My fish are doomed, what to do afterwards?

[iamaj]

Okay heres a long post starting....... now.

A few weeks back petsmart told my sister and mother you can keep a male betta with other community fish as long as there is not another male betta. (yes they are stupid for saying that but i wasnt there to disagree)

So she gets a 3 gallon tank, a male betta, 2 platties, and 1 molly. (yes overcrowded). So of course the betta nips at the other two fish.

My tank is a 20 gallon hex with 6 neon tetras and a ghost shirmp and its planted.

I come home and those three fish (the 2 platties and the molly) are in my tank. And when they are introduced i was having a slight problem with no3.

A few days after that i noticed signs of ick on the platties. *also one of the platties niped at the other fish, which i didnt like* I think they got it from the betta then the bad water made it worst. I started treating the water with Ick Guard medicene and water changed every few days. It seemed to help a little, but not enough.

Now one plattie is dead, the other is covered with white spots and still is nipping. The molly is covered with ick and is swimming frantickly. Once nean tetra is dead, one tetra is dying, and the other 3 neon tetras are schooling weird.

I tried but i dont think i can save them. So as cruel as this sounds, after they all die off what do i do to clean my tank so the next inhabitants dont suffer from ick? It is planted so it would be VERY VERY hard to pull up the plants.

thanks for the advice in advance.

p.s. I dont have another tank to quarentine them in, the small tank that my sister has is full of baby fish the one of the platties had before this incident. And the betta died some how. The betta wasnt my responsibiblty.

aj

 

[fishfreek]

First off I would do a massive water change on your tank. There may still be hopes of saving them. Once you do this water change pull the carbon filter out of your tank and give them the recommended dose of ich treatment.

Do not feed the tank for two or three days and when you do feed only feed once a day very spairngly until you get your ammonia and nitrite problem under control.

 

[bettacove]

If you want to be safe:
Pour a little bleach (just enough to cover the bottom) and fill the rest with hot water. Let it sit for like 10-15 minutes, dump it out and rinse rinse rinse! And just to be safe fill it again and pour lots of aquarium salt in there and let it soak for longer. (the aquarium salt takes the bleach out of the silicon, and therefor prevents the bleach for being 'stuck' in the silicone and then being 'realised' n to the water later on)
Sorry about your fish!

ashley

 

[iamaj]

well that water problem was taken care of about a week ago *forgot to mention*, but i do have plants, wont the bleach kinda kill em?

But i am going to take out the filter and see what that does. I hope the neons and molly lives. i dont care about the platty.

 

[RogerMcAllen]

She meant use bleach only if your entire tank dies and you want to do a teardown and start again without infecting your new fish.

 

[iamaj]

okay, ill see what it does. i put in the ick medicine. That was tge last of it, ill need to get more but i dont know if i can get it tommarow. i gotta go to tech school, then to orintation for a new job (kick @$$), then to my current job then its 8pm! but i dont think petsmart closes till 9 or 10....

But i have taken out my filter the water is nice and blue from the medicene so hopefully thatll help it. i have been leaving the filter in so i might have been defeting my attempts to control it.

aj

 

[Allivymar]

Grab some RidIch or QuickCure. They seem to be the better ich meds on the market.

Make sure you treat the tank for 3 days AFTER the last obvious sign of ich; ich has 3 stages and only one (which you can't even see) is susceptible to the meds.

Water changes/gravel vacs are a good thing, although you may have to adjust meds to keep the levels where they need to be. By water changing and gravel vaccing, you are removing the ich cysts floating in the tank water as well as the ones hiding in the substrate.

Leave the filter in; only remove the carbon (if they come in the same filter, cut a slice into the filter media and remove the carbon that way).

Good luck!

 

[tkos]

By the way if the tank is suitabley large enough betta make fine community fish. But not is the tank they sold your sister. I kept my betta with 5 white cloud minnows and 3 cories with no problems.

Your ghost shrimp will probably not survive this sorry to say. But I have seen fish survive worse then this. Good luck.

 

[iamaj]

well i had 6 ghost shrimp, it seems 4 died off and one lived quit a while. im not sure if hes alive or not. i normally cant see him...

 

[vega]

dear aj,
Pls check the ich medicine u use in ur tank as common ick medicine contain malacite blue which is harmful to ur neon.

what u can do is used a norm paper cup fill with ur current tank water to 70% and add in double dosage of ick medicine u have. nex is put in ur molly and others in it for 20 mins and the put it back to the tank.

u can also try this method using aquarium salt instead of ick medicine (this is call salt bath which 1 of most effective method of curing sick fish).

btw, some ich medicine contain active ingredient that is allso bad for your plant and shrimp.

 

[iamaj]

Hi again, I got Rid Ich today. I did a 50% water change, removed the carbon from my filter and added the rid ich. The molly is dead, and i have three remaining neons. One is on the verge of dying, and the other two have very little strength. This is grim, but i give them 24 hours.

I did read Ich doesnt lay dorment but it has a life cycle of up to 7 days. And the "cysts" fall off and creater micro ich that attack fish. then they make cysts on the fish then they fall off and it repeats. So if i give the tank a while to settle down and give it a decent scrubing for good measure i shouldnt have a problem with ick being in my tank when the fish arrive.

But my question is, i was planning on getting a few more plants and putting in some driftwood, would it matter if i do this while i let the tank settle down before i get new fish in probibly 3 weeks or so?

 

[Allivymar]

Actually ich has a 3 stage life cycle. One is the stage you see; the ones that infest your fish. There another stage where they are freeswimming (the stage that you can kill with meds) and a 3rd stage where they are encysted in the substrate. There isn't actually any "micro-ich"; what you may be thinking of is when they parasite first infests your fish. You can't initially see em. Know those nasty white spots? Those are actually the fish's immune response to the infestation (fluids n stuff) and not the parasite itself (its too small to see).

A decent scrubbing may not help; your best best is to crank up the temps (assuming the fish don't survive) for a couple of weeks. It will speed up the life cycle, and without a host the ich parasites will die. But don't add anything they can hide in until then. Best to wait just in case. Plus, you'll need to QT the plants anyway (they can bring in a host of nasties too!).

And the neons may surprise you. I have a case of ich in my QT tank that the cardinal neons brought with them I'm treating with high temps only (88f) because I can't use meds (it would kill the shrimp thats in QT with em) and I can't use salt (cards and otos can't handle it). I SWORE I was going to have to euthanise one of my cards Saturday. He was at the top of the tank just...twitching. I gave it till Sat nite to see what would happen. He's now schooling with the other surviving card like nothing's wrong, and they don't seem to be picking up any more spots. So keep your water parameters pristine and see what happens; you may be pleasantly surprised.

 

[iamaj]

Well just to update, like i thought every thing is dead. I even got the Rid Ich like suggested. So now just plants are in the tank. Im going to let it run for a few weeks and sdo some water changes.

But i think I have discovered the real reason why the fishes died.

About a month ago *before the mollys and platties* i had gotten three small blue rams. They all died. But I read in the Dr. Fosters catalog about ich. They said he symptoms included fish ganging around the filter input, or where the water is put back in to the tank. 2 or the three rams did that to a T atleast 24 hours before they died. I guess it can kinda be my fault i thought Ich was where the fish go into spasm attacks or something. But you cant learn every thing at once. So im gonna let it cycle for about 2 weeks, add a few more plants, cycle a bit longer then get some neon tetras again.

 

[vega]

sorry to hear that

 

[Allivymar]

Aw I'm sorry iamaj that sucks.

Couple of things:
Keep the temps up; the higher the temps the faster the life cycle. With no hosts, ich will die off quicker (so at a higher temp, like 88f, you can be pretty sure the tank is clear after 2 weeks fallow).

The tank will not remain cycled without an ammonia source. You may want to consider adding a drop or 2 of pure ammonia in the tank each nite, or a flake or 2 of fishfood, so the nitrifying bacteria have something to eat and don't die off too.

 

[dralarms]

Sorry to hear about your troubles, I too had a problem close to that. Turns out it was an "internal" parisite that was introduced by a wal mart fish.

 

[iamaj]

thanks, ill try that alli, some one on a chat said it could have been the ich and a parasite. Ill keep a better eye on em next time.