Cant keep anglefish alive?!?

Question
Hey Karen,

 My name is Michael, and Ive been having problems with keeping angelfish alive.  Ill start by saying that I have around 10 year with freshwater fish, and this bugging the heck out of me!!  Mybe two minds will fix this problem :).  

 It all stared when I sold my oscar.  I had him for around 3 1/2 to 4 years, and I wanted to go back with a community tank again.  The tank is a 55 gallon,lightly planted tank, with a PH of 7.8-7.9 stable, nitrates 10-15 ppm, nitrite and ammonia is at 0.  Hardness is 200 GH ppm, and alkalinity is around 300 KH ppm.  I have pretty hard water.  As of right now the tank has been running two months with out the oscar.  I did two 100% water changes to make sure I started with a nitrate free start.  I cleaned the gravel until the water came out clear.  I ran the tank for a week with only a zebra pleco.  I was also putting "CYCLE" in the tank.  It helps cylce a tank faster, by putting a boost in the bacteria.  I never had an ammonia spike, and the water seemed to still have a great bio-filter going after all the cleaning.  I am still running one of the power filter, and a sponge filter in the tank.  The same ones that I used with the oscar.  I figured he was so messy that the bio filter was full enough to keep the new tank going great.  After 2 weeks I put a school of 5 lemon tetras in the tank.  They did great, so I went back and got a school of 8 harlequin Rrsbora.  So far I have yet to loose any of them.  So after a week or so I thought I would try some angels.  This is were the I went wrong.  I bought 3, hopping they would do good and I would get more to make a little group.  They all died within a day.  Most would hang out at the top of the water and pant really bad.  I thought something was wrong with the water so I did a 50% water change and waited another 2 weeks before adding anything.  All the water permitters came out great, so I went back and bought 3 again.  Two were about quarter size and one was half dollar size.  One died in about an hour. So I took it back to get a new one.  That night the two small ones died, but the half dollar one lived for some reason.  So now I was mad.  I felt like a noobie again.  Ive never had trouble keeping angels before.  Ive had them for years, and even had some breed in this same water.  At one point Ive had discus with good luck, so I thought I knew what I was doing.  Last night the bigger angle died, after a week of doing great. Eating like an angel ( a pig), and had great color.  It was breathing kinda hard though.  I bought a pair of rams almost a week ago and they are doing great.  They are breathing normal, eating, and showing real personality.  I dont know what Im doing wrong.  Maybe the angels Im getting are all ready sick, or they are from real soft water, and are going through a ph shock.  But all the angels at the store are doing great, and they use the same water as me.  They are not on a main filter system, they use filter in every tank.  If you have any ideas, let me know.  Hopefully the two of use can figure this out.  Thanks for your time,

 Michael


Answer
Dear Michael,
This is truly a mystery, but one I hope we can solve!
I can only guess at a few reasons I know of that could possibly be the cause of the mysterious Angelfish losses.

Since both your petstore and you have the same water. It couldn't be water chemistry changes like you figured.

My next big thought was like you mentioned perhaps the angelfish you currently have are sick before you even bring them home. Maybe they are ich infested only in their gills? This can happen. I have also heard of Ich not appearing very clearly on a fish at times or just being in their gills and causing the sudden losses. Especially since you mentioned your angels panting badly as well.

Basically from what you described. You could certainly just be getting ahold of some very weak or sick Angels who might be too stressed from the move from the dealer's tank to yours for them to recover. Generally, Angelfish are never this delicate unless water conditions are bad but yours is not.

This breathing hard and gasping is definately a clue  to these sad losses of such lovely fish.
Maybe they had a parasitic infection or another type of illness that affected their breathing and gills.

The fact that your other fish are doing great, especially the normally delicate and suceptible rams, must mean it is something wrong with the angelfish themselves...

The best advice I can give here is to try a different source for your Angelfish. Try visiting a different petstore and trying a few of their Angelfish to see how well they do. Maybe it's just the current stock at your local petstore that is weak and switching petstores may help.

I really hope this helps and I will continue doing research on this matter and I'll be sure to let you know if I come up with anything!

Sounds like you are a very good and caring fishkeeper, I wish you only the best!

Karen~