One of my golden white cloud mountain minnows has gone very skinny........

Hello
I have a 200 litre tank with air pump and filtration system. It is stocked with:
1 clown plec
6 rummy nose tetras
6 black neons
10 cardinals
10 zebra danios
5 cherry barbs
6 purple rasboras
6 harlequin rasboras
6 golden white cloud mountain minnows
6 guppies (new today)

We did have a few health issues after the addition of the cardinals, but that has been sorted thanks to this forum . We just lost a cherry barb with a very big belly (but flat scales - thought she was trying to spawn but sadly she passed away), and a zebra danio that had swim bladder problems and was then bullied by the other fish. He's at peace now...

Anyway, all of our fish seem ok now apart from one white cloud minnow - the other 5 are great, but this one almost appears to have no belly!

Has anyone any idea what could be wrong with it - it seems fine apart from that, and does appear to be eating and is as active as the other....

Thanks

 

I just want to comment that IMO you have way to many schools in this tank.. And they are also not temp. Compatible..
Could you post a picture?

 

Yeah I agree with Fallen... Your tank is and I hate to say it, way overstocked. Rehome at least two of three schools of fish there. The reason foe the skinny belly is its either a male, has internal parasites or is not getting enough food. If you can, please post a picture of the fish in question.

Also, could you please provide your parameters (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH etc)? How often and by how much are your water changes? Have you noticed any other signs of internal parasites? Restless, flashing or scraping off things, stringy/white detrital?

Also, White Cloud Minnows are COLDWATER fish. They are mistaken as tropical sometimes because they can withstand the higher temps for some time. And don't bother debating this point. I did myself, and learnt the hard way that even though they can survive for a while, they aren't happy, they are more prone to illness, and they will suffer a very early death.

Rehome at least two or three schools of fish (at least 20 fish) because your tank is way overstocked. No matter what kind of filtration system you have, there is not enough room for your fish to thrive and ammonia and other nasty stuff will build up ridiculously fast and harm or even kill many if not all of your fish. I hate being the bringer of bad news, but there is a need for me to say this. Also, is your tank planted? Do you have any shrimp or snails? What size and how old is the clown Pleco?

 

I know this isn't a question about stocking, but you should only have 4 schools of fish at the most (preferably 3)
Depending on what fish you decide to keep you could probably bump each school up to 10

 

Yeah I agree with Fallen... Your tank is and I hate to say it, way overstocked. Rehome at least two of three schools of fish there. The reason foe the skinny belly is its either a male, has internal parasites or is not getting enough food. If you can, please post a picture of the fish in question.

Also, could you please provide your parameters (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH etc)? How often and by how much are your water changes? Have you noticed any other signs of internal parasites? Restless, flashing or scraping off things, stringy/white detrital?

Also, White Cloud Minnows are COLDWATER fish. They are mistaken as tropical sometimes because they can withstand the higher temps for some time. And don't bother debating this point. I did myself, and learnt the hard way that even though they can survive for a while, they aren't happy, they are more prone to illness, and they will suffer a very early death.

Rehome at least two or three schools of fish (at least 20 fish) because your tank is way overstocked. No matter what kind of filtration system you have, there is not enough room for your fish to thrive and ammonia and other nasty stuff will build up ridiculously fast and harm or even kill many if not all of your fish. I hate being the bringer of bad news, but there is a need for me to say this. Also, is your tank planted? Do you have any shrimp or snails? What size and how old is the clown Pleco?

HI - oh dear - we haven't been given the advice that we are overstocked by our LFS . They said it would be OK as they are all small community fish. We have had the tank 7 months now - temperature is a stable 25C. We don't have any shrimps or snails. The tank isn't planted, but has artificial aquarium plants, bogwood (with shelter areas) and slate landscaping.

We have a water testing (drops) kit, which we carry out every week - Ammonia 0, Nitrites and nitrates 0, pH 7.0. Every week we vacuum the gravel and change 20% of the water. Unfortunately phosphate is a normal part of our water supply, to which we add conditioner; hence I devised a cover for the tank light to stop it being too bright and filter out wavelengths to restrict algae growth.

Our "woody" clown pleco is about 2 inches at the moment - no idea how old he/she is. The fish get fed with flake food 2x per day, and sometimes frozen bloodworm. Woody gets cucumber pieces and algae wafers.

We even read up about stocking and based it on their eventual size to the volume of the tank, but we didn't pick up on the number of different TYPES of shoals, just numbers of fish.............the fish are asleep at the moment so I will post a picture of skinny minnow when I can. I enclose some pics I already have when I have adjusted the file sizes......
Thankyou

 

Hmmm - just tried to upload some pictures with a further reply - but I don't know what happened to it......