Dying Fish!

[joels3400]

About 5 days ago, I added 3 fancy guppies and 2 Otto's to my 20 Gallon tank that holds 6 platies.

Everything was seemingly fine until 2 days ago when one of my platy fish was sitting on the bottom of the tank. He seemed to have trouble with his buoyancy and when he tried to swim, he would spin like he was in outer space. He died a few hours later.

The next day, a guppy was gasping at the top of the tank and died soon after I noticed. Later that day, another platy sat on the bottom of the tank breathing heavily and died the next morning.

Yesterday, I noticed that one of the Platies had red gills. My readings are all 0 according to my API liquid tests. I do have a high PH of about 8.4 but have had that since I started my tank 3 months ago.

I treated the whole tank with Erythromycin as instructed by my LFS. Do you think this is bacterial gill disease? Will this medicine help? Are there lasting effects after I contain the disease? What else can I do? HELP PLEASE!

 

[BBradbury]

Your Tank

About 5 days ago, I added 3 fancy guppies and 2 Otto's to my 20 Gallon tank that holds 6 platies.

Everything was seemingly fine until 2 days ago when one of my platy fish was sitting on the bottom of the tank. He seemed to have trouble with his buoyancy and when he tried to swim, he would spin like he was in outer space. He died a few hours later.

The next day, a guppy was gasping at the top of the tank and died soon after I noticed. Later that day, another platy sat on the bottom of the tank breathing heavily and died the next morning.

Yesterday, I noticed that one of the Platies had red gills. My readings are all 0 according to my API liquid tests. I do have a high PH of about 8.4 but have had that since I started my tank 3 months ago.

I treated the whole tank with Erythromycin as instructed by my LFS. Do you think this is bacterial gill disease? Will this medicine help? Are there lasting effects after I contain the disease? What else can I do? HELP PLEASE!

Hello joe...

Don't get down. 99.9 percent of the people on this forum have had fish die. Unless you have a degree in fish biology, it's difficult to tell what happened. I would do a few things. Start a more aggressive water change routine. Remove and replace half the tank water every few days. You have a small tank, so remove half twice a week. Your fish could use a little standard aquarium salt for good general immune system health. Add a rounded teaspoon to every 5 gallons of new water and make the water a little warmer than what's in the tank. Tropical fish water should be around 78 degrees. Get some floating plants into the tank. Just drop in some stems of Hornwart or Anacharis into the water. They grow without being planted. and fish feel comfortable in tanks with a lot of plants. Make sure your filter is cleaned regularly, so it moves the water surface. Surface movement mixes oxygen into the water and more plants supply even more oxygen.

Good nutrition is as important as anything. Try feeding a little variety of frozen food like Mysis or brine shrimp and bloodworms. I like to feed my fish a little minced garlic. It's high vitamin and has some natural antibiotic properties.

Just some things to consider.

B

 

[joels3400]

Thank you for the reply! I have been doing water changes every week and then when they started dying, daily. Yesterday, I did buy the Tetra whisper 20 and air stone to help with aeration.

Wouldn't salt be bad for my Otto's since they don't have scales?

I definitely need to start feeding them some new things. I've only been feeding them the flakes but I bought some cucumbers to try. Will definitely try the garlic!

Also, I've gotten all of my fish from Petsmart and it seems like the last bunch must have been diseased. I've read that a quarantine tank is a good idea for new fish but my wife doesn't even like my one tank let alone another one. There is an actual fish store that seems to have very healthy fish although they're a lot more expensive. Should I go there instead to avoid these diseases?