HELP! My fish are all dying

[foothead]

I had two small african cichlids, a danio, a jack dempsy (5-6 in.) and a green terror (4-5 in.) in a 55 gallon tank. Yesterday I did the first water change in about 4 weeks (I had a broken arm and couldn't do it any earlier). I treated the water with aquanova plus. I woke up this morning and realized the danio was dead and was being eaten by the other fish. I scooped it out. All the other fish seemed fine. Two hours ago, the other fish seemed fine. About an hour ago, I looked in and the two africans were lying on the bottom, barely breathing. One was being blown around by the pump. The two larger cichlids were still swimming around, but breathing heavily. I immediately set up a 10 gallon tank and treated the water. I put the two cichlids in bags and they are floating now. The africans are both dead.

What should I do? I don't have access to transportation until about 6:00. I assume I should do a salt dip, but I have never done it before, and need to know what concentrations I should use. I have access to aquarium salt (the synthetic type for reef tanks), and sea salt. Which should I use and how much?

I am completely freaking out right now. I have had these fish for quite a while now, and it is devastating to lose them. Please advise me on what to do.

Many thanks.

 

[goestonemoa]

well im here to help and what you should do IMO is about a 20-25% watter change with 1 tblspn of sat per 10 gallon in the tank and i would crank the temp up to about 84f and continue the watter changes until tank has been suficiantly flushed
what i do with the multiple changes is measure the inches take out and replace the salt i have removed with the watter change
there is a conversions chart at the top of the page it helped me greatly
hope this will help
and if you already knew all this im sorry for waisting space
have a good day and good luck with your tank
if you have anymore questions feel free to PM me

 

[OddBallKeeper]

Oh i Dont know much about salt baths but you should buy the expensive treatment for whitespot it works on everything And do you have a Air Disc or something like that?

 

[foothead]

Quick update - I netted them out of the bags and into the qt tank, to avoid transferrring contaminated water. I watched the 55 gal tank for a few minutes and saw a couple of worms about 1 cm. long. They definitely were noty there (or at least not visible) yesterday. I have an aqwuatech 30-60 pump running on the qt tank.

well im here to help and what you should do IMO is about a 20-25% watter change with 1 tblspn of sat per 10 gallon in the tank and i would crank the temp up to about 84f and continue the watter changes until tank has been suficiantly flushed
what i do with the multiple changes is measure the inches take out and replace the salt i have removed with the watter change
there is a conversions chart at the top of the page it helped me greatly
hope this will help
and if you already knew all this im sorry for waisting space
have a good day and good luck with your tank
if you have anymore questions feel free to PM me

Thanks. That helps. I'm actually going to drain the entire tank and clean it thoroughly before any fish go back in it. But the amt. of salt definitely helps. They are going in a 29 gal. tonight or tomorrow.

Oh i Dont know much about salt baths but you should buy the expensive treatment for whitespot it works on everything And do you have a Air Disc or something like that?

What is the active ingredient in this? I have some coppersafe left over at my dad's house that I could get to tonight assuming he didn't throw it out, but I have heard that copper and cichlids don't do too well together.

Also, I have an air disk, but I don't want to transfer whatever parasite/bacteria/whatever is in the big tank. I assume the bubbles would help somehow?

 

[goestonemoa]

no prob any time

 

[floridagar]

Add the aquarium salt never hurts cause it gets rid of a lot of disease that float in the tank. And one question what food cause same thing happened to me when i used a certain food killed all my fish within an hour (i did not over feed them). went back to my LFS and told them what happened and now they don't sell that food anymore. but repost if you know and did you save any fish?

 

[foothead]

Add the aquarium salt never hurts cause it gets rid of a lot of disease that float in the tank. And one question what food cause same thing happened to me when i used a certain food killed all my fish within an hour (i did not over feed them). went back to my LFS and told them what happened and now they don't sell that food anymore. but repost if you know and did you save any fish?

I last fed them wardley premium floating cichlid pellets. I normally feed hikari cichlid bio gold but I ran out and used what I had.

I think I saved the jack dempsy and the green terror. They are in the qt tank and seem to be swimming around a bit more.

 

[goestonemoa]

when you switch tanks are you taking any biological filtration materials from the old tank to help get the new one started

 

[foothead]

when you switch tanks are you taking any biological filtration materials from the old tank to help get the new one started

No, I'm woried that it might be contaminated. I did pull some gravel from my pond's undergravel filter though. It seemed to do okay when I first set the tank up.

I Spent the entire day cleaning the tank, then I sterilized it with bleach and cleaned it again. I am going to get some coppersafe in an hour or so, and hopefully that will knock out whatever is left. The fish seem to be doing better btw. They're breathing more normally and they started nipping at each other again.