What to do with QT

[Saltair]

I had a Dwarf Gourami in a 10gal QT for twelve days. When I got home from work this afternoon he was dead. I am not surprised as the stock at this LFS is never great, but nobody else has these fish. So now I have a QT that just had a death I cant explain. The tank is completely cycled and I am not crazy about the idea of tearing it down to sterilize, but I dont know about putting more fish into an environment that may be compromised. If I just keep dropping food in the tank can I keep the cycle going and wait for whatever else may be in there to die off? I know I am going to end up breaking it down, I was just hoping for a better way.

 

[calfishguy]

What are your water parameters temp filtration I need more info in order to help you. Did the other fish in your lfs' dwarf gourami tank look heatlhy.

 

[Koikid88]

Are you sure the illness just didn't get the best of him? What did it have, and what did you treat with.
Or was this quarantined before entering the tank? Doesn't mean it had an illness at all, sometimes perfectly healthy fish don't make the transition. It is rare when properly introduced, but it does happen.

 

[Krazy]

Dwarf gouramis can also be tough to keep. They are very picky about their water parameters and the tank conditions. If their water isn't how they like it, theyll give up on life. [sorry about your loss. RIP mr fishy ] I've heard that since they're labyrinth fish from the still waters of Asia, they prefer a very calm environment without a lot of surface agitation. An since they're slow movers, if you put them into a tank with fast moving fish like tetras or danios, it can stress them out. In other words the fish didn't have to be sick to die. Was it showing any particular symptoms?

 

[Koikid88]

^^ I find they were only tough to keep because of DGD.
So not only are you on the look out for Gourami Disease, but also the mysterious Dwarf Gourami Disease(Plus all other common illness). I lost 2 of my guys to each of these.
First one I lost was kind of due to inexperience, didn't diagnose in time. Once he started 'rocking' back and forth, was too late.
DGD is a bit harder to identify also, until it's too late. It is treatable if caught in the very early stages.

 

[adadkins1]

I agree that Dwarf Gouramis are extremely difficult to keep. I've got one that is a year and a half old so I must have got lucky. Seems like you can buy one and it may live 2 days or it may live 2 months before it randomly dies.

 

[Saltair]

I had read a little about the fish, mostly looking at compatibility issues, but did not run into anything about Gourami Disease of DGD. What it this? The only symptom he had was rapid breathing. When I first got him home I noticed some raggedness to his dorsal fin, but I was changed the water four times in the 12 days he was here even though the tank was cycled, and had completed seven days of Melafix hoping to give him a leg up on the healing proess. It was actually looking better.
For those that asked tank is 10gal with a quitflow10 with a filter element taken from one of the filters on my primary tank. Parameters were 0,0,5. The tank had salt in it at a tblspn/5gal ratio, and had been treated with melafix though that was probably pretty well out of the tank by yesterday.

 

[HooKooDooKu]

Rather than tearing down the tank... can't you simply QT the QT tank?

Basically, don't stock any fish in it for 2 to 4 weeks, but keep "feeding" the tank some ammonia (like you do in a fishless cycle) to keep from loosing its cycle.

Without a host (i.e. fish), won't any diseases simply die in that 2 to 4 week time frame?