And Then There Were 2

Woke up to another dead fish. That's 4 now in the space of a few days

Think I need a new hobby. One where I can't kill anything

 

I'm sorry I must've missed your earlier threads. I'm sorry for your losses.

you've been doing this a while - what's the symptoms? I won't ask about parameters because you're onto that stuff.

 

Woke up to another dead fish. That's 4 now in the space of a few days

Think I need a new hobby. One where I can't kill anything

Condolences for your loss.

I would encourage you not to give up.

Some questions if I may. The answers will help us to find the reasons for your troubles and how to solve them.

1. Water readings. including temp.

2. Are you sure the aquarium is fully cycled.

3. What are the inhabitants of the aquarium?

4. What are the readings of the source water?

5. Is there any chance of external contamination? Like Aerosols: Insecticide, air freshener, paint, hair spray and the like? Even if the aquarium is covered if you have an air pump contaminants can enter the aquarium that way.

6. Any new fish introduced that were not quarantined?

We have all been there. Help is coming.

 

1. Ammonia 0 - 0.25 consistently - however, after lengthy discussion on here, comparrison tests with distilled & tank water, different light conditions etc etc - everybody concluded I'm just one of those that will never get a true VISUAL 0 reading. The threads are out there if you'd like to take a look at the experts opinions on that whole conversation.
Nitrites 0
Nitrates currently 5 (did a 50% pwc 2 days ago).
pH 7.6
Temp 26dc (78.8f)

2. Despite all the discussions, I use Prime JUST IN CASE

3. 1 Neon Tetra & 1 Platy left.

4. Source water readings are all 0 on Nitrites, Nitrates & Ammonia

5. No chance of external contaminants. I'm very anal with anything that touches the water from outside of the tank. No aerosols are used inside the house due to my eldest sons asthma & heart condition. No plug-ins or anything like that. Full house refurb was completed 4 months before I set the tank up so no chance of paint fumes etc

My Sunburst Platy started with a white cottony tuft on his side. Sitting at the top constantly. Not eating. So I started a tank treatment of ParaGuard. Lost 2 Neon Tetras 2 days into the treatment, so stopped using that. That left my 2 Neon Blue Platys & 1 Neon Tetra.
Everything was fine last night - woke up this morning to a dead Platy.

I have recently fed very sparingly. Anything that never got eaten in the past was removed with my Eheim battery powered vac, so I can rule out over-feeding.
Fed de-shelled peas & flake this morning to the remaining 2. Soaked them for 30mins in GarlicGuard & they haven't even sniffed at em so now I'm just basically sat here hoping not, but essentially waiting for them to die too. My remaining Platy looks like he's in a bad way.

At the minute, I'm thinking columnaris - but I just don't know

 

Wow, I must admit to being at a complete loss. But I am not the most knowledgeable person here.

The only thing I can think of doing is to install a 5-6 stage RO/DI unit and remineralize the water. I do that because it gives complete control over the water chemistry. But it sounds like water quality is not the issue.

I apologize for not being able to help in this

 

Wow, I must admit to being at a complete loss. But I am not the most knowledgeable person here.

The only thing I can think of doing is to install a 5-6 stage RO/DI unit and remineralize the water. I do that because it gives complete control over the water chemistry. But it sounds like water quality is not the issue.

I apologize for not being able to help in this

Its ok. I really appreciate the help & advice I get here. I'm convinced Ill lose the other 2 very soon. Will strip & restart but if it WAS a disease - how do I go about doing that?

 

Its ok. I really appreciate the help & advice I get here. I'm convinced Ill lose the other 2 very soon. Will strip & restart but if it WAS a disease - how do I go about doing that?

Considering what you have got through I would use the nuclear option and bleach everything. The process of making it fish safe is time consuming but simple enough. After soaking rinse, rinse, rinse until you can not smell even the slightest trace of bleach then rinse again. If you can, leave everything out in strong sunlight for a couple of days. Then fill and add the latest generation of chlorine neutralizer.

Remember not to mix anything else with the bleach water. Ammonia and bleach release amonichloride gas. Odorless, colorless and very deadly.

Oh, and only use bleach with no addatives.

 

Literally EVERYTHING with bleach? Substrate too?

 

My water seems prone to mystery diseases too. I've had one fry epidemic where a whole tank par one little guy got wiped out in a week, with symptoms unidentifiable to any disease. Fry are still born then die of this mystery thing.

I've had two perfectly healthy guppies just vanish, one into thin air and one found dead with the most pained look on their face and their whole stomach missing, just missing.

I've had fish in my main tank go into shock on occasion. Nothing changes, they just become stressed, scared, listless and almost as if in a coma on the water surface for a week before they slowly regain "consciousness" and act as if nothing ever happened.

I'm still trying to find the answers too but I haven't given up! Must have lost upwards of 30 fish now but most were newborn fry so I'm not too fussed.

Where abouts do you live and can you find a governmental record of your water supply? I suspect there is something in the water for the both of us.

Literally EVERYTHING with bleach? Substrate too?

Ditch the substrate and filter media as they can be replaced but bleach everything else! I've done this before twice on two different tanks and things are fine!

 

My water seems prone to mystery diseases too. I've had one fry epidemic where a whole tank par one little guy got wiped out in a week, with symptoms unidentifiable to any disease. Fry are still born then die of this mystery thing.

I've had two perfectly healthy guppies just vanish, one into thin air and one found dead with the most pained look on their face and their whole stomach missing, just missing.

I've had fish in my main tank go into shock on occasion. Nothing changes, they just become stressed, scared, listless and almost as if in a coma on the water surface for a week before they slowly regain "consciousness" and act as if nothing ever happened.

I'm still trying to find the answers too but I haven't given up! Must have lost upwards of 30 fish now but most were newborn fry so I'm not too fussed.

Where abouts do you live and can you find a governmental record of your water supply? I suspect there is something in the water for the both of us.

I had fry too but theyve gone now. I just assumed they all became lunch.
Had a letter of our water board recently to say they're doing a cleaning of all the pipes. Its got me thinking now

 

I'm so sorry for your losses, that cannot be easy. The only thing I can maybe think of, and I don't know if this applies to fish, but prime. I've seen several threads in which people kept having shrimp and other inverts dying and it only stopped after they switched to a different water conditioner. Prime coupled with a certain chemical or element in the tap water can turn it toxic. No one knows quite what it is yet. I don't know if this even applies to fish or only to inverts, mainly shrimp, but you're doing everything absolutely correct, there's nothing you could have done better or anything more that you can do. You're doing everything perfect, and I'm so sorry that this is happening to you anyway

 

I'm so sorry for your losses, that cannot be easy. The only thing I can maybe think of, and I don't know if this applies to fish, but prime. I've seen several threads in which people kept having shrimp and other inverts dying and it only stopped after they switched to a different water conditioner. Prime coupled with a certain chemical or element in the tap water can turn it toxic. No one knows quite what it is yet. I don't know if this even applies to fish or only to inverts, mainly shrimp, but you're doing everything absolutely correct, there's nothing you could have done better or anything more that you can do. You're doing everything perfect, and I'm so sorry that this is happening to you anyway

Thanks for your kind words.

I've always used Prime & this just seems like a sudden thing. These losses have happened over a period of a week. I'm not convinced that's the cause but its food for thought

 

I had fry too but theyve gone now. I just assumed they all became lunch.
Had a letter of our water board recently to say they're doing a cleaning of all the pipes. Its got me thinking now

Aha! It could well be some obscure chemical in your tap water then. How big is your tank? Any chance you could slowly start introducing bottled mineral water until your tap water is back in track again?

 

Just want to leave some words of encouragement for you. Long story short, I killed two fish at different times & my husband gave me a 10 gallon setup & how- to books for Xmas. I was terrified to try again, and possibly kill another living thing, but stuck to it. Don' t beat yourself up, & the people on here are the BEST! Keep it up!

 

Aha! It could well be some obscure chemical in your tap water then. How big is your tank? Any chance you could slowly start introducing bottled mineral water until your tap water is back in track again?

I'm down to 1 Neon Tetra now. Just lost my remaining Platy
I'm gonna go with a full nuclear clean, replace the substrate & filter media - then start all over again. I'm off to the states for a month at the start of May so will more than likely leave it all till then.

My latest loss has this red on his side. Any ID ideas from anyone?

 

Your journey has been the most heartbreaking one I have followed here on the forum. It is so sad when you do everything possible to keep your water pets safe and healthy and then something apparently out of your control comes along and you end up with this mystery.

I truly am sorry for all your losses.

 

That's so sad!!! I'm so sorry foe your losses!!!

After your nuclear clean, try starting up again with mineral water or water from another water source, I suspect something is happening to yours as it is being cleaned..

 

Your journey has been the most heartbreaking one I have followed here on the forum. It is so sad when you do everything possible to keep your water pets safe and healthy and then something apparently out of your control comes along and you end up with this mystery.

I truly am sorry for all your losses.

That's so sad!!! I'm so sorry foe your losses!!!

After your nuclear clean, try starting up again with mineral water or water from another water source, I suspect something is happening to yours as it is being cleaned..

Thanks guys. Lets hope next time goes better than this has. It's nice to know I have the support from everyone

I found the card from our water board. No mention of chemicals being used when Ive read further into it, but I dunno if the sudden change in the quality could be the culprit. All seems to have started within the date range of the scheduled work

 

From the looks of that report it looks to me like it could very well be what caused your losses. The build up in the pipes may not be harmful to humans but it looks like it could have been more than your fish could handle since they were used to the pristine water in their home.

Had they been very slowly acclimated to whatever was in there might not have killed them but the drastic change was more than they could handle. Sadly there is no way you could have known

I know there isn't much good one can get from this event but it is good that you most likely now know what happened and now know that it wasn't something you did or some kind of disease that caused it.

Hopefully this won't stop you from going ahead with your plans to get back up and running again. Hopefully your water company sends out notices far enough ahead to warn you of possible changes in the future and you can use a different source for your water changes during the changes.

 

Looks like it was a build up of heavy metals! That would explain the sudden deaths without symptoms, as fish are sensitive to heavy metals and it says that those are the deposits in your tap water.

A nuclear clean may not be necessary after all, though a clean of sorts is.

Does your water conditioner remove heavy metals? If it does double check the dosing on the back and then dose as much as it says you are allowed to in an emergency!!! It might not be too late to save your last neon!

 

From the looks of that report it looks to me like it could very well be what caused your losses. The build up in the pipes may not be harmful to humans but it looks like it could have been more than your fish could handle since they were used to the pristine water in their home.

Had they been very slowly acclimated to whatever was in there might not have killed them but the drastic change was more than they could handle. Sadly there is no way you could have known

I know there isn't much good one can get from this event but it is good that you most likely now know what happened and now know that it wasn't something you did or some kind of disease that caused it.

Hopefully this won't stop you from going ahead with your plans to get back up and running again. Hopefully your water company sends out notices far enough ahead to warn you of possible changes in the future and you can use a different source for your water changes during the changes.

Looks like the culprit doesn't it. However - I'm still gonna do the nuclear clean as a precautionary measure. Will completely replace my Caribsea moon sand (ouch), & all filter media - clean everything else & start over.

Looks like it was a build up of heavy metals! That would explain the sudden deaths without symptoms, as fish are sensitive to heavy metals and it says that those are the deposits in your tap water.

A nuclear clean may not be necessary after all, though a clean of sorts is.

Does your water conditioner remove heavy metals? If it does double check the dosing on the back and then dose as much as it says you are allowed to in an emergency!!! It might not be too late to save your last neon!

I use Prime. As far as I know, it detoxifies metals but doesn't remove them

 

Looks like the culprit doesn't it. However - I'm still gonna do the nuclear clean as a precautionary measure. Will completely replace my Caribsea moon sand (ouch), & all filter media - clean everything else & start over.

I don't blame you. I would too. If I didn't I would always live in fear of it happening again.

 

I don't blame you. I would too. If I didn't I would always live in fear of it happening again.

Exactly. Its more than likely that it's the pipe maintenance, but if I took the chance & this happened again, i'd end up throwing the towel in - which I'm trying hard not to do. I think a complete restart is the safest option

 

Exactly. Its more than likely that it's the pipe maintenance, but if I took the chance & this happened again, i'd end up throwing the towel in - which I'm trying hard not to do. I think a complete restart is the safest option

Stay determined!! I've had many my giving-up moments but when things run smoothly it feels wonderful!

 

Stay determined!! I've had many my giving-up moments but when things run smoothly it feels wonderful!

Thanks Mary. I'll look forward to that feeling

 

I've learned something from your trials and efforts that you've shared. I've seen those notices. I had almost the same water maintenance warning at my work just last year. I don't think I would have thought to be cautious about wc once the water looked clear.
I'm sorry for your loss but grateful to you for sharing your story. I believe you've saved future fish because this is bound to happen again to one of our readers and we'll all remember the hard lesson you learned. Take care.

 

I'm so sorry about your loss. It sucks to lose a fish, more than you'd think at first. I've straight up bawled my eyes out about my fish, especially if you think you've could have done better. (But sometimes things are out of your control.)

Good luck. You can always pull through.