Tank Problems

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Aweb28

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
Messages
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First post here, I'm having problems with my 90g lightly planted community tank. I have 5 angels, 15 mixed tetras (I think) male and female Bolivian and German blue rams, 3 Otos, 2 female and 1 male red hump Geos, 1 cory, and 1 leopard pleco. The water has always been 0 ammonia, nitrate, nitrite. 7.2-7.4 ph. Temp is 80f. I run 2 Eheim 2227s don't run Co2 and dose with liquid ferts half dose. 20% water changes every week with water conditioner. The tank was fine for 5 weeks and then I had a die off and lost the Cory, 3 Angels, a female geo, male german blue, 1 oto and 3 tetras in that order. I talked with the guy at my LFS and he recommended pimafix and melafix along with aquarium salt as he couldn't really see anything in particular wrong with my fish in videos I took. The fish were active, eating well, no visible marks or problems, no real aggression problems etc. everything was fine until I noticed one of my angels had a pink area between his lips and nostril, I put him in the hospital tank. Dosed with salt and tetracycline. It went from pink to bleeding to white fuzz to nothing and normal colouring coming back. I kept him in there for another week and put him back in the main tank. A week later I noticed his fins are starting to rot. Now I'm wondering two things
1) what is the best way to treat the fin rot without quarantine
2) is there any kind of cost effective way of treating the whole tank. As I can pretty much replace my fish for less than the cost of the medications (that's the way the LFS put it, not my outlook as I've had some of my fish for over a year now)

Any help would be greatly appreciated
 
How old is this tank?

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First off, you are testing the water right? How do you have zero nitrates in a cycled tank? usually in a properly cycled tank you will have no ammonia, no nitrites and between 10-20 nitrates which you keep low with routine water changes.

Its hard to tell what is wrong, but it sounds like maybe you have a parasite of some kind. Did you add any fish recently without QT them? Any new plants bought from tanks with fish in them can also transfer parasites and disease. I would up the water changes to e/o day for a while to get everything leveled. Fish respond well to clean, fresh water and whatever is wrong can usually be remedied with stepping up the water changes. If you notice fins rotting, like you said, that is a sign of poor water quality. More water changes and bigger volume of water being changed. Use prime to condition the water, as it seems to be the best. Id start today with a 50% water change. Then on tuesday, 30-40%, and so on until the fish start looking better.
 
I believe I'm checking the water properly, I've taken samples to two different LFS and they were getting the same readings the guy at big als couldn't figure it out either about the nitrates, but he said it wasn't really a problem, I forgot to mention I did a 50-60% water change Thursday night when I was working on the stand. Topped it back up. I don't know if this would affect them but my GH is high at (if I'm doing it right) 170-200ppm I'm assuming the salt I added did that. I haven't added any fish that weren't quarantined for at least a week, some were more. I added two big amazon swords that I bought on impulse but they were from a plant only display.


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Its likely not "fin rot" which is fungal and true bacterial fin rot is brown and not usually deadly.
So, if your loosing fish left and right, and their fins look frayed, its probably Flexibacteria columnaris, which is very deadly.
What is the best way to treat this in such a large tank?....Thru their food. You can find a excellent, cheap, food here Ken's Premium Sinking Pellets with Oxytetracycline 2.5mm
Turn down the heat slowly too, bacteria loves heat. The fin rot is secondary fungal growth on dead skin and fins that have been eaten by the bacteria.
Its a tough disease, but it can be cured with a good strong Gram-negative antibiotic.
Stay away from the "fix's" their just money makers for API and useless, the only thing they do is make the water bubbly and smell like pepermint.
 
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