Hi

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

labrakitty

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Nov 25, 2004
Messages
35
Location
Australia
Hi, i'm Miranda, i'm 13 years old. I have just started fish keeping about 6 months ago, but I haven't had much luck.
This is my story:
I started of cycling my 40 litre tank with 2 Zebra Danios, Guess what? I was doing water chages every week and checking everything, and the ammonia levels never went past 1.0, then one day I came home and both were dead as anything, the ammonia was 0.25 but nitrite had suddenly gone from 0.0 to 0.25, and they were dead.

I waited for the cycle just to finish its self. When nitrite and ammonia were 0.0 then I added a black balloon molly and a platy, the balloon molly was so cute, when ever i walked into the room it swam up to the froint of the tank, and if I put my finger in the tank it would nibble on it!!!!If you blew kisses to it it would open its mouth really big as if it was doing it back.

Everything was going good so I added 2 tiny tiny bristle nosed catfish, then 2 guppies, then another guppy,then a platy, then for some reason the platy was being nipped by the balloon molly, then a few days later it died. no signs of illness. Then more trouble started when I added the 5th guppy.

After the three days the next morning the balloon molly was dead, perfectly fine the night before, no signs of disease, eating well, no ammonia or nitrite.

Then the next day the 5th guppy suddenly got really really sick, its tail was all red and half of it was disappearing, it couldn't swim properly, and it wasn't eating, it wasn't being bullied and it used to be swimming with the other guppies. 3 days it was dead.

Then we added 1 male dwarf gourami, It was fine until it stopped eating and sat with its tail in the gravel and floated side ways, the next day it was dead. ammonia nd nitrite still 0.0

I am left with 1 platy 4 guppies 2 bristle noses.
one day the third guppy gets sick, its stomach pops humungous, and it won't eat, it swims vertically with its tail down and sits on the bottom in the gravel, then it died, another guppy started looking sick ,so I took it to the vet. The vet did a scale scrape and they had lots of gill flukes and terrible Oodinium 'velvet' they were also extremely anemic. He opened up the dead one and its liver or kidney was all yellowy and it is ment to be dark red.

We treated them but the one we took tothe vet died that night.
After that we had no more losses, we finished the treatment and everything was good. We decided to set up a quarantine tank, we got another platy and it is now in the quarantine tank. but wait the problems haven't finished. yesterday we took the old platy to an aquarium(Black burn aquarium in melbourne, Australia.) with probable Dropsy, they are treating it for that but also did a skin scrape and found a big flat worm on it with a hook on its tail. Does anyone know what that could be?

So at the moment i have:
2 platys(1 at aquarium, 1 in quarantine tank)
2 guppies, getting 2 more.
2 bristle nosed catfish.

I am thinking of stting up a 25 gallon tank for my birthday.
 
:invasion: Welcome to AA Labrakitty. I'm no expert but there are only a few explanations: (1) Your fish were already sick at the LFS or (2) There is something wrong with the tank itself. You didn't mention if you did a PH test. I also assume you had salt (FW) in the tank as well? Let me know.
 
Hi Miranda,

Welcome to AA!!!

I saw you speak of nitrite and ammonia levels, but you didn't mention your nitrate levels. How often do you change your water?
It is indeed possible that you have some sort of disease in your tank. I think you should probably treat the whole tank if you keep having problems with it.

Hope your fish get better! :D
 
Nitrate level? I saw your post regarding the worm the vet found and it is very likely that the fish had this prior to you getting him. Very unlikely for it to have occurred in your tank.
 
Welcome to AA :mrgreen:

Sounds like anchor worms to me, which can be treated with salt and removing the parasites by hand, but they are very tricky to eradicate. Best of luck!

You can also post over in the Unhealthy Fish forum and you will get tons of responses there - :)
 
Back
Top Bottom