COBettaCouple

At the beginning of April, we had to give 4 of our Cory Cats to a friend to keep in her tank. While we were gone, she would drop a half of an algae wafer in every other day. Well, she didn't know about taking out the uneaten portions after 12 hours and 1 of the cory cats along with a growing number of her fish are dead. Could the wafers being left in the water cause this? She's using distilled water and some of the fish in there had some fin nips & all. I noticed on the back wall of the tank some white 'hair' sticking to the glass and there is a small amount of algae on the gravel. She doesn't have a testing kit so i'm going to go over & test her water either today or tommorrow when i'm back on that end of town. Any ideas on if the wafers are to blame or what might be happening?

nmwierman1977

I don't know that the wafer's are to be blamed, but I do know that she shouldn't use distilled water. That could be the problem. A lot of the " good" chemical are taken out of distilled water and that could very well be the problem. Distilled water is not the safe for them. If she has to use bottled water then I would use spring water. Natalie

COBettaCouple

Yea, I try to tell them to go to treated tap water but she's always done distilled. I told her it's hard to figure a way that the wafers could start something, but it's the timing of the outbreak of whatever is wrong.. maybe algae wafers can't be put in distilled water - they certainly look VERY different than wafers left in treated tap water. The one cory cat who died did seem to be seperate from the others & smaller.. i wonder if he had something the other fish caught - but then i don't know why Sora and the other 3 corys would be fine.. kind of a mystery.

griffin

the wafers are a definatly a probable cause. there might be other things going on, but if the wafers didn't get eaten and were left there, they're just adding to the waste.

i think distilled water is fine as long as you put some stuff back into it, even if only for buffering capacity

COBettaCouple

I'll recommend that when I stop over there today to test the water.

griffin

cool - hope you get the problem fixed quickly!