Help! My Corydoras isn’t doing well.

[UncleLeo]

I’m new to this fish life, so please help me take care of these fish correctly. I purchased 2 Corydoras 3 days ago. The guy told me they were sterbai Corydoras, but after looking at pictures I’m not sure if they are. Anyways, I read that you should QT new fish and give them some medicine to make sure they’re healthy before introducing them to other fish (we have a betta fish). I put them in a container (about 1 gallon for now), and purchased ICH-X, General cure, and fin and body cure. When I put them in the container, I slowly add a little bit of the water from my tank and then few hours later added a little more, like the guy at the store told me. I fed them a sinking wager and a little bit of bug bite (not at the same time).

The next day, I started the fin and body cure treatment. This morning I noticed the tail of one of them started floating upwards. I googled and read it could be swim blaster disease. I vacuumed the bottom (I put a thin layer of sand) and did a 25% water change and didn’t feed them today, just in case it was because he/she ate too much, and added the 3rd dose of fin and body cure. Now it looks like the second one is developing it too! Could it be the medicine? Could it be something I’m doing? It hurts to think I’m harming them. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I should also mention that I also notice some redness by their gills. It looks internal. I just thought that was how it looked, but when I looked up sterbai, I don’t see it in any pictures which is why I think they might be a different kind. Could they have been sick when I bought them? Could it be something other than SBD?

 

[Rutrag]

Two questions:
1) Is the one gallon aquarium they are in cycled? (Meaning, is there an established colony of nitrifying bacteria on the surfaces?)

2) Did you medicate the fish with all of that medicine at once?

I am concerned that you might have fish in an uncycled aquarium that are being ammonia poisoned, which could be compounded by the medicine (particularly if you used all of them) instead of being helped by it. The red gills are a telltale sign. Unless the fish you are working with are wild caught, I'm generally against using meds as a prophylactic, and then I would generally only use an anti-parasitic. It is appropriate to use meds when you can ID a disease and target the treatment. Quarantining new arrivals is appropriate, but needs to either be done in a cycled tank, or you need to be prepared to do frequent, daily, large water changed to mitigate the ammonia the fish are producing.

I don't think you fish have a swim bladder issue. That will normally manifest as a fish not being able to maintain its position in the water column or keep themselves upright.

From the picture, I don't think that those are sterbai cories. I think those might be julies or false julies. The sterbais are almost the reverse of that color pattern: dark grey/ brown with light grey/ white spots.

 

[UncleLeo]

The tank is not cycled. I only have one tank, which my tetra is in, so I currently have them in a large glass container. I kept the water from the pet store and added some water from my Bettas tank a little at a time. We got him back in March and I do weekly water changes, and So far I haven’t had any issues with my betta.

I didn’t do them all at once. Currently I’m only doing the fin and body cure. I did a 25% water change today, should I do another tomorrow? Attached is a test strip I just did. I would use the test tubes to test my bettas water, but I bought the test stripes today, along with melafix since I read that would help SBD, but I was going to wait and to try it since I didn’t want to mix medicine.

I have a heater in the tank (water is at 77 degrees (there isn’t anyways for me to change the temp on this heater, unlike my bettas heater which I can choose the temp.) I ordered an air pump for the container, it arrives tomorrow. I did t plan on getting these little cuties, my husband just showed up with them, so I’m scrambling to research and try and care for them as best I can.

 

[UncleLeo]

Sorry, the picture didn’t attach.

 

[UncleLeo]

**update**

I decided to move them to my cycled betta tank. Feeling terrible, but learned a lesson today. I will invest in a filtered tank for future use. Hope these babies make it.

 

[earhtmother]

Those are Trilineatus cories.some times called False Jullii