Help please - I lost ABN yesterday which seemed sick shortly after I got him. He started a little bloated but then went back to normal but seemed "shy" and a little pale (even more so than usual) and hung at the back of the tank under driftwood. Then yesterday he was just lying on the bottom stone cold dead. No marks, not thin, not bloated, just dead.
My concern is that the remaining male has had a red tip on his leading pectoral fin ray for a couple of weeks (which has got any bigger). He eats like a pig and moves freely around the tank. None of the females have any symptoms to make me think they are ill but one did have long clear/white poo tonight. I have started feeding them zuccini instead of algae wafers so I guess that would effect it.
Tank has been set up for 4yrs. PH 7.6, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0
I have been doing partial water changes every other day to try and get them to spawn again.

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers
Mic

sounds like an internal infection to me....cant be helped sometime's......how often do you do a gravel vac???

And maybe feeding some crushed pea's will help the clear poo....which is generally caused by bad digestion..peas will help this...

And try feeding softer food's like cucumber........

Or give the "fix-it twins" a go, "melafix" and "pimafix" seem to work well for me when I notice bumps and scraps
and minor infection looking bits.
J

yep the good old medicine will get rid of any type of infection's............

Thanks for the responses guys.
I gravel vac regularly but as there is a lot of wood and caves in the tank there is probably a fair bit of muck I miss. May have to do some reshuffling and make sure I get it all.
I have melafix but I'll have to grab some pimafix.
I'll also switch to cucmber and try and get them to eat peas (they wont normally touch them)

I thought my readings were a little screwed up so went and bought a new test kit - one that included nirates. Results are:
Ammonia- .2mg/L
Nitrate- 5mg/L
Nitrite- 0
PH 7.4

I'm not quite sure whats going on. The tank has been established for ages. It has the least amount of bioload its had EVER. My ph has never reached over 7 in this tank.
The only thing I have done is change my canister filter but I used all the media from my old one. I also added an air driven sponge filter.

I did a 50% water change tonight including a thorough gravel vac. There was a fair amount of crap in the substrate. I also added the "fix-it twins"

well thats pretty much everything you can try for the time being.....

Let us no if that improve's anything..

Keep up the water changes and it should be ok and work itself out

i wouldnt worry too much about the red pec ray mine get it from time to time its just a knock and a bleed if they get red paches all over the body then they have a internal infection i always treat any infections with myaxin i find this the best thing to use and as always cleared any thing ive treated for or octazin for bloat i dont feed peas anymore after one of my albinos got one stuck in his mouth and died plus they go mouldy very quick if they dont eat them and you fail to remove any that they didnt eat
good luck with the problem i hope you get it sorted

Well it looks like things aren't that bad now. All fish are active and hungry, water parameters have started to settle and my big male (with the red ray) is doing his best to entice my big female back into his log. Fingers crossed they will get serious when i turn the lights out
Thanks all for the pointers. If I have any success with the breeding I'll make sure to post pictures

Mic

thats good news good luck with the breeding