No Signs Of Disease

HI guys. Before I start, let me just mention that this problem has been going on for a very long time. I've posted multiple threads for help but I've never reached a conclusion. For reference here's my parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5 (heavily planted tank, but dealing with lots of algae and cyanobacteria)
pH: around 7.5 (co2 injection and high light)
Temp.: 82 (summer problem, I've been using an air stone)

Stocking (75 gallon tank):
6 cardinal tetras
5 rummynose tetras
5 serpae tetras
6 sterbaI cories
4 habrosus cories
1 red lizard whiptail pleco
3 otocinclus

My problem is that fish just keep dying. It's not a fast thing, it's like once a week or even sometimes once a month. Last week, I lost a hatchetfish. 3 days ago I lost a rummynose tetra. The common signs I find before they die are that they lose color and weight, and they spit out their food. I've tried not feeding for 2 days. I tried going without co2 for a week (hence my algae problem). All other fish look happy and healthy. Any ideas on what is going on?

 

Probably internal parasites

 

I thought cynaobacteria was bad for fish and humans?

 

I thought cynaobacteria was bad for fish and humans?

Jist some rare varieties but in general one that is in aquarium 99% of a time is ok its just pain in the .

 

How should I start to treat for internal parasites then? PS I just had another fish die, looks like a cory. No signs of disease again.

 

API General Cure should do the trick but it works better mixed in food with garlic.

 

I guess I'll try general cure with garlic, but I hate using meds if I don't have to. I have something that may be important, I'm not sure. A few months ago (maybe April) my heater malfunctioned and brought the temp up to over 100 degrees. I surprisingly only lost a few fish over the course of a few days. I kept thinking it was some disease but I just never thought to check the temperature. Could this high temp have permanently affected the fish by like weakening their organs, which could be why I'm seeing fish randomly and slowly die over time now?

 

I'm just answsering your questions, frankly I have no idea what's causing your fish to die. You need to describe their symptoms while sick in more detail.

 

I'm being honest when I say there really were no symptoms except that they would lose color and they wouldn't be able to eat. Maybe it was hydrogen sulfide??? My planted tank is half eco complete and half sand. I wanted to take out the sand, and I finally got to it today. It smelled exactly like the hotsprings and stuff from Yellowstone Park (which is sulfur). I also cleaned out a lot of the algae, dipped my plants in bleach (and accidentally killed my Italian val... oops). I changed about 50% of the water and cleaned the filter tubes. If I have anymore dead fish, I'll keep updating. No dead ones yet though.

 

Ahh yea. Well, its not like you don't get that smell at the lake. But yes, for a closed environment like an aquarium, regular gravel is the best substrate, since air can get into the crevices and the bacteria stays healthier.
The problem with sand in an aquarium at home is there is just not enough microrganisms going on, and the sulfur side of things takes over, where as in nature there are many things going on at once. You get that real foul smell, but the fish are fine (my pond had gravel, smelled like this after awhile, but my fish were fine)
Gravel is the best substrate. Sand just never works in the long run.

 

Maybe it's just me but I've never smelled sulfur at a lake or pond. And it's supposed to be toxic to fish if it gets in the water column.

 

I wasn't really refering to sulfur smell, you get a diffrent really stinky smell at a lake (from bacteria, dead fish/ and fish poop)
My point was that smell is okay, but the smell you get from sand (stinks like rotten fish) actually is bad.
Good for you for making the change, sand is not the clean alternative to gravel that everyone thinks.

 

Sorry I misunderstood your original response then. Last time I moved my eco complete (when I upgraded tanks) I didn't smell that sulfur smell but I did with the sand. Now I want to work on keeping the temp at 78 rather than 83 like it is right now because of the summer heat.

 

Ya, I'm gonna work on replacing my sand tanks with gravel. I don't even know why I put sand in them, as I already knew that, just like to make tanks look nice, then I tear them down and re-decorate it; I change my mind alot.
There are a lot of mis-informed people out there, even those that own pet stores/sites online that preach sand is cleaner than gravel, it may not look as dirty as gravel gets but you can definitely smell the diffrence when you move a healthy gravel tank with one that's had sand in it for awhile (gross)

 

So what will happen if I have success in making a deep substrate bed (6~8 inches) and have healthy tank, with 10~30% wc once in three months approx.

What will happen inside the deep sand bed.
(The sand bed is made of small broken bricks, gravel and river sand)

 

I don't know but I'm really mad. So like I mentioned earlier, I took out all the sand in my tank, did a 40% water change, put my plants in a bleach dip, and cleaned my filter intake and output (not the actual filter). This was on Sunday. Today is Thursday, and I just found a dead sterbaI cory. No signs of disease. He's just dead on the bottom of the tank. What the heck! Internal parasite? Please help.

 

This is now like a ghost story. I am sorry about your loss.

Well there is one thing you can try, if you have a spare tank.
Set up spare tank with just an airstone and couple of fake plants with no substrate. Do not use anything from main tank.

Move some of the fishes to that spare tank and treat it as a QT tank, doing daily partial water changes. Meanwhile let the main tank continue as it is.

If there is indeed internal parasite it will result in death of fish in spare tank too. If its not parasite and there is something off in the parameters of main tank then only the fish from main tank will die.

This is the last remaining thing you MAY TRY to find the cause. Divide and find. Hope it helps.

 

Thank you for the suggestion. I do have some spare tanks, so I will try that and see how it goes. I'll report back my findings.

 

Good luck. We will try to help and provide additional information if found.

 

Are the plants growing / thriving ?

 

The plants are definitely growing. I have a melon sword, cabomba, anubias, and Italian val. In the beginning, my melon sword, italian val, and cabomba were all thriving. Then one day I decided to put like 4 root tabs under my anubias and all of a sudden it exploded with growth. Most of my Italian val was killed after the bleach dip. Then I looked it up and found you aren't supposed to put vals in bleach dips. Oh well. And I've ran out of root tabs (I need to order more) for my melon sword so it's still alive it just isn't thriving. My anubias and cabomba are still doing well. The algae in my tank is at a minimum, with most of it being on the driftwood, which is hard to scrape off because of the uneven surfaces.

 

Okay I was wondering if there was a lack of ferts in a way. CO2 is a turbo, but algae and cyano a signs something lacks. But then r plants wouldn't really grow.

The plants are definitely growing. I have a melon sword, cabomba, anubias, and Italian val. In the beginning, my melon sword, italian val, and cabomba were all thriving. Then one day I decided to put like 4 root tabs under my anubias and all of a sudden it exploded with growth. Most of my Italian val was killed after the bleach dip. Then I looked it up and found you aren't supposed to put vals in bleach dips. Oh well. And I've ran out of root tabs (I need to order more) for my melon sword so it's still alive it just isn't thriving. My anubias and cabomba are still doing well. The algae in my tank is at a minimum, with most of it being on the driftwood, which is hard to scrape off because of the uneven surfaces.

 

What's kinda strange is that both the plants and algae are flourishing... I even have some xmas moss I found under some algae that's still alive and it grew a lot since the last time I could even see it.

 

But I will say I can't get enough nitrates. Every time I test, even after a month without water changes, I see almost 0 nitrates. I have kno3 but I don't want to dose that because my lfs is having a fish sale very soon. To test this theory, I'm going to use a spare 55 gallon tank. With 50% off everything at my lfs soon though, I can't pass that up. So first I'm going to qt the new fish in that 55 gallon, then after a few weeks (probably 4-6 weeks to be safe) I will start moving fish over to the 75. Once the 55 is empty, if I see deaths still occassionally happening in the 75, I will start moving some fish.