whoa i need help

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freebyrd

freebyrd

Piranha
MFK Member
Jul 6, 2010
1,167
37
81
Virginia
today was just like any other day,
i was doing my water change in my festae/ornatum growout tank. a few days ago i bought a geo. steindachneri, and wanted to put him in the growout tank, so i did. i didnt add the pet stores water as i never do. turns out that he had ich, most likely from stress. i do not have a hospital tank available, so i just treated the tank. i used malachite green, APro quick cure. it has worked just fine for me in the past, when i brought home 5 clown loaches, a few of them had ich, in this very tank, so i did the exact same thing you know? well its been almost a week and some of the other fish now too, were starting to get ich. i went ahead and did my water change taking about 40% of the water out, and replacing it immediatly after.

well, since it hadnt seemed to me like the med was working, i took out my 4 HOB filter cartridges(they have carbon and the bottle says to remove it anyway - but i hadnt done this in the past) and i added 75-100 drops, its a 75 gallon. in all of this stuff going on i forgot to add my prime. 2 hours later i come back to the tank and to my surprise all the clown loaches were on their side and not moving, most of the ornatum the same way...plecos...and all of the festae huddled in the corner near the top. what in the HELL happend here?

to correct things, i immediatly did another 40% water change and put my carbon filtration cartridges back in. i used my prime in the water before adding to to the tank and now most of them are starting to move around a bit and almost "coming back" what did i do wrong? did chlorine do this due to forgetting to add the prime? it had only been two hours, so i dont understand what had happend to them so fast?! i feel horrible right now:nilly:
 
I dont know what would have done that, Did you try just bumping the temp up and adding salt to treat the ich? either way good luck I hope theres no casualties.
 
Hi,

I'm not sure if the untreated water you added could have affected them that quickly or not... hard to say for sure. Someone else may have a better answer there. Regarding the ich, what do you have your tank temp set at? I had a group of juvies of mine come down with ich several weeks ago. I'm not one who is that big on using meds so much, unless I become pretty desperate. What I did, honestly, was raised the tank temp up to about 86 degrees, and added a teaspoon of table salt for every 10 gallons of water. Two days later, partial water change, about half that amount of salt. Two more days, same thing. Day 5, ich appeared gone. I left the temp high for another three days, just to be safe. Then, I dropped the temp 2 degrees per day until it got back down to 80 - 82, where I kept it.

Ich does not like warm water, and I find salt being very good at helping fish heal from many things. Hope this helps some. Good luck.

-Rich
 
Probably the stress of the water change made them react that way. I agree with preston5321 about the ich, adding salt and bumping up the temperature always works a treat for me!
 
thanks for the comments, it appears that i lost 2 loaches and 1 cory, all the festae are fine and begging for food oddly enuff....the ornatum dont look so good...there are some that are doing better than others, the smallest one is still alive but is on his side in the sand, the others are swimming but looks very woosy.. and appear to have a slight cloudyness to their eyes. i wonder if adding the meds in combination with the chlorine could have caused some kind of reaction. im pretty upset this is my one tank that has been doing VERY well for many months with zero issues

my tank stays at about 84F all the time anyway.
 
I can understand the frustration... if I were you, I'd bump the temp up and add the salt, and mabye stop using the meds for now... don't seem to be working anyway.

My fish kept their appetite throughout the whole ordeal! I fed them sparingly, to make sure they kept their strength up. I did end up losing 3 of the original 7 I had at the time. One of my Festae juvies survived though... as did my Fenestratus and my two Vontehillos. But I did lose two Vontehillos and one Festae.

Keep us posted... I'm hoping you pull through this.

-Rich
 
Hey bud, nobody uses carbon anymore. Very simple way to cure ick is bumping up the temp to around 89 and using copper safe. Got to leave the tank alone now as it takes about three days for the ick to cycle through. And no carbon! In a week you can go about your water changes and bring the temp back down to normal. The fish in that tank should be immune to that ick bout but any new fish will have to be monitored.
 
Theres alot of close guesses here and I do mean guesses.

Activated Carbon removes meds from the water - period, it's the best and only use IMO. If the carbon was your only source of Bio-Media and you remove it, your also removing Nitrifying bacterial colonies which may cause ammonia to not be transformed. Also if you add Meds with carbon you run the risk of the carbon absorbing the meds before they have a chance to work. Cletted cooper is an exception.

Ick doesn't have "feelings" about higher temps or salt. Ick has a short lifespan, by increasing the temps you increase it's metabolism shorting it's lifespan. Ick species are found in saltwater, it's not the salt that kills the babies. It's the babies inability to adjust to the fluxuation in the water salinity after the salt dissolves.
 
In response to the ? on forgetting the water conditioner, In short yes it will cause all of the symptoms your fish had.

Back last year I did a water change on my pond and i too forgot to add water conditioner. Within 2 hours after fill-up, all of my fish where dead or laying on their sides gasping. I was too late with the water conditioner and i lost all, but i learned a valuable lesson. :) :( Sorry you lost some, glad you got there in time for most, good luck with the ick.
 
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