Cycle crashed during quarantine process

[Karen B.]

Greetings!

Yesterday I bought two little adorable female honey gourami (am not biaised at all!)

I think my cycle was weak or too new (although I do have old established tank media in my filter) and before I added the fish I ended up doing a much bigger WC + gravel cleaning then intended (60%).

I did however drip acclimate them for 2-3 hours. Added them in the tank and added the trio med for quarantine. My water yesterday before adding the med trio was already a bit milky, today it’s a bit more.

Temp is 75, pH a bit low between 6.8 and 6.6. 0/0/0. KH crashed from 40 yesterday to 0 today (on aquarium coop strip). GH is still fairly high (but dropped a bit too) between 75 and 150.

planted tank, 1 HOB filter (tidal 35) + aquarium coop sponge filter. Current bioload is 2 baby honey gourami and a nerita snail.

So. Water is not cycled anymore and milky. I always use prime in my WC, might add another dose tomorrow to make sure it binds any ammonia if there is any (none showing on the test strip atm). The only unfogged place in the aquarium is around the sponge filter and the 2 fish seem to favor that place.

Haven’t fed them since I got them last night. There was a huge amount of poop in their bag (they spent about an hour - 1 hour and half in it. They are still pooping a lot (eating off plants and some remnants of my ghost feeding of the tank I would guess). Both seem to be passing parasites (Was expected. That place always have parasites but it’s the only place I could find female honey gourami).

One has a scale damaged/loose under her chin. Yesterday both of them seemed to have a single white spot (debris? Injury? A crystal from the med?) one on her tail fin, the other on her pectoral fin that I don’t see today. They are alert, swimming, really curious and pecking at everything in the tank! (One more then the other).

So.

1- Should I have any worry?

2- Beside testing and adding prime/stability every 2 days, anything else I should be doing?

3- Knowing (or thinking) they might have parasites, should I wait one week after the quarantine and hit them with a full treatment of paracleanse?

[KaitieG]

Your tank looks beautiful other than the cloudy water 🙂  Looks like a bacterial bloom to me or like issues with cloudiness from the meds.  I've had that happen before in QT.  If I were in your position, I'd probably start by just monitoring the paramters closely (as in daily) and then have Prime or another conditioner on hand to help with ammonia/nitrite if I had to end up doing a fish-in cycle.

[Karen B.]

On 11/17/2021 at 7:17 PM, KaitieG said:

Your tank looks beautiful other than the cloudy water 🙂  Looks like a bacterial bloom to me or like issues with cloudiness from the meds.  I've had that happen before in QT.  If I were in your position, I'd probably start by just monitoring the paramters closely (as in daily) and then have Prime or another conditioner on hand to help with ammonia/nitrite if I had to end up doing a fish-in cycle.

Thank you so much. Always so nice to hear someone say my aquarium looks nice. I put so much work into each.