 25 Neons for no apparent reason from the fish store and felt horrible but couldn't thing of any thing and found all died for them too/ bad batch.

 

[Petal1980]

Actually there was cotton on two of them! I've never seen that before... what do you recommend to do if the cotton means something to you?

 

[Autumnsky]

Hoping Coralbandit sees this and can do better direction for meds and diagnosis.

Often a move of a tank can cause lots of stuff to work its way out of the substrate and can foul the water, but pwc helps fix it an you might not have noticed. Maybe who knows. Poor water qulity can stress the fish and the move and they can get sick.

 

[V227]

I think AutumnSky called it. I suspect the big move, and the 100% WC stirred up Some type of bacteria in the substrate which infected the stressed fish. Once I switched out the gravel of a well established 29 gal.tank of very healthy cichlids. Within 2 weeks I lost half the population to a bacterial infection. I didn't medicate, only partial WC's. Just a suggestion, with such a large tank, and a relatively small population of fish, I would concentrate on keeping the tank clean, let this bug run its course without meds. Then slowly rebuild the population.
Good luck, things will level out. Note: my 29 gal. Tank has been up and running for 4 yrs. Now after the bacterial plague with no further issues.

 

[Petal1980]

You guys keep mentioning the move as the factor.. it's been 3 months?? I don't feel that it took 3 months for my fish to finally decide to become stressed and start dying on me. I mean I'm no fish expert but that's one heck of a delayed reaction. Lol! I could totally be wrong but that just doesn't make sense to me at all. Why would it take 3 months for that to happen. They've been completely fine and happy since.. eating..active.. etc.

 

[V227]

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Thought the die off was in short order after the move. The advice is likely the same, Some type of bacterial infection. Who knows the cause? You've done this a long time I'm sure this type of thing has happened along the way. If not you were lucky. If you medicate the display tank, the antibiotics will likely put a dent in your BB. I would just concentrate on keeping the tank clean, weed out any fish that start to show signs of disease
and then rebuild the population.

 

[coralbandit]

Quick deaths from fish that looked healthy the day before say columnaris type 1 to me.
Good link with great info and treatment advice.
Fish Columnaris | Fungus & Saprolegnia | Treatment & Prevention
And a plain English link about the different strains
http://www.myaquariumclub.com/colum...out-the-types-causes-and-treatments-1689.html