Re: Help - somebody else's fish dying

I am curious about what you mean by "tank was cleaned."

I change a portion of my water each Saturday in each of my tanks.
I clean the glass when I feel like it, personally I find a common
bathroom wash clothe is good to clean with.  I clean my power filters
seldom, but usually after I have stirred up the bottom a lot.  

I find the first week new fish are under stress, hide a lot of the
time and search for a way out a lot more than the established fish.

I haven't had barbs for years as I consider them too aggressive for a
community tank.    From your discription it sounds like Petsmart sold
you some sick fish.  The white spots most likely being Ich.  Ich can
be cured and here I have experience.  The only fish I have lost due to
ich were clown loaches.  I haven't used Coppersafe, I use RidIch+.  I
suggest you review the Coppersafe instructions.  I have misread
instruction several times so am in a position to suggest that mistakes
can be made and can be deadly.

I believe I saved 3 out of 9 Clown Loaches by stopping Ich treatment.
I noticed that while treating the heavily populated tank after
receiving 9 ich ridden Clowns, that none of my other 40 fish were
sick, but my tank and fish were not looking very spry.  I also noticed
that my other Clowns were not getting Ich.  So, I destroyed 6 of the
new Clowns, keeping the 3 healthiest and stopped the Ich treatment on
the hunch that the Ich treatment was sapping their strength.  Whether
my hunch was right or not, the 3 new Clowns quickly shed their
remaining spots and are very healthy and active 4 months later.  I
have since added even more Clowns in my 75 gallon tank with no
problems.

I have read that Ich remains in tanks forever waiting for weakened
fish.  It has been 4 months since I have had any Ich in any of my 4
tanks so I consider them safe now.  

Most fish show some symptoms of illness prior to death.  I just killed
a Molly that had Dropsy, her scales stood out from her body like a
pineapple.  After doing a Google search I concluded her chances of
survival were nill.  Since I have to get all my fish stuff by mail not
having any local fish stores for about 200 miles I think of my other
fish and remove those fish that have symptoms I don't understand or
have no medication to treat.  In the last month I have had an
isolation tank.  That is where I kept the Molly until I reached a
decision to destroy her.  On a positive side, last week I got some new
fish and one molly had a white spot on top behind her head.  I thought
it might be a damaged scale, but my eyes don't see as well as they
used to so I isolated her in the Qtank.  At the same time one of my
older Platties developed what I am calling a cyst to the rear of her
eye.  I treated the Qtank with Melafix.  The molly dropped about 35
babies and the scale cleared up.  She is back in her community tank
and the Platty's cyst is getting smaller and I expect to return her to
her tank.  So, treatment can and does work.  It is good to have a
quarantine arrangement.  Treatment can be hard on a community tank.
And, lastly watch your fish carefully and don't hesitate to separate
sick from well fish.  Oh yeah, change water more often.  So speaketh
me!


On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 05:20:10 GMT, "MooKitty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>I saw a couple of recent posts here and thought I'd do one of my own.  My
>situation is very similar to Raj.  I have a 10 gallon tank.  It contained 1
>kissing gourami, 1 3-spot gourami,1 "headstand" fish, and 1 tiger barb.  The
>tank was cleaned about 3 weeks ago.  All was well before then and
>afterwards.  The tiger barb needed company, though.  So a week after the
>cleaning bought 2 green tiger barbs and 1 albino tiger barb from PetSmart.
>After introducing them to the tank one of the green tiger barbs died within
>a couple days.  The second green tiger barb began getting white spots all
>over it's body about 4 days after joining the tank.  I treated with
>Coppersafe. A few more days later and ALL the fish in the tank began showing
>white spots all over and the green tiger barb that had them first now also
>had almost no tail fin.  So I began treatment with tetracycline tablets.
>Then the remaining green tiger barb died and yesterday I came home to a dead
>headstand fish.  The most recent symptom on the 3-spot gourami is a red
>sore/spot where it's body meets the tailfin and tonight when I got home from
>work the albino tiger barb was dead.
>
>What is ravaging the tank and what ELSE can I do or treat it with to try to
>save the 3 remaining fish?
>
>I guess my lesson here is when introducing new fish, use a quarantine tank,
>eh?  It's just such a shame and I'm really sick about it.  These fish,
>especially the gourami's had personalities.
>
>Thanks so much for any help,
>Lydia
>