Completely Stumped!!!

[treenab]

My tank has been going wonderful for several weeks. but over the last 2 days I ahve had 6 fish die. To explain, the LFS gave me some floating plant and a female betta from their personal collection to breed on Wednesday. Honestly she was as old as the hills LOL They are trying to breed with 12 months old bettas and wondering why they aren't getting any results *duh!* I didn't have the heart to tell the girl then and there.. she was so excited that one of her fish "might" spawn, I was just going to toss her in the tank and give them some of my other fry (when it all happens again of course hehe) At the same time I purchased a peppered catfish and a purple (gorgeous!) male betta.

Wed night the catfish was doing weird things.. he was sleeping on his back.. I thought he was dead at first but when I put the net in the tank he would swim away like normal. thursday morning he was dead! On further investigation of my tank so was the female tetra the LFS gave me. I put her down to old age, had no idea on the catfish

Thursday I went to another LFS in another town... purchased a bewdiful yellow bodied female betta with purple fins and a marbled cream and turquoise male. Everything looked fine and dandy until I noticed that the "soft colour" spot on the purple I purchased the day before was actually spreading over his body. It didn't look like fungus... more like well... as though it was an oil spot.. you know the way oil would discolour things.. it looked just like that! So I isolated him. He seemed to be swimming OK and didn't look stressed.. anyways in case it was a fungus I put a little sea salt in with him. half an hour later I noticed my red female betta was swimming badly. She was looking half dead to be honest with you. So I isolated her. Looking closely at her I noticed she had a similar discolouration at her tail fin I put a bit of salt in with her. Now I know she was disease free prior to this as she has been with me since day 1 and a really good spawning partner . So you can imagine my suprise when this morning I wake to both the isolated bettas dead, as well as a neon tetra and my gorgeous gourami!!

I have no idea what is going on?!?!?! I have checked my other fish vilgently and non of them seem to ahve any discolouration. There area no white sports anywhere to suggest ick I am totally stumped!! My tank has cycles, I do water changes and testings weekly and vaccumm the gravel every 3-4 weeks. Anyways I have also removed the floating weed as both the gourami and the tetra were sitting in it when they died so I am wondering if they got stuck in it and drowned?? It is a pretty thick weed, I haven't seen it before... have I been stupid to trust the LFS??? The problem being the local fish breeders have split up and now going their separate ways and I have no one here to contact about my fish except for the LFS Augh!!!

Heeelp... is there anything more I should be doing??? I suspect my turquoise male now of possibly having this thing as some of his tail fin is starting to fade.. i ahve never seen anything like this just make the fish colour fade like this.. and it seems to happen sooo quickly!!! (oh the gourami had no colour "bleached" but the tetra was as white as he could be )

[sweetsuvvyb]

Did you quarantine your fish before adding them to the tank? It's possible the new fish brought in some kind of bug and introduce it to your tank. If the plant was being kept in a tank with fish, it could also introduce some bad stuff.

When you say you isolated the fish, what exactly do you mean?

What are your water parameters like (often if there's a fish death, you can get an ammonia spike due to decomposition).

[treenab]

No I didn't quarantine.. the LFS calim they quarrantine.. I don't think i will be trusting them from now on. Ph level is 7, haven't checked the ammonia.. I did a water check yesterday so ill check ti agian to make sure it is still safe.

I Isolated the fish in betta containers. Just in case what they had was contagious.. I took them out of hte community tank as soon as they started looking "odd"

My gut instinct is that the new fish brought something with them I am going to ring them today and let them know and see what they have to say. I also purchased another tank fromt ehre this week and whe I got it home I realised that it was waay too thin a glass to be used for fish, so they will be getting that back too. I rang them about it and they said it was originally made for hermit crabs but they had assumed it would be sturdy enough for water and fish grrrrrrr.... the glass is so thin if you give it a gently nudge it will give!! I have no idea how they expected it to hold water... okies, enough griping.. off to check the amonia levels....

[treenab]

Sorry, that was water change yesterday.....

[Allivymar]

*nods and agrees with sweets*

Sure does appear your new fish brought something nasty and virulent along with em. I do suggest for the future, QT all new fish before adding em to your guys; even if the lfs QTs em, they are still at some point exposed to every other fish on the same filter system. Personally I'd get my money back for the new fish that keeled over, return that crappy tank they sold you, complain enough to bet my money back on the fish THEIR fish killed and find a new lfs. That sucks. My guess its the catfish that introduced the disease.

As for what it is, the one disease that can be that virulent is columnaris. In its acute form it can kill in 24 hours. Thing is, the symptoms are not quite right. Be that as it may, I'm sure its a bacterial infection and you are going to need to treat ASAP. A broad spectrum antibiotic MAY help the survivors; Kanacyn is one.

[treenab]

Here I am totally devastated. Today my whole betta population was wiped out.. bar one strong male who I am hoping *fingers crossed* will survive the night. I have liteally been here watching them drop off... After looking up columnaris and having a closer look at the dead fish I beleive this is what is plaguing them.. Only thing is it is a matter of 6-12 hours between getting the first signs and death.... I have set up an emergency tank for the rest of the fish and plan on draining and disinfecting the other tomorrow morning. I am really REALLY dissappointed with all this. Oh and one paragraph that I found on this disease realy hit me.. the fact that it is often carried in catfish... the catfish was the first fish to die in this chain of events.... It died within hours of getting him home from the LFS... Ooh it makes me so angry that because they sold one (or two.. still have doubts over another fish i got from there as well) sick fish I am now over $100 poorer through dead fishies. I know not much compared to what some of the salties and mroe exotics cost but for us $100 is a weeks worth of groceries.. a LOT of money!!! That plus I was so attached to my bettas :'(

Anyways I will be heading to the LFS tomorrow morning as well to let them know what has happened, to return this dodgy tank and see if I can get a little closure to this whole thing. From now on I will be traveling the 1 hour away to get my fishies....

[Allivymar]

Aww I'm sorry treenab Your poor bettas...that just sucks.

Make sure you treat all the remaining fish while you are disinfecting the main tank; better safe then sorry. And keep a close eye on the water parameters in the QT tank; I wouldn't put anything from the main tank in there cept the fish, and it won't be cycled.

Do let us know how it goes at that crappy store; I for one am interested.