Mysterious ailment

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Jabfish

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
May 31, 2015
Messages
17
Hello everyone I am experiencing a unknown disease in my planted tank the fish develop a white slime I have not been able to identify the illness the closest match I've found seems to be slime illness but I can't really find a pictures of fish that are infected it originally affected 2 older rainbow fish I had so I put them and 2 other fish that seemed to be affected into my hospital tank all but one of those fish died and now I fear that one is on its way out I have done larger water changes but they have only seemingly helped for about 2 hours also any new fish I've added almost immediately develop the white slime and die within 2 hours I'm pretty sure all my fish are going to die due to this - should I just throw everything away and start a new tank I was considering upgrading anyways I have pictures but I don't know how to embed them as I don't see a picture button so if someone could enlighten me on that I'll post them
 
can you take a video with ur phone and upload it to youtube or this thread? Shouldnt be that hard
 
I have solved the problem - it was nutrient depletion due to none being in the rodi water and also in soft water it is hard to maintain colonies of bacteria that filter the water
 
I have solved the problem - it was nutrient depletion due to none being in the rodi water and also in soft water it is hard to maintain colonies of bacteria that filter the water

If the fish are dying within hours of adding them it's an acclimation problem. You are putting them through too much osmotic stress.

Why are you using RO/DI water?
 
Because I wanted the water to be soft

Do we care to discuss this more?
What is your source water like?
What kind of fish are you trying to keep?
What is your goal with these fish?
Straight RO is not for every fish.
It is not for many fish really?
 
I was keeping Rams but I no longer have any and I had yet to switch back to normal tap water
 
I was keeping Rams but I no longer have any and I had yet to switch back to normal tap water

Rams do like soft water, but they also don't need it. There are also no freshwater fish that will tolerate straight ro/di water for a number of reasons.

1 - There's no nutrients in it for the fish causing them to have problems such as HLLE
2 - There's no buffering of the water. This is problematic because there will be huge pH swings between the day / night cycle.
3 - The lack of TDS in the water causes problems with acclimating fish as it will send them into osmotic shock.

It is perfectly fine to use ro/di and mix it with straight tap water in order to soften up the water a little bit.

It's also perfectly fine to use buffers such as Seachem Equillibrium in order to get the water where you want it.

But straight ro/di water is sadly, a death sentence for fish.

Another thing to note, whenever you do buy new fish there is a proper way to acclimate them rather than floating them and then dumping them in. While you're floating them remove some of their bag water (probably 10 - 20%) and refill it with an equivalent amount of tank water. It's best to do this every 10 minutes or so at least over an hour but best over 2 hours or so.
 
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