Diagnosing Pearl Gourami / Tank

[Lvkas]

I have been monitoring this pearl gourami for the past month when I noticed she had a small amount of hazing on both of her eyes. She shows no signs of appetite loss, no visual impairment (she swims gracefully through aquarium plants sideways when darting around and has no difficult getting food). 

This female is picked on by the other 2 female gouramis along with the male who pretty much harasses all of them especially when they approach his bubble nest corner. 

Yesterday I noticed she had a white spot on her lip that appears as an infection from a wound perhaps? So I did a bunch of googling and figured I would wait a day or two to see if there is any other changes. Today her right eye is significantly cloudier than it was yesterday and her other eye is essentially the same. 

After seeing all of this I looked into the rest of the eyes of my fish to see if there’s any other signs of clouding and it turns out two of my green corys have small white spots on their eyes as well (it was hard for me to tell with them always moving around and how small their eyes are) but their appetite is massive and they’re extremely energetic. My rainbow shark flashed a few times yesterday but he does that every once in a while (I notice it maybe twice a month). 

This tank has been set up and running for about 5 months now with no issues. The only additions to it have been me gradually replacing fake plants with real plants in the tank. 

I guess my questions is if these things are related, if it’s either a bacterial issue, a fungal issue, or a parasitic issue, and what should my course of action be? I have a fair amount of meds on hand. 

These are my water parameters and some other pictures of my female gourami and one of the corys. 
 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Lvkas

[quikv6]

What is the PH and KH out of the tap? You have 0 KH, which can result in a PH crash, which may be why your PH is so low. A crash can cause fish stress and lead to issues.

Crushed coral may be your friend, and help increase the buffer (KH), preventing a PH crash.

[Lvkas]

On 8/23/2022 at 12:45 PM, quikv6 said:

What is the PH and KH out of the tap? You have 0 KH, which can result in a PH crash, which may be why your PH is so low. A crash can cause fish stress and lead to issues.

Crushed coral may be your friend, and help increase the buffer (KH), preventing a PH crash.

@quikv6 All of my tanks tend to be low ~6.4 ph, high GH, and low K. The except being a beta tank I have with eco complete substrate which is usually 6.8 ph and medium KH range ~80-100.
 

This is my water straight out of the tap 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Lvkas

[Mmiller2001]

If this was me, I would treat for flukes and do a round of antibiotics. I would use API General Cure or Paracleanse and I would use Seachem Focus and Kanaplex mixed into food. I would use them simultaneously. There's no such thing as a pH crash. The pH of the tank is nothing more than a result of a tanks parameters and these are soft water fish who's natural habitats consist of low pH water.

I would make sure you are using enough dechlorinator before water changes just incase the tap water contains higher amounts of chlorine or chloramines. I would do a few extra low volume water changes to improve water quality as well.

Follow direction for both treatments and repeat the GC/Paracleanse treatment in 2 weeks.

[Lvkas]

On 8/24/2022 at 10:22 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

If this was me, I would treat for flukes and do a round of antibiotics. I would use API General Cure or Paracleanse and I would use Seachem Focus and Kanaplex mixed into food. I would use them simultaneously. There's no such thing as a pH crash. The pH of the tank is nothing more than a result of a tanks parameters and these are soft water fish who's natural habitats consist of low pH water.

I would make sure you are using enough dechlorinator before water changes just incase the tap water contains higher amounts of chlorine or chloramines. I would do a few extra low volume water changes to improve water quality as well.

Follow direction for both treatments and repeat the GC/Paracleanse treatment in 2 weeks.

@Mmiller2001 So I am just reading this now. The day I made this post I bought Melafix and Pimafix and began dosing both of them in my tank. Today the cloudiness in my pearls eyes have significantly decreased back to how they were a month ago. The white spot on her lip has also decreased considerably. 

This leads me to believe it is simply a bacterial / fungal thing ? 

I always make sure that I add the proper amount of water conditioner when doing changes, and recently found out that my  tap water comes out with relatively low levels of chlorine to begin with according to my test strips. 

I also bought crushed coral and added it to my tanks HOB, what you’re saying about pH crashes not being a thing is intriguing because I Read a handful of articles and watched a few ACO videos and they all seem to suggest that not having any buffer leads to pH swings?

Would you suggest that I remove the Crushed coral because it might raise my pH to much and actually cause an issue within my tank?

would you also suggest I still dose with an anti parasitic? I have paracleanse and it would make sense that a parasite would also be a stressor leading to an infection.  

Edited August 25, 2022 by Lvkas

[Mmiller2001]

On 8/25/2022 at 11:36 AM, Lvkas said:

@Mmiller2001 So I am just reading this now. The day I made this post I bought Melafix and Pimafix and began dosing both of them in my tank. Today the cloudiness in my pearls eyes have significantly decreased back to how they were a month ago. The white spot on her lip has also decreased considerably. 

This leads me to believe it is simply a bacterial / fungal thing ? 

I always make sure that I add the proper amount of water conditioner when doing changes, and recently found out that my  tap water comes out with relatively low levels of chlorine to begin with according to my test strips. 

I also bought crushed coral and added it to my tanks HOB, what you’re saying about pH crashes not being a thing is intriguing because I Read a handful of articles and watched a few ACO videos and they all seem to suggest that not having any buffer leads to pH swings?

Would you suggest that I remove the Crushed coral because it might raise my pH to much and actually cause an issue within my tank?

would you also suggest I still dose with an anti parasitic? I have paracleanse and it would make sense that a parasite would also be a stressor leading to an infection.  

My initial guess was bacterial, but flashing indicates flukes. Flukes can get into their eyes and cause cloudiness. Just keep an eye on things.

So, crush Coral has a problem that it increases GH and KH at a rate that's unpredictable. So in many fish tanks you already have a high GH so why would you want to increase that when you're trying to add a little bit of buffer to the water? This is the downfall of crushed coral.

In all honesty, pH is not important, what's important is GH and KH. So if you have livestock that enjoy high GH and high KH, coral can make sense there, but when dealing with soft water tropical fish it makes no sense to have any KH and you want to keep GH lower (3 to 5dGH). PH fluctuation definitely does not hurt fish. Many aquarists, who inject CO2, see pH fluctuations between 1.5 and 1 twice a day. And this fluctuation has absolutely no detrimental effect on fish. But it's important to understand what your fish like. If a fish likes higher pH what's really being said is that the fish likes a higher KH. Remember, KH sets the PH range. It used to be easier to test pH, so people have fallen into this trap that a dropping pH is some type of crash and is detrimental to the tank. This is just simply untrue; what they didn't understand what was happening. It was KH dropping. If you have fish that require KH and you have no KH, you may have problems. Hence the "crash".

If your tank is full of soft water fish then zero KH is no problem. I run 0dKH in all of my aquariums even while injecting CO2. This results in a very low ph yet my soft water fish have absolutely no problems, no cloudy eyes and so on. Here's a picture of my pH after about an hour of CO2 injection. I have even gone as low as 4.9.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Mmiller2001