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When it rains it pours. Sick fish everywhere

3K views 26 replies 12 participants last post by  Nordic 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I've been really fustrated trying to get fish through quarantine without dying. I have been losing black ruby barbs in one tank, diamond tetras in another and columbian tetras in a third tank.

I have fished out and tossed about 6 fish the last couple days from my basement quarantine tanks.

So after cleaning up down there I did a water change in my 100 gal planted display tank. I went ahead and rinsed out my two hob filters, but left my canisters alone.

Afterwards I was viewing the tank and discovered that one of my rainbow fish appeared to have a bent spine and looked like it had TB. I didn't want to mess around with it so I went and got a net and removed the fish and euthanized it.

Went out to dinner and came home to my Electric Blue Acaras infected with what appears to be ich....

How can this all gone wrong in a matter of hours???

All I can think is maybe the net was infected? But I did dip it in a weak bleach water solution beforehand.

I'm freaking out now because my tank is heavily planted and there's no way to remove the fish without really tearing down the tank. Super high temps aren't going to work either.

:-(
I feel like someone kicked me in the gut

Here's one of my sick Acaras, sick pic from today, not sick pic from yesterday
 

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#2 ·
Ich. I'd say probably contaminated equipment, water, or invertebrates. Has anything been added lately?
Most likely it's been killing your other fish, hiding in their gills out of sight, and this guy is the first one tough enough to have it show up elsewhere.
 
#5 ·
I swear by UV lights and diatom filters. The diatom filter is run once or twice a month on all of my tanks. Over thirty years ago I started using diatoms and have never had ich since. Back then, UV was for the saltwater tanks. But today, there is no good reason not to have UV on freshwater tanks. I now buy the UV that hangs inside of the tank instead of buying powerheads, to move the water gently.

Both of my Parents were Ichthyologists ('ich' lol) that studied SA cichlids, bringing them in from the wild often. These fish had every parasite you could think of, but they kept a diatom filter running, and dosed them with single treatments of blue and yellow and red colored medicines (I was too young to remember anything but the colors). Point is, diatom filters are awesome, because these wild caught fish were scrubbed of infection within a few days, and lived long lives in captivity. I've asked to be buried with my diatom filter, so I'll be ready for that aquarium in the sky.
 
#9 ·
As far as uv goes you have to slow the flow down to get it to kill parasites.(big unit slow flow) I have never had ich in my tanks and I don't use diatom filters but have in the pass. I don't think there the miracle cure but they can help. How long do you quarantine your fish? Do you see losses in your q.t.

All these fish were health and eating well before they got sick?
If so then you had to bring it in and contaminated the other tanks wither thru a net or adding water from another tank.
 
#12 ·
I've had really great success with using Paraguard, especially when the infection is spotted early. It also does not require activated carbon to be removed as it perciptates out of the water column after 24 hrs.
I would start use of it ASAP. If the infection is able to proceed into a second wave you most likely will experience some loses. If after a few days of treatment you believe the infestation is more advanced than you thought you could discontinue use of Paraguard and use Metro-plex + Focus in a medicated food mix. I've done this myself and to be honest, even though Seachem does not recommend it, I've even continued use of Paraguard while treating with the medicated food mix. I've done this in a tank with sensitive wild caught Otos and Cory cats.
One other thing of importance is to continue medicating for at least 3 weeks even if no sign of infection is present. I've made this mistake. I read so many posts from people discouraging the use of medication that I stopped after a week and came to regret it.

Also something to consider going forward: I now also use Paraguard in the recommended higher concentration for one hour dips on any new livestock I receive. I then use the normal dose for a one week period in my quarantine tank. This practice has spared me a lot of frustration!
 
#24 ·
Yes to be expected. One trophant (responsible for the white spot) is capable of producing 2,000 additional free swimming parasites. I suspect you caught it in its fist wave and luckily not in a second wave which is often deadly.

The medicine is only capable of killing the parasite at the stage where they emerge from the fish or rupture out of the cycst formed in the substrate. The entire life cycle is temperature dependent: about 6 days at 82°, 15 at 60°, and 30-40 at 40°

Higher temps obviously speed up this life cycle. However, higher temps can cause additional stress on the fish and allow for the parasite to reproduce in greater number. 2x and a half times as many are produced from an encycstrd trophant at 76° than at 70°.
Though it can be said that medicating also causes stress and so turning up the heat to increase life cycle would mean less time needing to do so.

That said I would still recommend treating for no less than 3 weeks and so a temp in the high 70s would be sufficient.

Keep us updated!
 
#14 ·
What's the tank temperature?

I've never seen ich hit so fast and hard like what you are showing (pleco pic is kinda blurry to really tell if that is 100% ich). Usually just a few visible ich cysts/spots show up daily.

If the water quality isn't that great, I'd suggest doing some water changes (vacuum too). If the water they live isn't healthy, even medicating with the best meds won't do much.
 
#16 ·
I agree, that's pretty fast and aggressive even for ich. There's got to be an underlying stress factor that's weakening them to that degree and that quickly. Water changes can only do good things. My overcrowded guppy tanks tell me when I'm just a day or two behind on water changes.
 
#15 ·
Like Water eluded to above, water changes and vacuum. Also bump your heat up which speeds up the life cycle of ich. Whenever I've gotten inch I've raised my temp as high as my heaters would take it, upwards of 86 degrees. Some of your plants may take a hit due to the higher temp but it will make your battle with ich shorter.
 
#18 ·
Water is at 83.
I had it at 86 for a few days and the fish and plants were miserable. Had to scoop handfuls of leaves out of the water multiple times per day. My fish were zipping up and down the airstone bubbles and acting bizarre.
My lfs freshwater specialist told me to make the temp only a couple degrees higher than normal, normal is 78 here. She said going bonzo with the heat will only give my fish respiratory problems and hurt things. Also seachem advises not doing a lot of water changes during treatment. I change the water once a week, about 50%. I don't vacuum substrate because it's sand and heavily planted. There isn't clear areas of substrate.

Water parameters are great.
Not sure what is stressing them out.
:-(
 
#22 ·
Ich.

I would do this:
Add salt at the rate of 1 teaspoon per 20 gallons. This is just enough to ease some of the stress, but is OK for the plants. When you do water changes add just enough salt for the amount of new water. This is not enough to kill Ich. It helps stressed fish with osmotic balance.

Daily or every other day water changes. Goal is to remove as many Ich babies as possible, and to remove the breeding Ich, which often land on the substrate, but also land on many other surfaces in the tank.
This will also make sure the water quality is the best.

Then ONE of the following:
UV sterilizer. Do not use UV and medicine at the same time. UV may break down the meds faster.
Medicine. Pick one and dose per label directions. Continue dosing until at least 3 days after you have seen the last Ich spot on the fish.

Raising the temp is optional. As you have seen, your fish are stressed, so do not do this. Ich can live in the gills, perhaps this is part of the problem. Increase the oxygen content of the water by increasing the surface water movement.
 
#23 ·
I can't think of what could be stressing out my fish in the first place, to allow the ich to take hold so fast.

I just had a scary thought though. The tank is about 7 months along and is a heavily planted dirted tank.
Do you think the dirt could be full of anaerobic bacteria?

There's a lot of MTS and roots.
 
#25 ·
I spoke too soon :-(
Today I did a large water change, tried to vacuum and removing dying plants that were shedding everywhere.

Moved some filters around to help with flow. While doing this I found the pleco dead, then a dead denison barb, then a dead rainbowfish.

Had sone trouble getting my canister filter started, was blowing air and cutting in and out. I shook it and a nasty black cloud came out so I cleaned it in declorinated water.

While doing that accidentally let my other tank overflow :-(

Waited a couple hours till medication time, rainbows showed ich but were swimming around looking ok.

Poured in the meds and a couple minutes later a rainbowfish is doing backspins and laying on the ground dying.

I removed him and euthanized.

:-(
 
#26 ·
It sounds like you were perhaps already into a second wave when you became aware of the problem. Unfortunately I think a pretty high loss rate should be expected. The reason water changes are discouraged is the fact that maintaing constant levels of the Paraguard in the system is crucial.
However, a system being overloaded with organics isn't good either. If you were to continue water changes I would do this: begin dosing at night. When water change is necessary, also do this after lights out ( I've heard that the active ingredients can be light sensitive) and immediately administer your dose. Do not wait for any length of time, again to maintain constant levels of meds.

Also the ich parasite must find a host within 48hrs or it dies. As a last ditch effort you could move all fish into bare bottom quarantine tank and begin treating with Seachem Cupramine in said tank. This is the most effective treatment against ich. Doing this will remove all potential hosts from your display tank insuring that any free swimming or emerging parasites will fail to find a host and thus die
 
#27 ·
The ich swimmers are also light sensitive, they wait for the dark to do their thing, keep the tank blacked out of if possible.
I have my reservations on heat treatment as some strains are already heat resistant.
 
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