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Total wipeout


Skippy

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Well I've had a pretty craP couple of weeks all around, the icing on the cake has been the (almost) total loss of my electric yellows.

This is the worst loss in all my years of fish keeping and I’ve pretty upset that I haven’t been able to stop it. Every afternoon = more dead fish.

I’m down to 1 from 12 that were there a week ago. It’s a bit late for the other 11 but any ideas that might help me avoid a repeat in future would be appreciated. Although packing up and having another 4 year break from fish keeping is looking attractive.

1. Description of the symptoms, obvious signs of disease and behaviour of your fish. (wounds, nodules, erratic movement/breathing, feeding pattern etc.)

Fish are lethargic, sitting on the substrate breathing heavily. Not interested in food. Eventually they roll over sideways dead.

1 or 2 fish have had black spots or patches on their skin or fish.

2. List the fish that are exhibiting the above symptoms/behaviour: genus and species name. (some diseases and health concerns are more prevalent in certain types of fish)

Labidochromis caeruleus aka Electric yellows.

The 3 bristlenose catfish sharing the tank do not appear to have been affected.

3. When and how did the symptons/behaviour start? (when and how did you first notice the problem)

1st death last Thursday was a surprise, I put it down to an aggressive male being in the mood for love.

2nd and 3rd deaths last Saturday.

1 or 2 fish have died everyday since. Some fish went from looking relatively well in the morning to dead by evening.

4. How old are the affected/sick fish? (age can also be a determining factor)

Young breeders, females 6-7cm, males a little larger. Before things went pear shaped I had a couple of mouthfuls.

5. Have any new fish been added to the tank? (if "yes", when were they added, how many, from where did they originate and what type of fish were they?)

No new fish since the electric yellows were added in early March. Bristlenose had been in the tank

Since mid-February.

6. Has anything 'special' happened recently? (eg. water change, power failure, change of water conditioners/addition of chemicals, new plants/decor/substrate, treatment for other diseases, been away for a few days, house painted/fumagated, new pets, grand children banging on the glass etc.)

I did a prophylactic treatment of the tank with Tetra Parasite Guard 4 weeks ago because I noticed some stringly poo and thin bellies. Otherwise, nothing different leading up to 1st death.

Following loss of 2nd and 3rd fish, I dosed the tank with Waterlife Sterazin because I suspected gill flukes. I have continued treating with Sterazin according to the schedule on the bottle.

7. What are the water parameters? (where relevant)

- pH = 7.5
- kH = 120ppm
- gH = 180ppm
- Temp = 25°C
- NH3 = 0ppm
- NO2 = 0ppm
- NO3 = > 20ppm

8. Describe the aquarium and its contents (age, size, filter size/capacity, rocks/substrate/coral type, fish and plant species still in the tank)

2 foot cube (60x60x60cm). Brand new in January 2015 but fully cycled for 4 weeks before adding the electric yellows.

Filtered with a Fluval 405 (1300lph). Media used is course foam, ceramic noodles, filter wool, matrix, and shell grit.

Pool filter sand substrate, two mangrove roots and some bunches of giant val.

9. When was the water last changed and how much was changed? (include description of procedure)

50% water change following the 2nd and 3rd deaths.

Water siphoned out, prime added to tank.

Pre-warmed water added with buckets.

Pre-disolved Aquasonic rift lake conditioner and Kh generator added

10. When was the filter last cleaned? (describe procedure followed)

8 weeks ago (a week before adding electric yellows).

Sponges rinsed in a bucket of tank water, carbon removed.

11. What brand and type of food has been used over the past month? (include treats/live foods/vegetables)

New Era Rift Lake Cichlid Green, Hikari Cichlid Staple, shelled frozen green peas

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stringy white poo = flagellated protozoa = metro

what are the active ingredients of the Tetra product ?

Active Ingredients: Praziquantel, Dflubenzuron, Metronidazole and Acriflavin.

It apparently used to be Jungle Labs Parasite Cure

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pre warmed water?did you boil it or use hot water from a tap?

also electric yellows are prone to wasting

was the shell grit bought from a shop or collected by yourself?

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The foods your using are great foods.

But any quality yellows these days for some unknown bizarre reason are very delicate and touchy.

I have in the past had countless issues similar to yours every time I got my hands on good yellows.

I've had succes for the last few years now with them, and I have three different bloodlines of good yellows all kept separately.

Last line I purchased come from Dfishkeeper, 20 all up with 2 males, - and 4 days after purchase I had 11 females holding lol.

But I found with yellows these days,, just stick to sera-flora only and you'll have no problems,,, miss one day a week of feeding.

I personally believe its intestinal blockage and they can die directly because of this,,, but secondary issues can arise like bloat and wound like lesions.

Get yourself another bunch and feed sera only and I bet you have success.

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Hi Mike,

Damn that sucks :(

I've never experienced myself what you describe on that scale in recent memory so I'm just as confused as you about what could have caused it.

You are feeding good quality foods similar to what I feed my yellows, except I use NLS as a staple and supplement it with new era and hikari for variety.

Your water parameters are fine apart from pH which could be a little higher, I try and keep mine around 8.0. The lower pH while not necessarily the main problem in itself, can stress the fish a bit which may exascerbate the effect of anything else (disease, parasite) affecting the fish.

I believe fish can be carriers of disease and parasites without showing symptoms, is it possible the problem may have been introduced by the bristlenose or something else in the tank and only became an issue after the introduction of the electric yellows?

Cheers, Doug

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pre warmed water?did you boil it or use hot water from a tap?

also electric yellows are prone to wasting

was the shell grit bought from a shop or collected by yourself?

Hot water from the tap, I have instantaneous gas hot water so it doesn't sit around in the water heater or the pipes for long enough to worry about leaching.

I don't think it is wasting, most of the fish that I lost looked otherwise healthy with full (but not bloated) stomachs.

Shell grit was from a pet shop and very well rinsed before adding it to the filter. I added it as a buffer to counteract the driftwood that I "had" to add

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The foods your using are great foods.

But any quality yellows these days for some unknown bizarre reason are very delicate and touchy.

I have in the past had countless issues similar to yours every time I got my hands on good yellows.

I've had succes for the last few years now with them, and I have three different bloodlines of good yellows all kept separately.

Last line I purchased come from Dfishkeeper, 20 all up with 2 males, - and 4 days after purchase I had 11 females holding lol.

But I found with yellows these days,, just stick to sera-flora only and you'll have no problems,,, miss one day a week of feeding.

I personally believe its intestinal blockage and they can die directly because of this,,, but secondary issues can arise like bloat and wound like lesions.

Get yourself another bunch and feed sera only and I bet you have success.

Sadly these yellows were top quality ones from Doug too. It's never nice to loose fish but when it's top quality ones you've got to some extra effort and expense to get it hurts a bit more.

I usually give the fish a couple of "starve days" per week. I work on the theory that there's a lot more margin for error with under feeding than there is with over feeding.

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Hi Mike,

Damn that sucks :(

I've never experienced myself what you describe on that scale in recent memory so I'm just as confused as you about what could have caused it.

You are feeding good quality foods similar to what I feed my yellows, except I use NLS as a staple and supplement it with new era and hikari for variety.

Your water parameters are fine apart from pH which could be a little higher, I try and keep mine around 8.0. The lower pH while not necessarily the main problem in itself, can stress the fish a bit which may exascerbate the effect of anything else (disease, parasite) affecting the fish.

I believe fish can be carriers of disease and parasites without showing symptoms, is it possible the problem may have been introduced by the bristlenose or something else in the tank and only became an issue after the introduction of the electric yellows?

Cheers, Doug

It sure does suck. Watching beautiful fish dropping off one by one has been hard to take.

Apart from the yellows the only thing in the tank was the 3 bristlenose, they show no sign of any disease so it's possible they are an asymptomatic carrier for the nasty

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from what ive heard any hot water is not gd at all doesnt matter if its gas the water still sits in the pipes doesnt it.your pipes are always full of water

The water sitting in the pipes is cold so that all runs through before the hot water comes through. The hot water I use has been in the pipes for less than 10 seconds.

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It sounds like your doing all the right things,, weird.

Weird, frustrating and disheartening!

Maybe I've been a bit too confident in my own fishkeeping abilities after a such a long break. There were a lot of potential stressors that I thought I could mitigate (relatively small tank, driftwood in tank, lowish pH) but perhaps the sum of these stressors was enough to run down the fish's immune system enough to allow the disease to take hold. Perhaps the bristlenose were carriers of the nasty.

I'm confident it wasn't bloat or wasting. There were no swollen bellies or sunken bellies. No spitting out food.

I thought it might have been gill flukes because the fish were sitting on the bottom hardly moving and breathing heavily. Their breathing looked like females mouth brooding but at a faster pace if that makes sense. I have my doubt about the gill flukes though because I was still losing fish 5 days after starting the treatment with Sterazin. When I was down to one (which happens to be the best of the males) I gave up on the Sterazin and tried Furan-2 instead (after running some carbon in the tank for a couple of hours to remove the Sterazin). He's still going 2 days later. Fingers crossed.

One thing I noticed having a good look at the survivor is pretty ragged tail and dorsal fins, I noticed this on the girls a while back and put it down to fin nipping and aggression from the dominant male. Maybe something, maybe nothing.

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If you got drift wood and low ish ph, it likely has a low KH value,,,,, and Doug's water KH value may be moderate to high,,, I never tested his water.

My GH is 15 and my KH is 13.

Some people's KH can be as low as 4 !!!!

Some people don't even pay any attention to KH.

Some people see ph shock as serious but i think KH is much more important to match.

If a fish doesn't fair to well from a dramatic KH change they can look a bit raggity till they get use to it if they make it.

I personly wouldn't have wood in any Malawi tanks though some people get away with it.

Big pieces of timber in small tanks have greater impact on water chemistry.

Most problems that usually arise can be resisted in the first place if the highest as possible KH levels are maintained at a constant.

The higher the KH the more stable your perameters to.

Many many years ago I use to come up against occasional problems disease related.

This all completely stopped when I practiced maintaining a high KH value.

The only thing I have to worry about these days is aggression.

Just food for thought,,, as nutting out a problem can be hard when they are secondary issues caused by a primary issue.

Higher KH supports beneficial bacteria's strength and existence,,, this in turn allows the beneficial bacteria to outcompete any gram negative and positive bacterias that are bad and contributes to disease.

I'd say that 200ppm KH would be a minimum for rifty's.

Though many people keep their fish way under this.

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How did you cycle your tank? If it's fishless, what was your source of ammonia?

Mostly fishless. I used the old green prawn left to breakdown in the tank trick to get the ammonia going, then added the bristlenose towards the end of the cycle to boost things along and finish it off. If I was so inclined I would have looked for pure ammonia from one of the cleaning chemical companies in Mitchell or Fyshwick but the prawn was handy.

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Sorry to heat that Mike they were top quality fish.

It could have been a slight ammonia spike that triggered of some nasty protozoa. Kind of a new tank syndrome. My first major loss something similar happened to me when I got a colony of maingano from Alex years ago. It was all over in 3 days talking a colony of 20 adult maingano went with it. The tank want brand new but they're in a 4'tank. It wasn't me no fish in it for a week or so before addingthe fish about 6-8 weeks later after my first few mouthfuls and a water change, bam they had similar symptoms to what you describe and all gone. I didn't find out what it was that caused it I had to take it on the chin and start again. I ended up selling what I nicked named my "death tank" as something else happened after I tried again just on a smaller scale.

Did you add air stones when you were treating the tank as some of those meds might starve the water of oxygen.

Anyway sorry to heat about your load.

Cheers

Rosco

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Did you add air stones when you were treating the tank as some of those meds might starve the water of oxygen.

Yep, I bumped up the aeration for exactly that reason, I could hear the bubbling from the other end of the house.

1 male is the sole survivor, he's not looking 100% but he has gone 5 days longer than any of the others.

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Reason I asked about how you cycled it is I had something similar happened to me. I also used prawns to cycle one tank about 5 years ago. That tank had some deaths within the first couple of months of stocking it though wasn't a total wipeout. I never knew what caused it but I had a suspicion it had something to do with the prawns I had in there to cycle.


These days I just take cycled/used filter media from an established tank, put them in the new filter and 1 or 2 fish straight away. That has worked for me and haven't really seen spikes. It might be trickier if you don't have other tanks as you'd need to find someone or pay an LFS for them.


If you have an existing established tank, put used aquarium water in the new tank when doing a water change. Top it up with tap water, dechlorinate, then add the handful of cycled filter media to the new filter. Put 1 or 2 fish straight away. Monitor the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate stats daily for about a week, then slowly stock the tank. I've done exactly this and have not had spikes.

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Well, the last survivor met his maker this evening so it is officially a total wipeout. There was some redness at the base of his pectoral fins and I recall seeing this on others too.

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Had something similar happen to a 6fter and rack I had in the garage. It gave them massive lesions but from viewing no visible signs of aggression so it must have been something. Could have been gill flukes but my fish never sat on the bottom of the tank unless sleeping. I think my reasoning behind the sudden deaths in a short span of two weeks was spikes in the weather. Fluctuations cold nights and hot days.

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Had something similar happen to a 6fter and rack I had in the garage. It gave them massive lesions but from viewing no visible signs of aggression so it must have been something. Could have been gill flukes but my fish never sat on the bottom of the tank unless sleeping. I think my reasoning behind the sudden deaths in a short span of two weeks was spikes in the weather. Fluctuations cold nights and hot days.

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