Lost all My Fish - Need Help Figuring out Why

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scuba369

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 4, 2006
Messages
2
Here's the story. I have a 75 gallon fish tank that has been up and running for about 5 yrs. The last two years I've maybe lost two fish. So I've had no problems. I had 3 golden barbs, 2 cherry barbs, 3 black tetra, and a pleco. I was a little behind on water changes but nothing big. I added a gold nugget pleco about a week ago. He died the day I bought him. Took a water sample to the store and everything test okay with nitrates a little high. After that my remaining fish started acting funny. Flashing and more than usually activity. I notice some white spots and figured it was Ich. Bought Rid-Ich and did ten day treatment with slowly increasing the temp ... nothing major only think I got it to 80 degrees before most of my fish died. I did break my rule of not using a quarantine tank which I know was a mistake. In an attempt to save the remaining fish I stopped treatment and did a 30% water change. I tested the water the next day with the following results. Ammonia 0 ppm, PH around 7.9 hard to match color, Nitrite 0 ppm, and Nitrate 5 ppm. So now I'm starting to think PH problem but my water has always had a slightly high PH. So I decided to test the tap water for PH. It's almost neutral. So something in my tank is raising the PH. Only other change is that I added a piece of driftwood. But I'm still not convinced it's a PH problem. So now that I'm down to one fish how do I get my tank back up to a point that I feel comfortable adding fish. I'm thinking a heat treatment for three weeks to take care of any possible ick and then adding some New Tank Stabilization to get the biologic filter backup. Then wait another week. So in total I'm looking at a month before adding another fish. Anyone have any advice? First time in seven years I've had such a disaster.

Thanks
 
Sounds like the fish you bought had some nasty hitchhikers! I'm guessing it was more than just ick in play, possibly another pathogen or an oxygen starvation situation? (Increasing the heat lowers the oxygen unless you add an air stone or some other surface turbulence.)

I agree with your plan to wait one month before adding new fish. You could set up your QT now, and QT some new fish while you're waiting for anything bad in your display tank to die off. Standard new fish QT is one month after last symptom seen, so your new fish and display tank will be ready around the same time.

If you continue to feed the aquarium during the treatment period, you shouldn't need any additives to get the biological filter running again.
 
Sorry to hear about your fish. :(

I agree, it sounds like the pleco you got had some nasties that came with it. Ich can be a killer...and is likely the cause of death. It can present as an infection in the gills, which you will never see externally. Rid-Ich also can be detrimental to some fish. If you overdosed the medication at all, that could be a possible cause. I wouldn't imagine a lack of oxygen would be a cause, beause 80F is not that high at all.

What fish do you have left? Is it looking ok?
 
In my experience, meds are better at killing fish than at killing ich. If you don't have fresh carbon in your filter, add some to remove the meds. The heat and salt method in the articles section is the best treatment that I have found.
 
The last fish left which is a Golden Barb has white patches covering his body and some red streaks but he's still hanging in there. Looks a little better today.


Thanks for all the help. You have confirmed what I was thinking.

dskidmore what do you mean feed the tank? I assume you mean still putting food in.
 
Continue putting as much food in as you did when there were fish in there. That will be about the same bioload as the fish themselves.
 
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