Pop eye need some help!

I have been keeping German Rams for over a year now and I have lost my two oldest males and a few other ones too. To the commonly contracted Popeyes were the eyes or eye starts to bulge out of there head I can never pin point why it happens all my water parameters are zero no ammonias, no nitrites, no nothing harmful the only thing is my water is a bit on the hard side but since I run co2 it stays around 7.6 could that be it I doubt it all my rams do great and breed like crazy plus I only buy Rams that are in the same range of ph I won't buy Rams that are in soft water due to were I live in the Bay Area the water comes on the hard side. As of right now I have one of my lil females in QT with Popeyes I've been treating with Epsom salt going on two weeks the eye is not bulging as bad as it was but its still not getting any better she is doing fine she is out and about eats only live worms won't eats pellets but her Sprite is not broken that's why I want her to pull through but so far I am o for 3 in survival rate I loss them every time I need a win I know somebody out there can give me some golden advice for the deadly Popeyes virus help a fish keeper out

 

Can you give us some more info like tank size, types of fish and numbers as well as how often you do water changes? Usually popeye is caused by poor water conditions. You said you have no ammonia or nitrites but what about nitrates? What are you testing with?

 

Sorry about that so yea my tank is a 45 gallon as I said above I have German Rams I had about 5 Rams but as of now there's three only one is in QT with Popeyes and today my bigger male crooked he looked like he got in a big fight the side of his face was banged up the other male must of moved on him to take the alpha role this tank is stocked pretty heavy right now I had to move my fish from a 40 gallon into this 45 while I am getting a new 55 together so I have 10 Corey's , 1 angelfish and 7 dwarf rainbows the 45 is the Ram tank solely with 5 Corey's ,two oto cats before I had to squeeze the others in here for going on 3 weeks but this was happening before the over crowding happened but really the tank is heavy plant wise and tons of hiding spots the angel and rainbows stay on top of the tank ,the Rams have the big lava rock with a lot of holes in it so it's like a lil maze for them they are in and out of it all day long the Corey's do there thing all over . I run a sump filter do 50 % water changes every Sunday faithfully my water is fair from poor conditions but you got there I do not have a nitrates test I have the ApI single test kits I have the nitrites so no2 test, the ammonia , the ph, the Gh Kh kit I have not seen the nitrates kit or should I get the kit with the strips that test everything I didn't think much of those I keep it old school I grew up using these test kits or the master one that has them all. But from the question your asking I can already see what the reason is going to be the over stocking lack of testing the water changes I am on top of but let me know any and all in put is welcomed thank you

 

Are the other tests that you have liquid or strips? It would be a good idea to get the master test kit (liquid) for everything including the nitrates. But if you are doing at least 50% on water changes each week, I would think your water conditions are good as well. We'll know for sure once you can test your nitrates.

I don't think you're that overstocked on the 45 and if this is just temporary, it should be ok. I'm going to assume the eye issue is due to an injury caused by fighting among the rams. Could you get a photo? It looks like you'll need to separate the male rams as having multiple males is usually not a good idea unless it was a much larger tank.

 

I just got my test kit yesterday I only get the liquid test my man I don't trust those 5 test on one strip so I went ahead and ordered the nitrate test I didn't even know about this test so now I have all that the master test has so I did the test my nitrate level is 5 ppm and this is a day before water changes . Sad news my Ram male I had in qt died on me the other day and the next day I get my melafix in the mail bad luck I guess he hung on for almost three weeks doing the Epsom salt treatment but I thing you are right my alpha Male ram killed off two other males already now he is the only male now with like 3 or 4 females I just put the other two back in that we're in qt that I had to fatten up get some size on them before they were getting chased all the time they were the runts now that they got some size everything is hunky dory as of now I think I am going to reframe from buying anymore males but I really want one more for a female to pair with but I don't know what do you think if I put them in the new 55 would that be suffice for two males?

 

It would be risky putting multiple males even in the 55g. I personally wouldn't do it.

 

I was just reading some of your old post so nitrate is good to have in our planted tanks?

 

It's recommended to keep nitrates around 10-20ppm in planted tanks. Are you dosing any ferts? What kind of plants do you have?

 

I use to I was dosing iron,potassium and excel here and there I now just run pressurized co2 and iron but I ran out a month ago just didn't get more did not see reason too my plants look great and grow like crazy I have dirt under my sand so they get a lot to feed off from there and co2 I run 8 hrs what also helped a lot is I switch from t5ho light to LEDs I have two fixture over my 45 and 3 over my 40 breeder the plants seem to like led better then t5 . So my plants I have in my 45 are Rotola indica, crinum, ludwigla red, aponogeton longiplumulosus , dwarf sage, jungle Val, some type of hydropliha just two stems, cabomba purple and green mix together in my 40 breeder I have two Madagascar lace in the center, reineckiI red , ludwigla , star grass ,red swords and the mother plant of the hydropilha that I got in all my tanks cause it grows like crazy I missed some but you get the picture and now that I had to write that down its a lot more then I thought when I just started out with the plants I went crazy buying up everything a lot of trial and error got burned a couple times until I found planted aquarium central they are by far the best every plant I have got from them are lush and beautiful never once disappointed I highly recommend them. Anyways I have been looking into the dry ferts you get a lot more for your money I got tired of buying the liquid stuff so what would you recommend I have a lot of red plants and I would like to get my green plants more greener most do great my bulb plants all flower like my lace plant and my aponogeton but I know I need ferts let me know your opinion let me know if you need pictures I think I got a couple up there in my posts on my 40 breeder but idk let me know

 

I'd think some ferts are needed as you do have a lot of high demand plants. And if nitrates are only at 5ppm, you might see some deficiencies soon.

You could look into these dry ferts:

 

A matter of fact that's what I've been doing this week so far doing my homework on these dry ferts the EI method that everyone is doing now but really do I need all that I am thinking maybe just some iron and potassium would be ideal for what my plants need is it a must to have all that micro and macro ferts for my plants to look lush I love the dry ferts and Tom Barr's tanks all look amazing but looking at the plantex + b it says it only has 7 percent iron is that enough for my red plants need? I would love to pick your brain on this a lil

 

I'm honestly not really the go-to person as far as planting and ferts go. I did try the EI ferts from GLA last year but I was starting to get more algae than I started with and I couldn't quite figure out that balance and what was off. All my plants are low light and my light was in the low-medium light range so I'm thinking I was dosing more or incorrectly. So I just stopped with the dry ferts and started dosing Flourish Comp once a week and now my tank is in perfect balance with no algae whatsoever. I may start looking into adding the dry ferts again because it'd be a waste not to since I have them but I have to research a bit more.

I know there are others on the forum that have more experience with dry fert dosing so I'm sure they can help more than I can. Maybe aniroc or Silister Trench