[green18]

This has been an awful week. I have had my 150DD up and running stable with healthy fish and no losses. Fish, plants and everything perfect.

I broke my golden rule and added 4 neons and 4 cory's without quarantining over the weekend. By the end of the weekend all newly introduced fish were dead or dying.

Monday I lost a couple of the long term neon's. I decided to go ahead and do a 50% water change (normally do 20% a week). During this water change a towel fell into the tank and was pulled soaking and dripping from the tank.

Tuesday I lost 4 more neons, 2 more cory's.

Today I lost both bristle nose plecos, 2 more neons, and one catfish looks like his eyeballs are about to fall out of his head. Keep in mind all fish look fine, fat and hungry and then boom, dead or dying the next day.

Here is what I have left as of this minute. 2 angelfish that seem happy as can be, ditto for a red tail shark, 2 cory's that appear fine and the final 2 neon tetras that seem "off".

Theories?

1. I introduced something nasty with the introduction of the new fish. Is there really any disease that could lead to total tank wipeout in days?

2. There was something bad in the tap water on the big water change and it is basically a coincidence that it happened right after I introduced some obviously unhealthy fish.

3. There was some chemical or detergent on the towel and it is basically poisoning the tank.

4. ??????

All expected parameters are fine. Plants look great. My 3 snails look fine.

Theories? Next steps? Wild guesses. I could move the remaining fish to my 27 cube/quarantine but I do have a couple healthy fish in there and hate to blindly start transferring between the tanks. Thanks in advance for any thoughts. Sure isn't helping an already bad week!

*** I should add that I just hooked up my bulk reef reactor today and i am running carbon on the tank as of right now in the hopes it will pull any chemicals if that is the issue.

 

[Italionstallion888]

how long has the tank been running for?

 

[horsedude]

man that sucks. my guess is a disease from the new fish.
unlucky...

 

[mattjm20]

Seems likely that you introduced something with one of the new fish, although it seems to have progressed very quickly...

If I were you I would pick up a cheap tank from petco/petsmart and throw your angels in it with some medication while you get things figured out. It's one thing to lose a few neons, and another to lose some full grown angels.

 

[Diana]

1. I introduced something nasty with the introduction of the new fish. Is there really any disease that could lead to total tank wipe out in days? There is a form of Columnaris that can kill within a few days. I do not know of anything else that works that fast.

2. There was something bad in the tap water on the big water change and it is basically a coincidence that it happened right after I introduced some obviously unhealthy fish. That is possible. Water companies do not tell you when they are changing the water source and this can mean different water, higher chloramine levels or other problems.

3. There was some chemical or detergent on the towel and it is basically poisoning the tank. Yes. Can happen. Maybe softener? It sort of lingers on the fabrics. Perhaps the towel was stored in a spot that was exposed to something, it absorbed whatever it was and transferred it to the tank.

4. ?????? Good question. Some combination of things which, taken one at a time might not have killed them, combined, and killed fish.

Good to run carbon. Maybe change it out after a couple of days.
Obviously cannot run meds at the same time, but how about UV sterilizer? That would help kill bacteria or other microorganisms.

 

[DarkCobra]

Have seen a lot of columnaris in chain petstore neon tetras lately. Whenever a disease moves fast, it's typically a bacteria; but this one in particular moves exceptionally fast. Treating the tank with Kanamycin is the only treatment I found that worked, I lost many fish before figuring that out, and posted a thread documenting it.

I don't think I mentioned in that thread is that on the first try, I was short on quarantine tanks, so I placed the neons in a tank with some guppies that were considered expendable if worst came to worst. Which it did. All the neons quickly died, all the guppies shortly after.

 

[roadmaster]

Same for me last year.
Introduced a dozen neon's to increase their number's without first quarantine...and killed off nearly all fishes in 80 gal tank within a week (approx eighty fishes).
Is in my view ,,my own fault.
Year's ago,,neon's used to be very hardy fishes. Not so much anymore.

 

[green18]

Thank you so much for the feedback! I will do some research on that! Tank has been up a few months, heavily planted and only added a few fish per week post cycle.

I am suspecting the disease option because I do think I lost a couple resident fish prior to the towel episode but I really had not heard of anything moving quite that quickly through a tank. I mean the bristlenose was guarding his algae wafer and a few hours later bam!

I really appreciate it gang, been in the hobby many, many years and this is the first time experiencing rapid losses like this.

 

[pantherspawn]

1. I introduced something nasty with the introduction of the new fish. Is there really any disease that could lead to total tank wipe out in days? There is a form of Columnaris that can kill within a few days. I do not know of anything else that works that fast.

2. There was something bad in the tap water on the big water change and it is basically a coincidence that it happened right after I introduced some obviously unhealthy fish. That is possible. Water companies do not tell you when they are changing the water source and this can mean different water, higher chloramine levels or other problems.

3. There was some chemical or detergent on the towel and it is basically poisoning the tank. Yes. Can happen. Maybe softener? It sort of lingers on the fabrics. Perhaps the towel was stored in a spot that was exposed to something, it absorbed whatever it was and transferred it to the tank.

4. ?????? Good question. Some combination of things which, taken one at a time might not have killed them, combined, and killed fish.

Good to run carbon. Maybe change it out after a couple of days.
Obviously cannot run meds at the same time, but how about UV sterilizer? That would help kill bacteria or other microorganisms.

I would agree with all.. And have personally had the same issue happen to me. My die off wasn't quite as bad, but did lose quite a bit of stock. After 3 days, the fish I had left, survived and have shown no signs of illness since. My initial guess was columnaris, but after time and looking back, the fish showed no real signs of disease, just death. So I now attribute it to something in the water, since no further signs or deaths have been seen, even after introducing new stock after 2 months of the tank being on qt.

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