Sick Fish....Please Help!! Soon!! :0(

Question
QUESTION: Hello,
  My name is Kristal, and I have a 75 gallon tank (5 Tanks in all). I will start by telling you about the tank, the Ammonia, Nitrite and nitrates are all at 0 the PH is 7.6. Our water temp ranges from 80.4 to 80.9 (80.9 at the hottest time of day, we live in AZ). We have 2 Canisters 1 Magnum 350, and a Fluval 3. We also just bought a steralizer, which my boyfriend just turned off because we don't know what is going on in the tank. we also have live plants in the tank, we add plant nutrients to the tank which are fish safe. we do not use aquarium salt, we do use the stuff for tap water though to make it okay. We waited a MONTH for the tank to cycle and watched everything VERY Closely. We just started adding fish, and have kept check on the water paremeters. 2 weeks ago we started to add fish. We NOW have 1 Blue Paradise Gourami, 1 Gold Gourmai, 1 Figure Eight Puffer Fish, 4 German Blue Rams, 2 Red Tail Catfish, 2 Petracola catfish, 3 apple snails, and some ghost shrimp. I say now because we had 2 other fish that have gone to fishy heaven. we HAD an opaline Gourami who we think died of stress, when we first put him in there he freaked out. 2 days later he was fine, then the next day he wasn't swimming and was laying on the bottom getting picked on by the other fish. so we put him in our hospital tank were he died a day later. that was last sunday. Then our Powder Blue Dwarf Gourami who has also died, had (not trying to be gross)white stringy poop coming out that wouldn't go away. He was also VERY bloated, we didn't think anything was wrong with him, just thought he ate tooo much. Of course the next day he was dead. He died this pas friday!! NOW, 2 of our blue rams are not doing well at all, they are breathing Really heavily and there gills are sticking out very far. They are also not swimming much at all. and when they do swim it looks like they sway back and forth, go a little ways that sit on the bottom of the tank. I don't know what is going on, all of the fish have been having different symptoms. I really dont want anymore of my fish to die..I am getting attached to them!! Right now my boyfriend is doing a water change on the tank, hoping it will help. Can you please give me any advice on WHAT to do?!? I will do ANYTHING at this point!! Please help as soon as possible, I don't want anymore of my fishys to die!!

Thank you.

ANSWER: Hi Kristal.  I need for you to answer a couple of questions for me in order for me to sort some things out.

1. You say you have a 75 gallon tank, 5 tanks in all.  Does that mean you have 5 tanks and you are talking about your 75 gallon tank at this point, or you have 5 tanks equaling 75 gallons??

2.  Did you add these fish all at once?  If not, please let me know what fish you added with which.

3.  The fish that have gills sticking out, are they bloated also?  Do they look kind of like porcupines with the scales sticking out and bloated?  This answer is very important.

4.  The white stringy poop on the one fish...could it have been a parasite coming out?  Did it look like normal fish poop or something else? Did it ever fall off of the back of them or just stay there?

Please answer these questions ASAP by hitting the follow-up button.

Also, I would just like to know if you did research in keeping all these types of fish together, or did you just get the types of fish you liked?

Lastly, are you both beginners, novice or well educated about fish? This is also an important question.

Thanks, and I will wait to hear from you.  I will get back to you as soon as I can after you write me back.

Thank you.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Again,

  Well Sorry to say, the to Blue Rams who were not doing good last night have pasted away. But the other two rams are doing GREAT!! They are eating swimming and there color is awesome. I forgot to tell you one thing, we had gotten the fish from two different places. One from a LFS that the 2 that have died came from, which they were in poor conditions when we bought them. And it took the guy like 15 min to catch them. Spike was also very beaten up when he came to us. The other 2 were from a different LFS where they were colorful and swimming and in clean tanks. Anyways, here are the answers to your questions.


1. We have 5 tanks in ALL, 1-5 Gal. snail tank, 1-10 Gal Betta tank, 1-30Gal. Community tank, 1-46 Gal. Dwarf Puffer tank, and our 75 Gallon Tank which is Semi-Aggressive Tank (Which none of the fish are really aggressive LOL)

2. No, we did not add all of these fish at once. Also all of the fish are only about 1 Inch in length if that, we wanted smaller fish so we could watch them grow. We first added the 2 Blue Rams from the LFS (The ones that have just passed away last night) and 1 of the Petracola Catfish. We liked the Petracola so much, and felt he needed a buddy, so the next night we bought another one. That same night we bought the 3 Gouramis (2 of which have passed, and about 2 days ago we added another 1). We also had purchased 2 Rams Earlier in the day (which are from the clean LFS and still doing well).  Then the next night we bought 2 Red Tailed Sharks. We have been checking the water parameters every time before we went and bought more fish, everything has been okay.

3. The 2 Blue Rams that have passed and were sick Did not have there gills sticking out at all, and they were not bloated either. Spike was very skinny and never really ate, he would eat about 1 blood worm and be done. The other one would eat fine, and looked healthy otherwise. He never really did swim much. And none of the other fish are having a hard time breathing or anything.

4. The Stringy thing coming out could have been a parasite, none of our fish in any of our tanks have ever had a parasite. So I don't really know what that looks like, the only thing I have ever seen is ICH and not on my fish only at fish stores. It never fell off, we thought he was having problems getting it to fall off so my boyfriend took him out put him in some water out of the tank and wiped it off. He was very bloated but I thought he had just eaten to much, he loved to eat. And none of the other fish have that either LOL.

We did so much research it is not even funny, both my Boyfriend and I would research every night. We had this tank cycling for a month prior to buying fish and we would go to the fish stores find fish we liked write them down, and then we would go home and research them. We would also go back and ask the guy at the LFS about the fish and compare answers. None of the fish are having problems being with eachother, they all get along. The blue rams only chase each other, and it is only when they are in the others territory. The Red Tails only bother eachother and they usually just play, swimming around the tank together. They are all Semi-Aggressive fish, and we made sure they would all stay around the same size so that no one would over power another fish.

I would not consider us beginners, but we are not experts either. We have been doing this for about 8 Months and have only had 2 fish die prior to this, due to the fact that they were alage eaters and wouldn't eat wafers and there was little alage in our tank at the time. Other than that we have not had any other fish die, or get sick. All my boyfriend does is research, and upgrade, and more research.

Also I was wondering, are the UV Sterilizers a good thing to have in your tank? I know that they can help prevent parasites, and help make your water clear, I just want to make sure it won't hurt to have this in the tank.


Thank you for your help.

Answer
Hi Kristal, I am so so sorry for the delay (I have a 2 yo daughter who has asthma problems).

Ok, I read over everything you have told me, and the thing that keeps on hitting me, actually 2 things that keep popping out at me are this:

1.  You could have introduced a sick fish in to the tank and now have some type of illness running around.  However, without any of the fish showing any outward signs, it's hard to tell. In this case, I would not add anymore fish, and I would treat the tank with a broad-spectrum antibiotic to try to cover "everything it could be". This will destroy your biological system so you will have to bring it back very carefully through cleaning, water changes and water testing. I would suggest getting a Freshwater Test Kit and testing the water 1 time a day while treating the tank if you go this route, and do regular water changes when done treating to bring back the cycling. (There is info online about this. www.americanaquariumproducts.com has GREAT information on everything fish and it is very thorough and correct, run by a friend of mine with over 30 years experience. He also has a forum called www.everythingaquatic.com where you can join and ask questions, etc. and many many knowledgeable people there can help also. I would strongly suggest you go this route, it can be VERY helpful.)

2.  The second thing that jumps out at me is that you are adding a lot of fish at one time or within a short amount of time. This can also shock the delicate biological system, as the water needs time to adjust to the increasing waste/food/cycling, etc. It is suggested that you never add more then 3 or 4 fish a week, and with the larger ones, I would only do 2 a week myself (even if they are small).

Be sure that you are not over-feeding.  I know you've probably read this a million times but it is SO SO TRUE.  ONLY feed as much food as they will consume in a couple of minutes, and remove any extra. Don't thing that they will "go get it later", etc., which so many of us are guilty of (Trish raises hand), but this quickly converts to ammonia, etc. and helps upset the balance also.

Please let me know if this makes sense to you, and get back to me with any other questions you may have.  I would also add some aquarium salt, which has healing qualities for fish.  Make sure that if you have fish that are salt sensitive, you cut the dosage on the box in half.

Good luck, hope to hear from you soon.  (When you write back, please mark it "private" and I'll explain more to you why I said that).