Need help on diagnosis

[pride]

Last Wednesday my wife and kids found a turtle wandering across the road so thinking it had to be in water immediately decided to put it in one of my tanks. When I came home I rang Sydney wildlife and handed off the turtle but within 48hrs all of my fish ( 6 parrot cichlids ) except a featherfin catfish have cloudy bulging eyes, some white stringy fins and one with a white film above the mouth. These fish are no bigger than 5cm.

Some seem to be pumping their gills quite hard and hanging out near the filter intakes or heaters. Once I noticed the problem I did a small waterchange then dosed the tank with salt and added my homemade melafix. Saturday 1 died and now tonight another one died. The remainder are looking not too bad with slightly less cloudy eyes and have seen a couple eat but not alot of movement going on and fins still clamped. Do you think another small waterchange and dose again with the salt or better not to put them through the stress? Does this sound just like an external bacteria or fungal problem that could of come in off the turtle? Tank is a 6fter and fish have been in the tank no more than 3 weeks.

cheers

[Ash]

3 week old tank? probably the tank cycling again cause the turtle's crap would have jumped the bioload through the roof compared to the little fish alone. This would be the case even if you had fishless cycled the tank properly before adding your fish as the rapid change in bioload would cause a new mini-cycle.

Test your water perameters (NH3/4, NO2, NO3) to be certian though it might be too late & the bacteria have caught up by now.

Really I would be inclined to think it is something opportunistic getting hold from an ammonia or nitrite spike rather than something from the turtle, especially as the remaining fish seem to be improving. I would have expected the turtle to outright eat the fish to be honest!

I'd be doing a largeish water change & redosing the salt for the new water & continue with the "Alternafix"

[pride]

sorry Ash should of added the tank has been going for at least 3 years and the parrot juvies have been in there for 3 weeks. Prior to the parrots I had other fish in there which were healthy and sold on.

[Ash]

Ahh, bear in mind a big pH change (say from africans to americans) can kill off (at least partially) your bacteria colonies - if you did it gradually or had fish in the same water conditions it shouldn't have been an issue.

How are they going?

[pride]

had another die and the 3 remaining ones are swimming about and eating but all have eye issues which dont look like they will keep. Might end up having 3 blind parrots swimming around the tank! The featherfin cat has no sign of distress or infection at all.

thanks for the posts Ash.

Edit: always have kept Americans with no changes to water conditions at all.

[cyber_crimes]

1. You shouldnt have removed the turtle, it's ok to take it off the road and place it on the other side etc but I wouldn't have removed it from its own enviornment (I hope Sydney wildlife released it within 5km of its capture site). Turtles on the move are usually looking for new waters. Reasons could be their water ways are dried up, polluted, diseased or had newly introduced predators etc.

2. Deffinately shouldn't of introduced a wild animal to your collection. You dont know what they could be carrying. If the turtle was moving on due to polution or disease it has now managed to introduce this to your fish and this is probably whats happened here.