Angels for the THIRD TIME

[courtanee]

Im at my wits end. Idk what it is with me and angels. We just dont mix I guess. This is my 3rd round of angels. Spread out over a year.
Its always the same thing.
I get them, place them in a tank (1&2 time no QT, 3rd time they are) I use water from my big tank in my QT.
They get clamped fins, start to hang out at the surface lose their slime coat then die. I lost 3/3 of my first batch, 2/3 of the 2nd(the surviving one is still not in my big tank. Hes in QT right now. I dont understand what is wrong here.
I even took readings of the water from the tank they were purchased from with this last batch.
Original tank readings were:
Ammonia .5
Nitrite 0
Nitrates 160ppm
Ph was 6.8
My tank:
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrates ~270ppm
Ph 7.4-7.6
I just dont know what I'm doing wrong. They seem fine when I first get them. Hungry little pigs very friendly and then everything goes south. I dont know how to be successful with angels. Any pointers or insight as to what could be happening?

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[dalto]

A couple of quick thoughts.

First those nitrate levels are HUGE. Are you sure they are accurate? I try to keep nitrates under 20ppm.

Second, what you are missing in this comparison is hardness. How much harder/softer is your water than the store water.

Lastly, how are you acclimating them and how long are you keeping them before they die?

 

[courtanee]

Nitrates out of my tap are 20, so not much I can do about that. Besides they were coming from water with nitrates way higher than that, i dont know how hard the water was where they came from. But at my house, we use a water softener, so it can't be that bad. Acclimating I did a 1/4c of water about every half hour.

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[dalto]

OK, a few things, even if the water coming out of your tap is 20ppm your tank water shouldn't be 270ppm. This is unreasonably high. My test kits don't even go that high.

A water softener simply replaces calcium and magnesium with sodium or potassium. It doesn't have that much of an impact on TDS so this may or may not be an issue depending on what the actual amount of TDS is. Honestly, you don't need a perfect situation for domestic angels. You just need something that isn't very, very high.

How long as they typically living in your tanks before they die?

 

[courtanee]

Oh my god hahaha I did NOT see that type. My nitrates are never over 20. My bad!!!!

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[courtanee]

Oh my god. Haha I did not see that typo. My nitrates are 20ppm. Lol wow that would be bad. Well I dont have hard water build up or water spots on anything so I'm guessing it can't be that off.
They usually are ok for a day or two. Are sick like for 3-4 days then I lose them. Luckily my boyfriend raises discus and he has managed to save some from my last group. And as soon as I saw trouble with these I brought them to his house. But now I'm terrified to bring them back into my tanks.

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[dalto]

Well that's good

How many are you getting at a time and what are you keeping them in?

Only being good for a day or two is often a water quality issue. Either because the water is too different from what they are coming from or because a big bioload is being added all at once and there is too much free ammonia while your filter catches up. But honestly, it could be other things. Sometimes it is like solving a puzzle to find the issue.

 

[courtanee]

Im generally purchasing 3 at a time, kept in a 20gallon they are about quarter size body

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[Andy Sager]

From the sounds of it, there may be 2 issues: Water chemistry and acclimating proceedures.
Let's start with #2 first: Acclimating a fish means slowly changing the water from what they are in to what they are going in to. 1/4c of water every 30 minutes sounds like too much water in too much time unless the fish are in a large amount of water to begin with. ( This seems unlikely if they are that small and in a plastic bag.) You may want to switch to a drip method on a bucket where you constantly drip water with a tube ( I use airline tubing and 1 way valve) at a drip rate of approx 1-2 drops per second so that the water is changing slowly and the fish have all that time to adapt. Drip times, depending on the size bucket you are using ( don;t drip into a plastic bag) range about 45 minutes to 1 hour in a 4 gal bucket. What you want to wind up with is the water in the bucket being 90-95% new water and 5-10% water the fish came in. Once this is achieved, do not put this water back into the tank. Throw it away ( or water the plants with it.)

Water quality: Unfortunately, the symptoms you described are similar to a disease Angels are known to carry and may be the cause of the clamped fins. Rushing them into the new water may be stressing them to the point that they are unable to fight off the pathogen. The slower acclimation may help this from the start but if the water quality in your tank is poor, no amount of acclimation is going to work for long. You need to reduce the nitrate level either by mixing store bought water with your tap, using a filter to absorb it or possibly using seachem's PRIME to detoxify it so it is not as big an issue that it's there.

If you correct these 2 issues and still have a problem with the fish, you may need to consider that the problem starts with the fish quality and immediate treatment is necessary when you get the fish into your quarantine.

Hope this helps

 

[Autumnsky]

How about trying water out of the faucet outside, not run through the water softener. They don't need salt in the water. I am always leery of those things!

Do you have other fish in other tanks which are doing alright?

 

[serussell]

I literally have two Angels that I got when I did not have one small clue what I was doing, they are still doing just fine. In my very uneducated opinion I say it's the fish. Are you buying at the same store? Or it's the soft water I have very hard water. Like I said not even close to an expert quite the opposite and that's the only things different because I knew nothing about anything when I got the first one and only a little more when I got the second and never dripped or poured or sang soothing tones before adding them (not saying that's the way to go)


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[courtanee]

I've gotten all of them from different places :/
One set I've gotten from Petsmart, another from Indonesia, and from a guy in my neighborhood who bred them, and I've ordered some from wet spot. So kind of all over the place. I thought I would have the best luck with the angels from my neighborhood as the water quality was probably similar. But no luck there either. I really dont want to give up on this but its getting to be so frustrating for me.

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[courtanee]

Andy, do you think that I should switch over to store bought water from jugs and slowly revert over? I mean like maybe doing 10% change every 3 days or so? So take out 10% of my old water, and add 10% bottled water to slowly switch my fish over to a 100% store bought water tank?

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[Noviceafter2yea]

Maybe water for the main tank is not the best to use in QT. That itself could harm them if the water is super different from the store and you are either putting them straight into the QT tank which takes care of temp, but not necessarily water quality and not doing the drip method to put in the QT. The QT doesn't necessarily have beneficial bacteria even if using water from the main tank. The bb is on the substrate and decor and filter.

Perhaps you can cycle your QT tank separately. I know this contradicts what I said above' but I think I read somewhere that QT tank could use new water - BUT DONT QUOTE ME ON THAT. Just look into it. The other people on here are much more experienced than I on these things!

Good luck.

 

[dalto]

The reason for using water from the main tank in QT is that the water will be similar to what is in the tank and you won't need to acclimate them again.

However, unless you are only going to qt for a very short period of time this will not have much benefit as the water will be different from the destination tank by the time you actually move them in there.

That being said, I also don't think it will hurt anything to use water from the destination tank.

 

[Andy Sager]

Andy, do you think that I should switch over to store bought water from jugs and slowly revert over? I mean like maybe doing 10% change every 3 days or so? So take out 10% of my old water, and add 10% bottled water to slowly switch my fish over to a 100% store bought water tank?

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Before doing any switching, you have a wonderful opportunity to see if it's you or the fish. You said you got some from a neighborhood breeder. Find out what that breeder is doing to the water for their fish. You should be doing the same. If nothing, then you should be doing nothing as well.
It would then appear that your acclimating method is more the culprit. The part that the fish do okay for a couple days kind of sounds like it's something to do with the aquarium(s) you put them in. If it were the water, the fish should do poorly from day 1. Since they don;t do that, it sounds like there is a pathogen in your tank(s) that is attacking the fish once they are in the tanks. The fish being stressed would succumb to the disease in a couple of days in a weakened state. That, at least, is the theory.
Remind me, were there any other fish in the tank(s) when the Angels died?

 

[dalto]

If it were the water, the fish should do poorly from day 1.

I would just say that this does not match my experience. When taking fish from soft water to very hard I often see fish active for the fist day or two followed by a die-off.

Keep in mind, my tanks are on the extreme ends of hard and soft so this may not be the issue you are having here.

 

[Andy Sager]

I would just say that this does not match my experience. When taking fish from soft water to very hard I often see fish active for the fist day or two followed by a die-off.

Keep in mind, my tanks are on the extreme ends of hard and soft so this may not be the issue you are having here.

That's the thing about fish keeping, we all have different experiences with similar things. What i described was the results we had when we were importing fish from S. America. You can't get too much softer than that water. The fish did horribly no matter how slowly or quickly we acclimated them. Once we softened the water and reduced the PH, the fish did much better. This result was repeated weekly for years so i have to believe it was the issue.

 

[dalto]

That's the thing about fish keeping, we all have different experiences with similar things. What i described was the results we had when we were importing fish from S. America. You can't get too much softer than that water. The fish did horribly no matter how slowly or quickly we acclimated them. Once we softened the water and reduced the PH, the fish did much better. This result was repeated weekly for years so i have to believe it was the issue.

Agreed, it could simply be the degree or type of hardness between our two waters that cause me to see a slower die-off than you.

 

[Noviceafter2yea]

The reason for using water from the main tank in QT is that the water will be similar to what is in the tank and you won't need to acclimate them again.

However, unless you are only going to qt for a very short period of time this will not have much benefit as the water will be different from the destination tank by the time you actually move them in there.

That being said, I also don't think it will hurt anything to use water from the destination tank.

Like I said, just a theory, but don't you still need to make sure there is BB in the QT which doesn't just come from the main tank water.