My mistake (importance of good stock!)

[rdeis]

Hey all. Now that things seem to be improving, I thought I'd share some lessons learned the hard way.

My show tank has been up and running with a stable cycle for a little over a month, and a quarantine tank was also set up for the purpose of isolating some misbehaving SAEs when impatience got the best of me at the LFS.

I wasn't expecting to get my discus that day, but he had some, and they were only $17 each, and they were in a *terrible* environment for discus. Very small, way too bright, not enough cover. At least the water was clean.... One of them was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so I "rescued" the whole school of 5 even though they were dark and skittish.

Mistake #1: Buying cheap stock that isn't well cared for or obviously happy and healthy.

Took them home, and noticed that 3 were notably more dark and lethargic than the other 2. I didn't have any other prize fish in the new show tank- and the two "good" ones looked so much better than the others, so I put 2 in the show tank and the sicker ones in the quarantine. (SAEs were moved back to the show tank- seperate story there..)

Mistake #2: Not quarantining all suspect fish

Started medications on the 3, and observed the 2 closely. They immediately hid (as expected..) and were generally frightful and stressed the entire time. THis didn;t immediately worry me- until I picked up another one for the show tank from a reputable local breeder, and noticed a *HUGE* difference between his behavior and the 2. (Note that I skipped quarantine again-- even though this fish is good stock from a local source, it's not a good idea..)

The next day, the q tank was **full** of freeswimming parasites that the meds had helped the 3 fight off. This, plus continued lethargy from the 2, convinced me that I needed to get them in treatment as well or I'd lose them and infect the one healthy discus in the show tank. I moved them immediately, and updated the medications base on the breeder's advice.

Mistake #3 (really an extension of 2): adding additional moves to stressed fish.

The sick 5 still didn't eat well, and still hid from everyone, but seemed happier to be back together.

Mistake #4: Changing diet of stressed fish

I found out what they'd been fed at the store and shifted to that, and they began to eat better.

The one healthy one, now alone in the show tank, was suddenly depressed. At the time I almost moved him to quarintine as well- and probably should have- but I reasoned that he was more lonely than sick, and that turned out to be true.

Mistake #5: Buying/keeping single fish

I got a couple more from the good breeder, and the difference in behavior between the original group of 5 (now 4- lost the one that appeared healthiest at the store) and the second group of 3 is truely amazing.

The new group was well cared for by the previous owner, and all were gregarious beggars in the store tank. None of them hid in the store like the first group.

Not only that, but they didn't hide at home either! Its perfectly reasonable for a discus to zip to a dark corner and cautiously explore his new home-- but these guys didn't. They owned the place from the time their bag started floating. The lonely healthy one brightened up imediately upon introduction of the new ones.

We picked them up right before feeding time- and they were eating (bought some of the same food the breeder had been using along with them) voraciously within an hour of being introduced. Amazing.

Mistake #6: buying more fish with known sickness present

This one hasn't bit me (yet), but nevertheless I won't repeat it. I wanted to get some good companions for the one healthy one, and didn't want to put him through the treatments the sick ones are getting- so I convinced myself that the breeder's fish were clean and good enough to get away with it, and took the chance that the one hadn't contracted any problems from the others.

So far that seems to have been true, but it would have been a lot smarter to move the one to quarantine with the others and wait 30 days.

The GOOD example I can offer is this: I bought the second group from a local breeder and bought only strong, healthy stock. I'm lucky enough to have several good sources nearby that will order in from distant breeders and who are experts at recovering fish from travel shocks- and I'll be buying through them to round out the tank. (They source from some of Simply's advertisers, and they cost more than ordering directly, but getting fish that I can SEE are strong and good stock *after* they were shipped is well worth it to me!)

Sure, I'll get some gratification from nursing the others back to health, but the new group will be the pride of the school when we're done.

And now that I have discus in the tank, and seen the huge difference Q procedures and healthy stock make, you can bet I won't be cutting those corners again...

[M0oN]

sheesh rdeis sounds like you broke every rule in the book...hope things work out for you but you should really be more careful from now on...

[Carol_Roberts]

Good post Rdeis :thumbsup:

[jn4u]

Good post, But price its not allways connected to quality more to what is hot on the market. I have manacapuru wild that i don't pay more than € 20 and I had nice looking wild about 5 to 10 time that price that was sick...

[Willie]

A real learning experience!

Actually, I think all six mistakes were the same -- no quarantine. Quarantine would have resolved all those problems. It doesn't matter if you buy fish from an LFS, a local breeder, Cary, Joe, Danny, Hans, Jason, Frank, Jeff, Mike or me, you have to quarantine. Of course, you don't have to worry about bad quality fish from these name brand guys. But you still have to quarantine.

Willie

[rdeis]

sheesh rdeis sounds like you broke every rule in the book...hope things work out for you but you should really be more careful from now on...


Oh, not *all* of them.. (-:

Actually, the experience has been a net positive for me, I think. I've learned a lot about procedures, sickness, personality, environment, and etc, and done it with the loss of a single US$17 fish. I now have supplies and facilities on hand that will help me quickly deal with and similar problems in the future, and I've developed a daily water change habit on the hospital tank that will serve me and the fish well.

Not that I'm reccomending or justifying this path- because it's not the best of choices- but it's working itself out.

Current status:

Both tanks are fed 4 times a day with a mix of flake, discus chow, blood worms, and mysis (last 3 are frozen) and all fish are eating ravenously.

Last saturday was the first major vacuum/water change on the show tank since the big fish went in, and it freaked them out-- they hid for most of the rest of the day. (And noise from lots of visitors didn't help matters) They still ate well, but only when no one was close to the tank. Today they remain a little skittish, but have mainly recovered. Nitrate, Nitrite, Phospherous, and Ammonia all tested zero even before the change.

All 4 fish in the hospital tank are shaping up nicely. The tank is BB, but with broken pots and potted plants scattered about. Despite Nitromax and 2x daily water changes, Ammonia levels have stayed a fairly constant 2.0 ppm in that tank. I am dosing Ammo lock every couple of days, and the ammo lock does appear to affect the fish's behavior for the better. I added a fair amount of floating wysteria Sunday to help consume the ammonia, and I expect it to start making a difference soon.

No more worms are visible in the tank or on the glass. (We never could see them in the fish..)

The formerly sick fish will now come out of hiding to eat even with people around, provided no one moves too quickly. They will come out to cautiously greet my wife (who is always a bringer of food) but still normally hide from me (who brings the siphon more often than the food).

All this makes it tempting to move them to the big tank, but that would be foolish. I promised to stop cutting corners, remember?

Forward plan is as follows:

1. Repeat the salt treatment this week to make good and sure the worms are soundly defeated.

2. Next week, begin adjusting the temperature from its current 91 back toward the show tank's 86.

3. Also start using the show tank to supply "fresh" water in the hospital tank to match the chemestries.

Two weeks out, they move to the display tank and the hospital tank will get cleaned up and prepped for the two yellows that will finish up our school.

[M0oN]

Well I'm glad things are under control, don't worry about it too much everyone's gone through these things at one point in their fish keeping career, it's part of the learning process :)

[Carol_Roberts]

Don't add dirty water from the show tank to the hospital tank. Why would the chemistries be different?

[rdeis]

Nitrates, Nitrites, and Ammonia test very differently in the two.

Possible reasons:

One is 70gal, the other is 15
One has substrate, the other is BB
One has been undergoing treatments, the other hasn't
One is much more heavily planted than the other
One gets fresh water twice a day, the other gets it once a week
One has a more mature filter than the other
One has 4 fish, the other has 20
One gets some direct sumlight, the other doesn't
One is lighted with 2w/gal CF, the other is lit with .5 w/gal T-5
One gets ferts for the plants, the other doesn't

Prolly left some out as well...

You're right, though, I'll still add clean water as well.

[Carol_Roberts]

Only add fresh aged water to your fish tanks. I see no benefit from adding used water from a different fish tank to a hospital or any other tank.

[rdeis]

I don't mean to be combative- but why wouldn't there be? One breeder has specificly told me to use water from my show tank to start, at least, the isolation tank prepared to receive fish shipped from him, and to be extremely religeous about using identical proportions of any addatives in order to make sure that the water conditions in the isolation tank and the show tank are identical.

This seems perfectly reasonable to me, as it reduces or eliminates the acclimation period the fish will have to undergo when they're moved from isolation to their new home.

Given that they will have just recently gone through a huge travel shock and acclimation period in isolation-- and given that the stress of acclimation is as much a driver toward the need for quarantine as anything else (see health vs disease thread in sickness forum) isn't is important to make sure the water chemistries match between the two?

And isn't sharing water the most assured way to do that?

[rdeis]

I don't mean to argue that discard water that's full of pollutants and gravel-vacuuming waste should be moved from one to the other- but rather to put the fish in quarantine through the same sort of floating/aclimating water procedure you're ordinarily do with bagged fish.

Only on a much grander scale-- using tanks and gallons and days instead of bags and cups and tens of minutes.

Does that make sense?

[rdeis]

Good post, But price its not allways connected to quality more to what is hot on the market. I have manacapuru wild that i don't pay more than € 20 and I had nice looking wild about 5 to 10 time that price that was sick...


Agree. The cobalt I have now was **MUCH** better stock, and only cost $3 more. The tangerines were twice the price of the original stock, but solid yellow/gold/orange is hot right now. <shrug>

In the first case, I could tell by their behavior that the fish were either extremely stressed, poor specimens, or both, and impulse bought based mostly on price, with a little rescue and impatience thrown in.

[M0oN]

What I've been told to do is when starting up a new tank establish the filter in a seperate tank, fill the new tank up with water from that same tank, add the filter then perform a large water change with fresh water 24 hours later.

[rdeis]

In the interest of full disclosure- here's the next set of mistakes....

First the good news: We finished treatment with all of the sick fish and were able to transfer them to the main tank, where they immediately bonded with the others. Them and the clean-up crew maintained a happy life full of bloodworms and brine shrip without incident for a little over a month before we screwed up again.

The error was changing water with purified water that was too cold- a 15% change with 70 degree water chilled the tank just enough fo the alpha male to get sick.

About 2-3 days after the water change he started hiding and stopped eating. Shortly after that, so did the his apparent mate (they behave like a pair, but are too young to spawn.) We immediately tested the chemestry and found nothing out of place, and no one else showed and signs of trouble. It was a couple of days more before the LFS diagnosed it as probable hexamita.

We elected to treat the main tank rather than netting out the sick fish both to reduce stress on the sick ones and as insurance in case others were sick but not yet showing symptoms. We added more air, turned up the temp and began dosing hex-a-mit, and they both immediately recovered. Huzzah! We continued the full reccomended treatment.

Bad news is the temp went to 95 rather than 92, which caused the loss of most of our otos, 2 of the three SAEs, all the shrtimp, and the spotted loach. LFS had said that they'd be fine at 92, so we weren't worried about treating the tank, but the temp got away from us.

Mistake: Failure to Monitor temperature VERY carefully when treating ilness with heat.

10 days later, right after a water change, all the discus got dark suddenly and didn't come out of hiding when I was done messing with the tank in the morning.

By late that afternoon, we lost a discus. Another chemistry check found very high ammonia. Immediate water change (now from a heated barrel in the basement) fixed the problem. A second one was badly bloated by this time, and he died while we were at the store retreiving epsom salts.

I'm not sure how or when the ammonia started to appear, but given the high temp it's possible that it had been building the whole time.

Mistake: Failure to religeously monitor water conditions during treatment.

Needless to say, this has been a very frustrating couple of weeks-- a whole lot of heartache for a little cold water.

But treatment is now over and the temp is coming back down to our normal 86. Everyone seems healthy and the new cleanup fish are in QT. Could have been worse, I guess- and both the discus we lost likely would have been culled anyway....

And I have RO and a heated barrel in the basement now, which will make the WC chores easier in the future.

I think I got the last 3 SAEs in town, they are suddenly very rare-- maybe a seasonal thing? Ah, well. They're munching on green stuff in the Q tank. Hopefully all really is well and we'll be back to stable and happy in another week or two. *sigh*