Rapidly Loosing Healthy Looking Fish - Please Help ASAP!!!

[elspeth2000]

Hi there,

This is my first post - I've trawled these forums but cannot find an answer. Sure one of the pros around here will come up trumps though... they have to, I'm at my wits end!!

Heres the story:
I have a healthy tank, 10 months old, no deaths. 1 Siamese fighter, 8 black neons, 5 corydoras, 4 otosinclus. Everyone got on fine. Mix of frozen foods, dry foods and live daphnia.

A fortnight ago I added some new plants.

Last weekend I added 8 neon tetras and 2 german gold rams.

First of all 3 of the neons died. I thought this was just a bad batch. Then one of my black neons died. Then another neon. Now the German Gold ram has died.

All seemed to be fine (and I've been watching them closely & near constantly as you do when you have new additions!). Their colours were all amazing, new signs of weakness at all.

Each time I've noticed the fish swimming jerkily upside down, vertically etc. looking distressed and 'gasping'. And within 5 minutes of noticing it, it's died (in hind sight, there was a loss of appetite and vigour on the morning of feeding, 4 hours before). At first I tried putting them in a floating segregation tank, thinking it might have been a swim bladder problem, but this made no difference. They died so spontaneously that their colours were all bright until the second they died.

I've looked round and the best I can come up with is neon tetra disease - but even this doesn't add up. It's too rapid and there are no signs of degredation.

I hope someone can help, this is giving me sleepless nights! Any help will be gratefully received.

I off to inspect behind the rams gills.

 

[nycfatcow]

IMO i think that the new fish that you added to your tank was carrying some disease... usually for an established tank i wont really add anything new unless i had another tank to quartine the new guys. I believe that is the cause to the fish's death.. but you need the other pros here to tell you how to stop this....

 

[BillD]

Personally, I do a 50% water change as soon as something like that happens, with no obvious symptoms. I would then do another the next day. Even when there are symptoms, and a course of treatment is planned, I do the 50% change before the treatment. If nothing else it removes 50% of any waterborne contagions, whether it be chemical or pathogenic organisms.

 

[Creamhorses]

Have you checked your water quality [ies]?

If they are ok, any number of your recent additions could have come with problems. Previous posts pretty much sum it up.

Good luck to you and your fish.

CH

 

[Devilishturtles]

How did you acclimate the new fish to your tank? The fact that one of your black neons died while introducing the new fish could just be a conicidence..might not be though. What size tank is this?

If the store's water is a lot different from you water and you didn't acclimate the fish to your tank, the symptoms you described would occur. IME, the erratic swimming either comes from internal bacterial infections or pretty extreme shock of some kind (be it water quality, or the way fish were handled). If you can, find out the water parameters of the stores, then list yours.

HTH, welcome to AA.

 

[bs6749]

What size tank is it? Just wondering since it wasn't stated.

I think it may be some sort of parasite that the fish picked up at the lfs. When you introduced the fish to your tank you didn't go through a QT period beforehand but did you dump the water from the lfs into the tank? You may have introduced the parasite to the others in the tank as well. I recommend doing a large PWC (50-75% depending on tank size). If you have a smaller tank I would change more water since it would be easier to do.

As Lindsay said, differences in water conditions may have caused your fish to go into shock. Great differences in pH supposedly can cause this but I have never had anything like this happen before.

 

[elspeth2000]

Thank you all for your replies.

Here's some of the details I neglected from my original post:
The tank is a 125 litre Juwel tank.
Water quality, temperature etc appears fine. Both myself and the supplier use rainwater and have the temp at 26 degrees.
On receiving the fish, I left the bag in the tank until the temperatures equalised, then made a tear in the bag to allow the water to slowly mix.
The ram died today, after a week and a half in the tank. As stated before, I don't think it is any sort of shock as they have appeared very 'happy' (for lack of a better word) until their deaths, which in some cases has taken over a week.
No quaratine tank - we only have a humble abode!

I dissected the ram and noticed the gill area was a browny colour, and it was solid, rather than the redder, feathery type I have seen on healthy fish.

Just got back in and noticed that the stomaches on 2 of the neons look rather distended. Does this help?

I'm so gutted, it really has been going great up to now. I'll do a 50% water change after work tomorrow.

Thanks again.

 

[roka64]

Proper acclimation is very important to fish (even more so to inverts). I prefer the drip acclimation. This gives me time to mess around with the tank getting it ready for my new critters.
Rain water is full of pollutants and could be the cause of some of the deaths.
Definitely mixing your LFS into your tank can lead to any amount of parasitic/viral/bacterial infection. You should never let their water in your tank or at least as little as possible.
I would also suggest the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Freshwater Master Test Kit http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/Prod_Display.cfm?pcatid=4454&N=2004+114130 to keep up with your water parameters. Since you are using rain water, I would also suggest you running GAC, constantly to rid the water of pollutants.

 

[Zagz]

You haven't stated your exact parameters, what is your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate? Check with the lfs and see if they have suffered any amount of unexplained deaths. It doesn't sound like a parasite to me. Do you have an airstone? I would have to agree on doing the pwc's to be on the safe side. It certainly does sound like something with the water, whether it be acclimation or parameters.