TJfm1990

Sorry, what does that have to do with the issue ink dealing with / questions I asked?

Hi all. Maybe you can help. I have many tanks and one is a Molly tank. I have 4 gold dust and a couple balloon + a handful of adolescent gold dust. I breed a variety of fish. The issue in this tank began following the Nor’easter that hit the East Coast last week. We lost power for 12 hours. I did my best to keep water flow by doing small water changes and pouring water in. It got chilly but not cold enough to kill. We hear via a wood stove. I had an ammonia spike like crazy. I have been able to get it down to 2ppm. PH is correct. Nitrate and Nitrites were also high but currently 2 ppm and 20 ppm. I have lots of live plants, 4 lava stones, am running a sponge filter, an Aqueon filter and a aqua clear filter (I added this recently to try and help. My poor fish are in really rough shape. I did a ick and general cure regiment that ended 3 days ago (I added the new filter and put fluval Zeo-carb in a media bag in there. I can’t figure out what is wrong with them. They are inactive at the start of the day when level are high, I do a 70-90% water change and have been using stress guard, stability (I’m guessing my bacteria died off when the filters weren’t running), prime, ammo lock, stress syme, stress coat and fluval cycle to get the tank back to being cycled. Every day the levels go down a bit. I’ve lost 4-5 ballon Molly and my gold dust look like they are falling apart. They are eating (I’ve been feeding before my water change). But 3 of 4 are losing weight rapidly. Their color is fading, their scales appear to be missing. Red gills, shimmying, I’ve notice white stuff hanging off them, fins clamped, and some scales on the larger are shinny like glitter. I have a juvenile bristle nose who seems fine. I have mystery snails in there but a few died and the rest have this white stuff coming off of them. I’ve been researching and researching and know the ammonia is playing a part. But as to the other issues…. It seems like it could be so many different things. The smaller Molly are doing better. I want to move them but am unsure if moving them could cause issues in another tank (my hospital tank is in use for quarantine. I’ve used Cory’s suggested 3 med quarantine approach and had them in quarantine for over a week and they seem fine. Should I move them to my guppy breeding tank? If so.. should I move the larger Molly to that tank or the smaller guys? If the tank crashes completely as it appears it is… should I use the hardscape (rocks and wood with plants attached / unattached plants in another tank? Or remove the plants and boil the wood and stone? Also suggestions about what to do with my pleco in there? As mentioned I breed a variety of fish. I live in an area rural area and the closest stores to get fish and aquarium stuff are an hour or so away / big box stores. I’ve made a nice little business of breeding, buying used tanks and stuff on the cheap and selling folks around here ready to go tanks with seeded filters and what not. We also sell hard scape items and my fiancé makes resin aquarium decorations and makes them aquarium safe so we can offer people customized decorations. I also carry all sorts of medications and water treatment stuff and do aquarium maintenance + house calls for stuff like ick outbreaks so folks don’t have to buy bottles of stuff. It’s a good gig / business plan. So I’m nervous about moving anything from this tank to other tanks and risk infecting another tank. Any help would be appreciated. I’m lost on this one.

Hi there. I helped him set it up. I had him include a sponge (I didn’t change the filter cartridge until 2 weeks ago) and I kept the sponge in there. All I did with the water change was I took the bottom off to clean the propeller and I change the filter intake mesh. The filter cartridge looks to have been the first one he put in and needed to be changed. I made sure to keep the sponge in + put some good bacteria in there when I did change the filter cart.

I have a community tank (I recently got due to a family member being sectioned ) with 2 African dwarf frogs, 1 not aggressive male beta, 8 platy fish, a couple auto’s, a juvenile bristle nose Pleco and a 2 apple snails. I did a water change 2 days ago and treated the water with my normal water treatment stuff. While the filter was shut down I did a quick clean of the propeller and changed the mesh that is tied around the filter intake. Last night I added a piece of drift wood from an older set up (properly cleaned) with some Java moss and Java fern. He was sectioned 2 weeks ago and when I got the tank it was a wreck. Filter cartridge hadn’t been changed in god knows how long. I also added a new heater last night (he had one too small for the temp we keep the houses and the temp was a few degrees lower than it should have been). I didn’t make any changes to the inside of the HOB other than clean the bottom (I kept it wet) compartment where the propeller was super gross. About an hour ago I noticed 3 platy fish dead and a fourth on its side so I’m guessing at least 4 will be gone. 2 other platy seem to be struggling and are just at the bottom of the tank not really moving and one is diagonal with it’s face towards the substrate. I noticed a bit of an oily looking slick on the surface of the water and some bubbles formed on the opposite side of the filter. I immediately tested for ammonia and it tested at between 0.5-1 and seeing as the fish were struggling I immediately did a 40% water change and vacuumed. The frogs seem to be acting funny. Other than that the auto’s, Beta, Snails and bristle nose (oh and some ghost shrimp) all seem to be fine. After the water change I tested for Nitrite and Nitrate and both are at 0 PH. There were 2 male and 6 female platy. The three largest female were the ones I found dead and one of the male (died while doing water tests and writing this) after the water change the other struggling ones and two smaller ones seem to be acting more normally. During the water change I removed the drift wood as that seems to be the only major change. The heater is brand new out of the box. My cousin was new to fish keeping and went from just the Beta to upgrading tank size and adding new fish and stuff over the course of about 2 months. He asked me to give him advice setting up the new tank and kind of listened. He used some Fluval aqua soil (he wanted to make a hobbit town looking tank) and capped it with a layer of gravel and white sand. There patches of dwarf grass, a Java moss covered coconut shell hide space, when I got it he had stones with Java moss that was brown and a piece of wood with a stemmed plant glued on and brown Java moss. He had a bunch of fake moss balls and other than that some decorations he liked (one is also covered with brown Java moss). Since getting the tank I’ve slowly been removing the fake stuff and stuff with dead Java moss. I’ve in turn added live plants mostly different kinds I glued to rocks and two Java fern covered flexible metal stuff I grabbed from shops. I haven’t planted anything to avoid messing with the cap and allowing the soil to get into the water. I had two potted plants in one of my tanks I intended on planting but I moved them to this tank when I got it. Everything has gone smoothly and everything was acting normal and happy. I added the Java moss / fern drift wood last night and fed them and all was fine. When I turned the light on before work everything appeared fine but I didn’t take a lot of time to inspect things, just turned the light on as I left. I don’t think I inspected it enough to have noticed the oily looking stuff at the top. But I know there were no dead fish / it wasn’t a platy void like when I returned. Two dead fish were in one of the artificial floating plants he had for fry to hide (I’ve removed that as well) and one was stuck to the filter. Neither had been dead long enough for the shrimp or snails to start eating at them. I’ve used some paper towel to float at the top for a second to remove the oily looking stuff. The sponge filter I ordered for the tank arrived today and I’ll be adding that. Any ideas what could have happened? Anything suggestions on where to go from here? I know it’s late but I’ll be up for a bit. I don’t want to lose any more of them. The Java moss and fern were purchased at my local pet-co. I haven’t finished removing all the stuff with brown moss. I wanted to do it slowly as to not disturb things too much too quick. Seeing as I used water treatment stuff two days ago I didn’t add anything other than the simple tap water conditioner. I wasn’t sure if I should use more Stress Coat or Stress Zyme seeing as I just dosed the tank with it. I do have quick start and microbe-lift Xtreme water conditioner as well as API’s ammonia lock or whatever it’s called. I do does it daily and weekly with plant stuff (I’ll be ordering plant supplement stuff from here, but wanted to go through what I have. I personally have 5 tanks ranging from 5 gallon Beta to 50 or 55 gallon. All are heavily planted and I’ve never had a fish die off like this. The weird part to me is it is just the platy that seemed affected. The frogs were surfacing and more active than usual. Also 4 of the 5 platy around the same size (the bigger ones) are the ones that died. There’s two slightly smaller ones and one that is about half the size of the other 5. The one remaining large one and one of the mid-sized were at the bottom of the substrate and the one that died was also at the bottom but on its side, then it would swim somewhere else and settle on the bottom and go to its side. I thought it had died multiple times before it had. I’ve been doing fish for a decent amount of time and haven’t ever experienced something like this. I’ve had my ammonia spikes (worse than this) and lost a guppy or two, or a Molly. The ammonia was at 0 the night of the water change. As I’ve been writing this and observing the tank the surviving platy are acting more normal as time goes on. The drift wood piece I put in last night shouldn’t have caused issues, it’s been used before, dried out and kept with my other wood in a covered plastic bin and was treated by boiling it before using it. I used the same glue I’ve always used. So I’m completely stumped atm.