[mikecutts23]

Hello planted tankers, I've always used this site to find solutions to my questions, but now I have a pressing question that i cant find the answer for so lets give it a shot. this is my first post! woo-hoo!

We have 3 800 gallon system tanks running, each is kept ~77* Fahrenheit, we carry all sorts of fish from goldfish to cichlids, bettas, and African butterfly fish. Each system tank is gravity fed into a 55 gallon drum filled with filter pads, the pump is on the bottom of the 55 gallon drum pumping 4000gph into a large pressure filter filled with bio-balls. Ever since we stocked our tanks (a month or so ago we started gradually filling the tanks with fish) we have consistently lost 1-10 fish every morning. The weird part is that it isn't any specific species but just random happenings across all of our tanks. The cause is the question here! Some seem to be bloated, some are missing pieces such as their entire faces, some almost seem to have ich on them.

We have tried treating with Weco's Nox-Ich, API's General Cure Powder, Salt (in some cases), Melafix. Nothing is working. I of course am doing 25-33% water changes + gravel vac weekly and we wait the appropriate amount of time between treatments. I am at my wits end and can not figure it out. Some of the girls that work here have bought fish from us and taken them home and they've done just fine, no problems at all. Our PH is 7.5, Nitrites at 0, Ammonia at 0, and Nitrates are low 20~40 depending on the day between water changes.

I am just frazzled trying to think of anything else that could be wrong or how to treat all of these fish effectively.

 

[jmf3460]

my first thought is wow you have that many fish coming probably from all different sources and are only doing 25-33% water changes weekly......not enough, I do more than that in my tanks that have few fish, tons of plants and uv sterilization.

 

[roadmaster]

Could see how cichlid's and betta's would eliminate the weaker fishes especially if kept in large number's in same tank as neither species is known for their mild temperment's.
Only other thing's I might explore are possible low oxygen period's and or what was used to clean the 55 gal drum filter and or whether anything is getting into the water that shoudn't.

 

[mikecutts23]

If our water is testing fine aren't i doing enough water changes? Or is the benefit of more water changes to remove the water that has taken on the sickness of the fish?

 

[roadmaster]

If our water is testing fine aren't i doing enough water changes? Or is the benefit of more water changes to remove the water that has taken on the sickness of the fish?

Would test the water at three or four different times of the day such as first thing of a morning,an hour or two after feeding's,and right before time to close up shop for the evening.

 

[mikecutts23]

I will go ahead and do the multiple tests, thank you. The 800 gallon tanks are separated into 15 gallon, 20 gallon and 30 gallon tanks. We also have ridiculously huge aerators on each set of tanks with an air stone in each tank. They are all species specific tanks and we see little to no aggression in them, only a few barbs that have nipped at each other and were quickly separated.
We bought the 55 gallon drums brand new from u-line.

 

[SinisterSheltie]

Is it possible that the mysterious fish deaths, the ones with no wounds, were cared for improperly at the fish distributor? Were they packaged individually when they were shipped to you or were they bagged by species? Also, have you considered running Coppersafe in one or two of your systems?

I manage a pet store as well, and sometimes if the distributor is lazy, the fish come in with issues. Sometimes, I feel that they package the easy-to-catch(read as: sick, sluggish fish) fish just as a time savor. Which, this can, in turn, infect others. Perhaps, you should try inspecting the care they are giving the fish before they get to your store.

We have had success running copper in select systems to eliminate ectoparasites, and have fed metrodianzole/garlic soaked food to help cleanse them of internal bacterial infections. Paraguard has also worked well for dipping fish that are showing distress.

Side note: I can't, and am not, blaming distributors as the cause of illness. Because that's certainly not the case. Regardless of where illness comes from, it's the store's duty to quickly isolate, quarantine, and cure what ends up in the store. We're all responsible for our own tanks and procedures.

 

[mikecutts23]

Is it possible that the mysterious fish deaths, the ones with no wounds, were cared for improperly at the fish distributor? Were they packaged individually when they were shipped to you or were they bagged by species? Also, have you considered running Coppersafe in one or two of your systems?

I manage a pet store as well, and sometimes if the distributor is lazy, the fish come in with issues. Sometimes, I feel that they package the easy-to-catch(read as: sick, sluggish fish) fish just as a time savor. Which, this can, in turn, infect others. Perhaps, you should try inspecting the care they are giving the fish before they get to your store.

We have had success running copper in select systems to eliminate ectoparasites, and have fed metrodianzole/garlic soaked food to help cleanse them of internal bacterial infections. Paraguard has also worked well for dipping fish that are showing distress.

Side note: I can't, and am not, blaming distributors as the cause of illness. Because that's certainly not the case. Regardless of where illness comes from, it's the store's duty to quickly isolate, quarantine, and cure what ends up in the store. We're all responsible for our own tanks and procedures.

Very helpful!
The fish are bagged by species other than betta fish.
Do you recommend any specific distributor? Ours is quite far away and other than the fish we receive from them we have no other way of seeing how the fish were cared for before hand.
Those are some great suggestions and it gives us something new to try! :icon_bigg

 

[SinisterSheltie]

I'm only familiar with distributors in the Chicagoland area and marine distributors, I'm clueless about the OK market. Sorry.

That being said, have you tested the ammonia concentration and pH of the bagged water the fish are shipped in? It's also possible that there is ammonia poisoning and pH shock going on there. What are your acclimation procedures? Do you float the bag and introduce the fish directly from the bag into the water? Or do you drip acclimate them?

If your distributor is far away, are they shipping fish in Breathing Bags? Especially if they are shipping multiple fish per bag? They cost a little more(I think $0.50 per bag) but they do make up for the cost in fish survival.

 

[mikecutts23]

Usually we don't end up with any dead fish from our distributor. I am not sure how it would effect the bagged water but they are shipped with a tranquilizer so I'm not sure if that would change the readings from a test.
We do float the bags and after the temps are the same we pour the bag through a net into a bucket and release just the fish into the tank.
I could understand if our fish died shortly after arrival, but the older ones as well as the new ones die just as frequently.
I have never heard of a breathing bag, (and they do ship many bags per box per order) However we are switching distributors on our next order and hopefully that will yield some results as well.

 

[m00se]

The old timers in this business swear by and use discreet filters in every tank. They don't intermingle water from tank to tank and use an auto-top-off apparatus to keep tanks full. One shop in town just invested heavily in their new fish room. Marineland Commercial setup with mahogany and stainless steel everywhere. Guy's got over 1 mil invested in this room! And he's using all undergravel filtration on his 100+ tanks. Once you have a critter infestation, medicating 1600 gallons of water is untenable, and damned expensive (and not necessarily successful!). My first impression with your description is that 4000 GPH going into filters. That's a lot of waterflow over what's supposed to be a biofilter. The other impression is that if this is a new system and it was put together with the various plastics usually used in aquarium setups, you might be experiencing new plastic gassing out and/or glue gasout and accumulating somewhere that isn't allowing it out to the atmosphere. There's so many possible ways for your system to do this that it seems pretty difficult to diagnose from this chair. Maybe a call to another fish store guy might be a good idea?

Good luck and success!

 

[scapegoat]

are the three 800g tanks sharing the same water? or am i reading correctly that they're all running on the same system and sharing the 55g drum "filter"?

 

[mikecutts23]

are the three 800g tanks sharing the same water? or am i reading correctly that they're all running on the same system and sharing the 55g drum "filter"?

There are 3 800g systems, each on their own 55g drum filter and pressure filter. We do our best to not allow cross contamination from one system to the other two.

I wish we could run filters on each of our tanks, but we have 130+ individual tanks and the cords running from each of those would be in itself a gigantic hassle, let alone the money and maintenance trying not to cross contaminate. In a perfect world that would be the best option I agree though.

As for the plastics and glue we ran the tanks for at least a month before we introduced fish. I'm not sure how long that takes.

 

[m00se]

These individual tanks are run on undergravel filters powered by air delivered by one large commercial air pump. With redundancy of course. Something like these:

http://www.jehmco.com/html/central_air_pumps.html

I hope you can work this out. What a heartbreaking situation.

 

[Lowe]

These individual tanks are run on undergravel filters powered by air delivered by one large commercial air pump. With redundancy of course. Something like these:

http://www.jehmco.com/html/central_air_pumps.html

I hope you can work this out. What a heartbreaking situation.

Bingo.

My old LFS had nearly an identical setup as the OP and continually had plenty of deads before morning opening hours. Later moved to larger location and had no more than two tanks connected (via a trickle system) this time around. Most are filtered solely by their own ug filter or sponge. Before I left working there we could count daily deads on one hand which is quite a feat for good sized fish store.

 

[Kitsune_Gem]

some are missing pieces such as their entire faces,

This right here is a big clue

Google columnaris.. Missing the face makes me think of it.

Do any of the fish have white saddles on their backs? Or white faces?

 

[Texan78]

The old timers in this business swear by and use discreet filters in every tank. They don't intermingle water from tank to tank and use an auto-top-off apparatus to keep tanks full.

+1 agreed!

Some of it also depends on if they are farm raised or wild and how the dist are acclimating their holding tanks before shipping and how fast they are turning over tanks.

Do you recommend any specific distributor?

Segrest Farms in Florida. They are the largest dist in the world. They only sell to stores, not open to the public. I have been to their facilites but it has been many moons and I can say it is a first class operation over there.

http://www.segrestfarms.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.localops

 

[Chulios66]

Reminds me of the time when my lfs had ick in all of their tanks. They never treated it so nobody bought them and because of that, all of the fish died. I saw them take a bunch of fish out,one of the saddest things it was. Forgot to mention that they put all of them half off hoping to sell them.

 

[JoseRivera]

You should think about adding some heavy duty uv filters inline with your system, check out discushans' setup, and think about in the future quarantining fish