Juvenile Angelfish Dying

[guppygourami]

Hey everyone.

My angels are about 10 months old now and I've noticed that when they die it's without anything odd on their body. When they die they just lie on the bottom of the aquarium and try to swim. Today I found one with the same symptoms but a ripped fin as well. I put a bit of Melafix into the water. Should I continue treating with this?

1~What type of fish is afflicted?
10 juvenile angelfish mysteriously dying.

2~What are your tank parameters?
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 20
Temperature: 26
pH: 7.2-7.4

3~ How large is the tank? How long has the tank been set up?
23G tank. Third year of being set up.

4~What type of filtration are you using? Please give the name and number (i.e. Fluval 304) and amount of gph if known.
Aquaclear 50 with an intake sponge on it. I believe it's 200gph.

5~How many fish are in the tank? What kinds of fish are they and what are their current sizes?
11 (mother and 10 children). Marble angelfish at around quarter-loonie size.

6~When is the last time you did a water change and vacuum the gravel? How often do you do this? How much water do you remove at a time?
I do 25-40PWCs and gravel vaccuums every week. Did one today.

7~How long have you had the fish? If the fish is new, how did you acclimate it/them?
They were bred and born in the tank.

8~Have you added anything new to the tank--decor, new dechlorinator, new substrate, etc.?
Not that I can think of.

9~What kind of food have you been feeding your fish, have you changed their diet recently?
Recently I've been feeding them Northfin Community Formula (1mm) but I began feeding them slightly crushed up Aqueon Cichlid Pellets. Supplemented with (thawed) frozen mini bloodworms (usually once or twice for every two weeks) and occasionally (thawed) frozen brine shrimp.

Please help ASAP if you can.

 

[Autumnsky]

That is sad.

You might try PM'ing Andy Sager. He might know the magic answer.

Other than water issues, what are the parameters before you do a pwc? Sometimes the foods are really good but break down quickly and cause a lot of ammonia in the tank, and the higher ammount is not able to be broken down quickly enough by the BB in the tank.

So I might up the pwc to an additional one per week. With young fish, often you need to be doing every other day to keep quality excellent for growth. Do some checks for the water parameters at least every 2 days to get an idea what is going on.

Do pwc if needed.

Otherwise I wonder if a bacterial infection.

Andy may have good suggestions.

 

[guppygourami]

That is sad.

You might try PM'ing Andy Sager. He might know the magic answer.

Other than water issues, what are the parameters before you do a pwc? Sometimes the foods are really good but break down quickly and cause a lot of ammonia in the tank, and the higher ammount is not able to be broken down quickly enough by the BB in the tank.

So I might up the pwc to an additional one per week. With young fish, often you need to be doing every other day to keep quality excellent for growth. Do some checks for the water parameters at least every 2 days to get an idea what is going on.

Do pwc if needed.

Otherwise I wonder if a bacterial infection.

Andy may have good suggestions.

Recently, I've been testing the water every one or two days and the parameters are always the same except for the nitrates sometimes going to 40 and sometimes 20. I'm not sure how I forgot to mention this in the original post but for the past three weeks or so I've been doing water changes twice a week and sometimes thrice. I always clean the gravel as well. I will ask Andy Sager, I know he's very experienced with angels and he did help me in the past (back when I had around 40 fry in the tank -- yikes! ). Thanks for your help Autumnsky!