My tank is melting

[IKeepPacu]

personally, i would start with an air stone or two. heavy breathing has always been followed by an air pump with me, and then worry about what needs to be done. even if O2 is difficult to dissolve in FW, any little bit will help the fish IMO.

what started out as fairly simple case of ich, could have been made worse by oxygen depletion from meds and a high water temp. fixing one thing but making something else worse is unfortunetly all too easy to do.

 

[kzimmerman]

Is there anything that you may have overlooked? A broken heater, a change in water source paremeters, did you forget to dechlorinate or something similar? Any unusual markings, bloating or anything on the deceased fish? How heavily aquascaped is your tank?
Saying that you found fish dead, floating at the surface concerns me. When fish first die, they sink. It takes a while for decomposition to start, creating internal gasses which floats the corpse. Is it possible that you have a pocket of dead fish somewhere in the tank that you don't know about? I've put fish in tanks before, and then never seen them again, so don't feel bad if you do find an area like that.

 

[TaratronVaeVictus]

The fish I have found floating ARE all doradis, for the most part, and I think I found the last two dead ones today--one was stuck in a damn breeding tube and the other was floating. Am doing 50% water changes every other day, and pulled out all the breeding tubes and the like earlier. Tomorrow will take everything out save for the driftwood (long narrow branches, no place for a fish to hide) and filters.

One hoplo has a "wart," white, on a barbel. Another looks almost to have something similar to hole-in-the-head.

 

[knifegill]

Did you add any salt before this started? Doradids don't tolerate any salt at all. Raphaels, I know for certain, cannot handle any salt at all.

But raphs don't mind high temps one bit. I used Ich Cure II (designed for plecos, contains only malachite green and one other ingredient) and high temps when my tank got ich from new angelfish early this year. Full recovery.

This could also be toxicity. Like canaries, catfish are often the first to absorb (and suffer from) certain meds and solutes. So if you changed the water chemistry or accidentally got soap (or other residue) on one of your aquarium tools, the catfish's bodies might have been the first to soak it up and attain a high concentration of whatever it was in their tissues and organs. Just a thought.

Did you burn any scented candles? Clean the carpets? Spray for termites or use air freshener? Environmental toxins can enter the tank a variety of ways. A poisoned fly could have fallen into your tank for that matter. The added stress could have led to comprised immunity causing susceptibility to ich or other diseases which are normally harmless to healthy fish.

I hope you can save the rest of your fish.

 

[TaratronVaeVictus]

No sprays, no soaps, no salt at all, no medications save for Mela and Pimafix. I am wondering if some of them died and caused the ammonia spike, and then more died from that to the point I am at now. That would explain the floating bodies at least--they'd be dead for a while.

 

[Matt724]

hey, yeah. I'm sorry for giving wrong advice before, i forgot that you had catfish, which can't stand salt one bit. I agree that oxygen is probably what they need so more airstones. And, kzimmerman, my LFS performs autopsies on fish that I bring in. As for temperature, I personally would increase it slowly if you still have ich, as long as you add airstones. Water changes is necessary, making sure to gravel vac, especially if you have sand as one problem could be an anaerobic air bubble that was trapped and started releasing harmful toxins into the water. So waterchanges, gravel vacs, and i would personally stay away from pima and melafix. Hope everything works out =)

 

[TwistedPenguin]

Just to set the record straight I've 'salted catfish' many times. Raphaels, fancy Plecs, FeatherFins at the rate of 2 TBS salt/5 g. It's a heck of a lot safer than ich meds. It's pretty hard to tell if Raphaels (esp the Spotted's) have ich as they almost never break out in spots because of their tough hides. Not to mention a drop in temp would NOT cause ich. Ich has to be introduced by something-new plants that are carrying the ich cysts, new snails from the LFS, etc. If no plants, snails or new fish have been added to the tank in 2 months then it's NOT ich. The 1st death was probably just one of those things and in my opinion you caused the other deaths with the Melafix, PrimaFix and all the other changes done. I don't care what WalMart says-MelaFix sucks and does no good. I'd get the temp back to 80 and get the MelaFix, PrimaFix & salt out of the tank and continue on the way you were before you started messing with it. And they do NOT have HITH like you thought, by the way.

 

[Tanyoberu]

Sorry for the loss of the fish. I know it can be frustrating when your pets just die off like that and nothing seems to work. I had a similar case and the one thing that stood out that you mentioned is your sponge filters. Take them out and clean them! They provide good colonies of bacteria for your tank, heck, they hold bacteria! Good and bad.

Since you have other bacteria holding media in your tank, I'd start over with the sponges. Boil them! Soak them in a super Salt Solution! If you have the time, bleach them! It's what I had to do to save one of my tanks. I hope it helps, but otherwise good luck!

 

[jclyde13]

oh yeah, i used that the first time i had ich, but i realized as long as you get iodine free salt, you should be good; and you save money. only bad part is when your mom is cooking and she asks you where the salt is and you pull it out from under your tank stand and she says nevermind lol

lol