Fish dying - Symptoms of Ammonia Prisoning?

[rkeane]

Hi all,

I have 6 discus in my 50 gallon tank started 5 weeks ago. They all live healthy until recently. 5 days ago I found them all laying at the bottom, color fading, eyes turning white. I immediately changed 50% of water and they became alive again.

Then 2 days ago, I fed them in the evening and in the midnight they have the same symptoms again. I again did my water change of 20-30%, they became better again.

Yesterday I didn't feed them the whole day, in the evening I did a water change of 25%, again in the midnight they looked like they are dying again!!! I again did my water change of 20-30%, they became better again.

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I checked my water parameters with API test kit.
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia 0-0.25 ppm (I would say the color is close to 0)
PH - 7.5

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Any idea what happened??? I am so confused!

[AquaticNerd]

Zero nitrate is very concerning. In a cycled aquarium, there should always be some detectable level of nitrate (barring heavily planted aquariums).

What was your process for cycling the aquarium? How about water change process? Do you age your water? What kind of conditioner do you use?

[Iminit]

What are you filtering with? What are you feeding?

[rkeane]

Zero nitrate is very concerning. In a cycled aquarium, there should always be some detectable level of nitrate (barring heavily planted aquariums).

What was your process for cycling the aquarium? How about water change process? Do you age your water? What kind of conditioner do you use?

Hi, I started my tank by adding 5 capful of Seachem Stablity each day for 1 week. Then I added the fish. Water change was 3 days per 25%. The water was aged at least for 1 day with added Prime.

Now the situation is worse -- after I changed water, they are good. Then 13-15 hours later they became sick (the periphery of the eyes turned white from red, and they tend to lay on the bottom). After water change, they are good again. What is the possible problem?

[rkeane]

It is Aqua Clear 70. And fed with dry pallets and iced blood worm. Their poo is healthy,

[Megalodon]

Low oxygen?

Oxygen levels go down after feeding.

Water change water has high oxygen levels even if stagnant.

[Iminit]

Water change daily add a air stone could be loss of oxygen. How often do you clean the filter? How big are the discus? Something is changing the water quality. Test the before water change water.

[rkeane]

I believe air supply is good - they are good before, but only have problem these few days.

[rkeane]

Would it be some kind of bacteria or disease? I did introduce two plecos, after that they have such symptoms.

[rkeane]

Cause nitrate, nitrite, ammnoia all close to zero, shouldn't be poisoning?

They are 6 small discus, 3" to 4".

[rkeane]

The thing is, even I changed 50% of aged water, the fish become sick again after 14-15 hours. More percentage waterchange just delays their sickness happening, but the sickness comes back!
I suspect really there's some kind of bacteria growing in my tank very quickly. What could it be?

[fljones3]

Are you adding the Prime to the aging container or the tank when you change the water? Prime is about a 2 day effectiveness. If you are adding it to the aging container, you have about 1 day effectiveness afterwards. Also, if it were mine, I would add another sponge filter to the system. I don’t think that the tank is cycled for whatever reason.

I would add another sponge filter (which would add O2) and change 30% of the water daily. Smaller fish need more not less WC. Monitor until you get a nitrate reading. Keep your nitrate reading under 10. See how that proceeds.

[Second Hand Pat]

How are you aging your water. Do you add an air stone to the aging bin?
Pat

[AquaticNerd]

Hi, I started my tank by adding 5 capful of Seachem Stablity each day for 1 week. Then I added the fish. Water change was 3 days per 25%. The water was aged at least for 1 day with added Prime.

Now the situation is worse -- after I changed water, they are good. Then 13-15 hours later they became sick (the periphery of the eyes turned white from red, and they tend to lay on the bottom). After water change, they are good again. What is the possible problem?

.....

The thing is, even I changed 50% of aged water, the fish become sick again after 14-15 hours. More percentage waterchange just delays their sickness happening, but the sickness comes back!
I suspect really there's some kind of bacteria growing in my tank very quickly. What could it be?

I have never encountered a bottled bacteria solution that instantly cycled an aquarium. Likewise, the beneficial bacteria that do grow in an aquarium require a food source - ammonia. Since you mentioned that you only added Stability and nothing else, I'm afraid you didn't cycle your aquarium and the Stability was just wasted. I would recommend reading about the Nitrogen cycle to get an understanding of what occurs in your aquarium during the cycle. There are a lot of things I can assume that are happening. Since you mentioned a little later that all readings are "close to zero", that's not zero. Are you able to test for Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate and take a picture of the three next to your API test results card for us to see? Ideally, this reading should occur while the fish are exhibiting the symptoms and right before the water is changed. It's still concerning if you're seeing 0 Nitrate, because the presence of Nitrate indicates a full cycle. My instincts tell me their behavior changes after a water change because they've been alleviated from spikes in harmful levels of Ammonia and/or Nitrite. After a period of time they start acting strange again because those levels rise throughout the day after the water change.

For starters, I would follow up with and concur with Frank's advice - increase the amount of water you are changing and how often. I would even go so far as to say you should start with changing 50% of the water every day. I would also begin dosing Prime using the "in emergency" instructions - To detoxify nitrite in an emergency, up to 5 times normal dose may be used. To do this, you would change your water using the standard dosing for prime (1 capful per 50G, so up to the third thread if you're changing 50% water daily). After the water change, I would go with dosing 3-4 more capfuls. If my instincts are correct about ammonia and nitrite spikes causing this behavior, Prime will at least neutralize it and make the water safe for fish.

Would it be some kind of bacteria or disease? I did introduce two plecos, after that they have such symptoms.

It's quite possible that you introduced some disease or bug along with the plecos. I would suggest taking a look at http://www.simplydiscus.com/library/...ocedures.shtml for how to handle the standard quarantine procedures.

[dspeers]

A few observations/questions:
1. An infectious etiology (bacterial, viral, parasite) is extremely unlikely as none of those would exhibit such an immediate recovery after water change only to recur less than 24 hours later. Very much doubt the pleco's have any role in this.
2. Just FYI you reach steady state in terms of contaminants after ~ 20 water changes if changing 25%, not sure how that correlates with the development of symptoms. It is highly unlikely that the tank was cycled when you first introduced the fish, but 5 weeks later should be. Adding stability without a nitrogen source does very little. What is concerning is that the only positive you got was ammonia, and zero nitrates. That strongly argues for a non-cycled tank, or a faulty test. Did you test your water when the fish were exhibiting their symptoms. You might want to repeat the test a couple of times and see what you get.
3. What is loaded in your aquaclear, and how are you cleaning that filter? What if any substrate is in the tank?
4. Kinda doubt that you are having O2 issues but adding a sponge filter to provide substrate for nitrifying bacteria is a good thing especially if you have a bare bottom tank. Also redness usually indicates inflammation, and is not seen when an animal is hypoxic.
5. The fact that you have had no problems for 5 weeks, then fairly frequent recurrent problems is concerning in that one explanation might be your air quality. Are you having any symptoms? One thing that comes to mind is low level carbon monoxide. Do you have any natural gas or fuel oil appliances? What fuel does your heating unit use? Are you having daily headaches, dizziness, nausea? Do you have a CO detector and if so how old is it?