egironda
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
In August, right before finding this website, I set up a 90 gallon FW tank. It has a Fluval 404, underwater heater (set @ 80 deg F), and 2 airstones & a bubble wall. We treated with BioSpira (thanks to this group) and started with 1 male and 2 female gold barbs and also 1 male and 2 female cherry barbs. A week later we added 1 male and 2 female gold barbs and also 1 male and 2 female cherry barbs, bringing the total to 6 and 6, also adding 1 male and 1 female each of black dalmatian mollies and white dalmatian mollies. They all seemed to love the expanse of the 90 gal tank, swimming all over the place, especially at feeding times. Everything was going smoothly, with 20 gallon water changes every other monday, and the water parameters: nh3 0, Ites 0, Ates around 10, and ph of 7.4. Just in time for the holidays, when we were looking to expand the 'family' with some more adoptions, it all went you know where in a handbasket!
Since Thanksgiving, we've lost both black dalmatian mollies, the female white dalmatian molly, all 6 of our gold barbs, and 2 of the 6 cherry barbs (we have 1 male and 3 females, he seems happy!) one at a time, initially 3 in the first week. We still don't know what has been causing the deaths, but have so far treated the main (90 gal FW) tank with Paragon II, after a week of adding MelaFix to that tank, while quarantining the individual sick fish in the 10 gal using Naladin and MelaFix. Now the 5 remaining fish are in the 10 gal being treated with Maracyn-two. It's a LOT cheaper to treat 10 gallons rather than 90!
All of the fish were acting sluggish, not eating, etc. while in the main tank. As soon as the net hit the water to get them out, they started swimming like Olympic stars. Now, they are swimming all over the little
10 gallon tank, eating everything that they can find. And making quite a mess, to the point that I cut the carbon media out of a brand new Penguin mini HOB filter so that I'd have the mechanical filtration for solids, without the chemical filtration to kill off the meds. That and 5 gallon water changes nightly to keep the ammonia from building up. The fish seem to be ok, we haven't lost any more since the hospital tank was set up, but I'm trying to figure out what was killing them.
Since Thanksgiving, we've lost both black dalmatian mollies, the female white dalmatian molly, all 6 of our gold barbs, and 2 of the 6 cherry barbs (we have 1 male and 3 females, he seems happy!) one at a time, initially 3 in the first week. We still don't know what has been causing the deaths, but have so far treated the main (90 gal FW) tank with Paragon II, after a week of adding MelaFix to that tank, while quarantining the individual sick fish in the 10 gal using Naladin and MelaFix. Now the 5 remaining fish are in the 10 gal being treated with Maracyn-two. It's a LOT cheaper to treat 10 gallons rather than 90!
All of the fish were acting sluggish, not eating, etc. while in the main tank. As soon as the net hit the water to get them out, they started swimming like Olympic stars. Now, they are swimming all over the little
10 gallon tank, eating everything that they can find. And making quite a mess, to the point that I cut the carbon media out of a brand new Penguin mini HOB filter so that I'd have the mechanical filtration for solids, without the chemical filtration to kill off the meds. That and 5 gallon water changes nightly to keep the ammonia from building up. The fish seem to be ok, we haven't lost any more since the hospital tank was set up, but I'm trying to figure out what was killing them.