Hi all,
I just joined the forum to try to get some help with my sick aquarium before I give up at being a fishkeeper! Hopefully I can get some insight into what is going wrong...
I have a 10 gallon tank that is 1 year old currently occupied by 4 panda corys and 5 "glofish".
Here's the background info to help out:
1~ Every few months one of the glofish gets sick and dies. First it starts losing weight (while eating), then eventually stops eating and gets too weak to swim, then dies. This process takes several weeks each time. I don't see anything strange on the fish's body (no spots/wounds/etc). The most recent sick fish did lose a lot of his blue color and seemed to have bright red gills, but they could have just looked bright red because the rest of his body was so pale. This didn't happen in any of the other fish. I think all of the corys are fine, although one does seem a little smaller and more shy these days, but I might just be paranoid.
2~ Temp is 74. Water parameters according to API test kit:
Nitrate- 5; Nitrite- 0; Ammonia- 0; pH- 8.2 (it comes out of the tap this way, and I was told that a stable pH is easier on the fish than trying to lower it with chemicals)
3~ Its a 10 gallon tank, one year old.
4~ The filter is an aquaclear 20.
5~ There are currently 9 fish in the tank. One is almost dead. They are all full grown I think...
6~ Last water change/vacuum was two days ago. I do this about once a week and change about 30% of the water. I use seachem prime when adding new water.
7~ All of the fish have been there at least 6 months. The longest is 1 year.
8~ Nothing new has been recently added to the tank, other than a few live plants, but the mystery sickness started long before that.
9~ I feed mostly OmegaOne flake food, but also some sinking algae wafers and shrimp pellets for the catfish. I recently tried frozen brine shrimp to try to get the sick danio to eat. I also sometimes give them peas.
A litte more info:
About 3 months ago I did some research and thought maybe my fish were dying due to intestinal worms. I treated the whole tank with Prazipro and did see a lot of worms come out of the glofish. After that, I didn't have any sick fish for about 2 months. Then about a month ago, a power outage caused the temp in my tank to drop several degrees, which I think may have weakened my fish. When I noticed one getting sick again, I re-treated with Prazipro, but it did not help this time. I didn't see any worms and my fish did not recover.
Here's a photo from a few days ago. The blue fish has since lost most of his color and is laying on the bottom of the tank. I am considering euthanizing him, but wanted to wait for advice, and see if there was someway of examining him to determine what made him sick. There are now two more glofish who seem to be in the beginning part of losing weight, but still active and eating.
Please let me know if you have any ideas what may be killing my fish. I'm really sad and frustrated, and am hoping to treat the remaining fish so they can stay healthy this time!!
Thanks so much for any help
I just joined the forum to try to get some help with my sick aquarium before I give up at being a fishkeeper! Hopefully I can get some insight into what is going wrong...
I have a 10 gallon tank that is 1 year old currently occupied by 4 panda corys and 5 "glofish".
Here's the background info to help out:
1~ Every few months one of the glofish gets sick and dies. First it starts losing weight (while eating), then eventually stops eating and gets too weak to swim, then dies. This process takes several weeks each time. I don't see anything strange on the fish's body (no spots/wounds/etc). The most recent sick fish did lose a lot of his blue color and seemed to have bright red gills, but they could have just looked bright red because the rest of his body was so pale. This didn't happen in any of the other fish. I think all of the corys are fine, although one does seem a little smaller and more shy these days, but I might just be paranoid.
2~ Temp is 74. Water parameters according to API test kit:
Nitrate- 5; Nitrite- 0; Ammonia- 0; pH- 8.2 (it comes out of the tap this way, and I was told that a stable pH is easier on the fish than trying to lower it with chemicals)
3~ Its a 10 gallon tank, one year old.
4~ The filter is an aquaclear 20.
5~ There are currently 9 fish in the tank. One is almost dead. They are all full grown I think...
6~ Last water change/vacuum was two days ago. I do this about once a week and change about 30% of the water. I use seachem prime when adding new water.
7~ All of the fish have been there at least 6 months. The longest is 1 year.
8~ Nothing new has been recently added to the tank, other than a few live plants, but the mystery sickness started long before that.
9~ I feed mostly OmegaOne flake food, but also some sinking algae wafers and shrimp pellets for the catfish. I recently tried frozen brine shrimp to try to get the sick danio to eat. I also sometimes give them peas.
A litte more info:
About 3 months ago I did some research and thought maybe my fish were dying due to intestinal worms. I treated the whole tank with Prazipro and did see a lot of worms come out of the glofish. After that, I didn't have any sick fish for about 2 months. Then about a month ago, a power outage caused the temp in my tank to drop several degrees, which I think may have weakened my fish. When I noticed one getting sick again, I re-treated with Prazipro, but it did not help this time. I didn't see any worms and my fish did not recover.
Here's a photo from a few days ago. The blue fish has since lost most of his color and is laying on the bottom of the tank. I am considering euthanizing him, but wanted to wait for advice, and see if there was someway of examining him to determine what made him sick. There are now two more glofish who seem to be in the beginning part of losing weight, but still active and eating.
Please let me know if you have any ideas what may be killing my fish. I'm really sad and frustrated, and am hoping to treat the remaining fish so they can stay healthy this time!!
Thanks so much for any help