Second fish found dead

[AquaBear]

Hello. I am working on a 16g FW tank that has been up for 9 days and is already starting to cycle. Last Friday, an unauthorized fish (Betta) was put in the tank and was found dead Saturday morning. I removed it and watched my other fish. This morning, I found white spots on the fins of 3 fish. This afternoon, I re-tested and my ammonia was up to .50ppm (up from .25ppm yesterday). I just completed about a 30-35% water change, my ammonia still looks like it's .50 (I may not have waited long enough after water change, will try again in a couple hours).

DURING the water change, I found one Zebra danio floating. It had a noticeable white/gray ulcerous patch on the underside of the gills. Is this the result of ich? Ammonia? Or do I have something else going on. I have removed all the silk plants, because I am getting ready to treat for ich and don't want this stuff to stain them (which of course means I have to boil them, don't I?).

Thanks much.

--AquaBear

 

[QTOFFER]

Ich looks like tiny white grains of salt. It can occur on any part of the body. The white/gray patch is probably a secondary bacterial infection. Both of these diseases can be triggered by stress brought on by exposure to ammonia. 0.5 ppm is a pretty toxic level.

It's too late for you to do a fishless cycle, so the best thing would be to keep an eye on the ammonia levels and do very frequent water changes. When I cycled my 58 gal with zebra danios, I tested the water every day and did 25% water changes every other day. I also used BioSpira culture to jumpstart the biofilter - it's hard to find, but it really works.

For ich, see my Ich-lid thread in the Unhealthy Fish forum. I swear by the heat treatment.

 

[Menagerie]

If you believe it is ich, use the heat treatment, which can be found in the Articles section written by Allivymar. There are also pics of fish covered in ich in the article.

If it does not look like ich, look through these sites:
http://www.aquatronicsonline.com/hobbyist/hobbyist3.htm
http://www.aqualink.com/disease/sdisease.html#ich
http://fish.mongabay.com/diseases.htm
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/AqBizSubWebIndex/fishdisho.htm
http://www.fishpondinfo.com/health.htm

It is much better to start a treatment once you know what you are dealing with.