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Thread: Added new fish, now all my original fish are sick

  1. #1
    Registered Member
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    Karen

    Default Added new fish, now all my original fish are sick

    Problem

    1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?

    I added 2 new juvenile fish to my tank 5 days ago (after only 48hr quarantine - BAD, I know, I regret it). At the same time I also started feeding them frozen beef heart (grated with a fine grater into the tank), multiple times daily and wasn't able to do a water change for 48hrs (normally do it daily). I had a mini cycle in the tank with ammonia spike. The ammonia is back under control now. But my original discus juveniles are turning dark, swimming on an angle (some pointing face down, others leaning sideways, originally they were eating but today they're mostly not interested. no white poo.

    2. Symptoms (i.e. turning dark, excess slime, not eating, clamped fins, flashing, darting, clamped gills, white/yellow/green poop, hiding, headstanding or tailstanding, white on tips of fins, rotting or fungus, blisters/white zits on fish, bloated, cloudy eyes, wounds).

    - turning dark, excess slime seems to be floating off them. clamped fins. tilting. losing appetite
    - one of them had some sloppy looking brown poo, I looked under microscope and found some flagellates, looked like hexamita, started metronidazole

    3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.

    started metronidazole yesterday: 400mg/10g (crushed tablets - not sure how water soluble they are really though!!),
    70%wc this morning, 25% WC tonight, added liquid flagyl/metro 800mg total (need to get some more tomorrow)

    Tank/Water

    4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
    55g tank,
    10juvie turks (the original fish - they're all sick), 1 adult PB (added 3 weeks ago -no problems with her). 2 new juvies added 5days ago


    5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
    50-70% daily

    6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
    running for 6mths, bare bottom, I raised the original 10 juvies from 1inch, they were thriving until now.

    7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
    no, pH same in tank as from tap

    8. Parameters and water source;

    Note: Water Parameters are important in diagnosing problems within a tank. If you don't own test kits for the following information, you can purchase them, test your parameters and post this info as soon as possible.


    - temp ____ 30c /86f

    - ph _____ 6.8

    - ammonia reading ____ 0

    - nitrite reading ____ 0

    - nitrate reading ____ 5

    What type of water or combinations of water sources do you use? If it is an RO/tap/well water mix, please list percentages in the mix.

    - well water ____

    - municipal water ____ 100%

    - RO water ____


    9. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.
    2 new juveniles from LFS, (only quarantined for 48hrs - these 2 newbies look happy and healthy, eating fine)

    10. Please tell us what you feed your fish and how often. This can be critical information for solving the problem so be as specific as you can.

    normally FDBW, sera flakes, hikari granules. Right before they became sick I started feeding grated frozen beef heart (4 - 6 feeds daily), this created ammonia spike and coincided with them starting to look unwell -also coincided with adding the 2 new juvies, unfortunately

    11. Include any pictures or videos you have which shows the symptoms. If you can't add them to this post, please provide a link to them.

    tried uploading photos and video but keeps failing

  2. #2
    Administrator jeep's Avatar
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    Default Re: Added new fish, now all my original fish are sick

    Well, you already stated that you broke QT so we won't beat you up over that, lol...

    I'm reluctant to give specific advise at this time because you may have more than one issue going on. My main concern is possible contamination plus ammonia sickness. Do you know if you also had a ph crash during mini cycle? I don't want to prescribe a unneeded medication if there is ammonia poisoning or ph burns rather than a protozoa issue, although it could be a combination.

    Until an expert like Al replies, I would suggest keeping the water changes up, temp around 82 and add salt at 3-5 TBS PER 10G. I don't think metro is really beneficial at this time.

    Sorry I can't be more specific at this point, but I'm a firm believer in not throwing meds at every symptom until we can narrow it down.

    Also, a pic would be helpful. I imagine your photo is too large. You can either reduce the file size with a photo editor or you can email the photo to yourself, then save it then upload here. Your email should automatically reduce the file to the correct size..

    Brian

  3. #3
    Homesteader Filip's Avatar
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    Filip

    Default Re: Added new fish, now all my original fish are sick

    I would start with Daily salth baths along with 2 PPT of salt in the tank like Brian already suggested .
    Flaggelates are less important at this point until you get them to bright colours and being active again .You can postpone Metro treatment after this bacterial issue resolves.

  4. #4
    Registered Member
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    Default Re: Added new fish, now all my original fish are sick

    Sorry I didn't follow up with this. I separated the sick fish into QT tank. one of them was much worse so I put it by itself. It died after 3-4days. I did a post mortem and the only thing I found wrong was a lot of worms in the intestine (only visible under microscope). I can't find an ID on them anywhere. I know they didn't have these worms before I added the new fish (I'm a vet who usually treats dogs and cats mainly. Until now I've had no medical experience with fish. Anyway I'm a bit of microscope enthusiast at work so I had already done several fecal analyses on these original fish previously to check for eggs/worms, never found any.

    The other 9 fish have recovered well and are back in their cleaned tank, and I have moved the new fish into QT tank and treated both groups with flubendazole 3 times, I am still finding these worms in the faeces. I have just done the first dose of levamisole to see if that works better. Does anyone know what they are? they don't look like capillaria. I'm guessing they are a larva of some sort. They don't move under the microscope so I'm wondering if they are dead and being passed out from worming? But I'm surprised they are still passing them after 3 lots of flubendazole.

    I will try again to attach a picture

    discus parasites.jpg

  5. #5
    Registered Member
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    Karen

    Default Re: Added new fish, now all my original fish are sick

    Never mind about the "worms", I've just discovered on another thread here that these are actually setae from the FDBW I feed them.

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