Help...healthy fish dieing

[s2ary]

Hi folks,
I’m new here and I hate to come in asking for help, but I do not know where to turn.

Seventeen days ago I had a healthy 265 gallon tank with seven 8-10 inch spotted Muskies and two 8 inch plecostomyses. The tank has been established since x-mas, and has live plants. I run three Magnum 350’s with 2 intakes at the mid level of the tank and one under gravel. One filter is straight carbon, one ammonia carb, and one polisher, the outflows crisscross with the out flows to ensure that all 3 water sources mix.

Every week I add 5 dz feeder gold fish to the tank that are gone in two days, and everything is happy.

15 days ago I added 7 dz feeders to the tank. As usual 3-4 dz are gone that night, but the next morning the rest of the feeders are dead on the bottom with a white fungus/bacteria on them.

I scooped them out, and while scooping them out I think a few of the muskies ate a couple. Over the next few days I lost 2 of the muskies. Then another muskie and the two plecos. Finally after the tank seemed fine for a few days, I lost another muskie last night.

After checking with the pet shop, they claim to have not had a problem, and check the ammonia levels. Both the ammonia and ph levels are a little off but acceptable.

Can anyone help me out, it is like the tank is crashing. Could it be a bacterial thing?

Thanks in advance,
Geoff

 

[Alshain]

Hi folks,
I’m new here and I hate to come in asking for help, but I do not know where to turn.

Well first of all, thats why we are here so don't hesitate to consult with us.

Seventeen days ago I had a healthy 265 gallon tank with seven 8-10 inch spotted Muskies and two 8 inch plecostomyses. The tank has been established since x-mas, and has live plants. I run three Magnum 350’s with 2 intakes at the mid level of the tank and one under gravel. One filter is straight carbon, one ammonia carb, and one polisher, the outflows crisscross with the out flows to ensure that all 3 water sources mix.

Every week I add 5 dz feeder gold fish to the tank that are gone in two days, and everything is happy.

15 days ago I added 7 dz feeders to the tank. As usual 3-4 dz are gone that night, but the next morning the rest of the feeders are dead on the bottom with a white fungus/bacteria on them.

I scooped them out, and while scooping them out I think a few of the muskies ate a couple. Over the next few days I lost 2 of the muskies. Then another muskie and the two plecos. Finally after the tank seemed fine for a few days, I lost another muskie last night.

After checking with the pet shop, they claim to have not had a problem, and check the ammonia levels. Both the ammonia and ph levels are a little off but acceptable.

Can anyone help me out, it is like the tank is crashing. Could it be a bacterial thing?

Thanks in advance,
Geoff

The white fuzz you say you saw often happens with the corpse begins to decay. Can you give us any more specific information on the water parameters? We could use numbers for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, temperature, etc. The sticky at the top of this forum gives good guidelines for what we need...

1~What type of fish is afflicted? In addition, please describe what is wrong with the fish to the best of your ability (i.e. cotton like growth, bloated, etc.).
2~What are your tank parameters (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, temp, pH)? Please give exact values.
3~ How large is the tank? How long has the tank been 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.
5~How many fish are in the tank? What kinds of fish are they and what are their current sizes?
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?
7~How long have you had the fish? If the fish is new, how did you acclimate it/them?
8~Have you added anything new to the tank--decor, new dechlorinator, new substrate, etc.?
9~What kind of food have you been feeding your fish, have you changed their diet recently?

 

[s2ary]

Thanks,

The temp is in the 70-72 degree F range.

The pH is 6.2 ish

And the amonia is in the safe zone, by on test, and at the pet store their two part test turned slighly green when yellow was the optimum color.

Beyond that I'm not sure of anything else.

The only thing that has changed in the tank since early spring was the weekly addition of feeder goldfish.

 

[Jchillin]

Welcome to AA!

I believe this is a definite problem:

Every week I add 5 dz feeder gold fish to the tank that are gone in two days, and everything is happy.

15 days ago I added 7 dz feeders to the tank. As usual 3-4 dz are gone that night, but the next morning the rest of the feeders are dead on the bottom with a white fungus/bacteria on them.

Feeders are inherently bad for our livestock. As you know, they are crammed by the hundreds into small tanks. The amount of diseases or parasites present within them isn't known until they are fed to other fish.

I will await the answers to the other questions before going further.

 

[s2ary]

Ah said the grasshopper, I think I see it now. The links up top were very informative and helped me narrow it down. 8)

Tell me if this is plausible;

I bought 7 dozen feeder gold fish and an hour or two later (ya, I didn’t think about it and went to home depot ) dumped them in the tank, and because I was in a hurry, the three gallons of water they were in went into the tank as well. (First and last time I do that. )

The water that came in with the feeders was very high in ammonia, and as the water and the fish hit the tank the four most aggressive muskies rushed in and burned their gills to varying degrees.

The goldfish died overnight while it took a few days to two weeks for the muskies to die. But it does not account for the death the plecos which died after one week.

Because the tank is established and has live plants, the ammonia spike has been neutralized but the fish are still dying possibly from ammonia toxicities evil twin nitrite poisoning or as a result of their sustained injuries.