- Messages
- 3
- Location
- Portland, OR
I started out with 5 or 6 healthy Apistogramma Agassizi back in April. After a few months I noticed that the dominant male was hiding and had fungus all over, I separated him from the other fish and treated with Jungle brand Fungus Clear, he died overnight. Over the following several weeks the rest of my fish disappear one by one, they may have jumped out but I've never found a dead fish in or out of the tank, do Apistos jump? Finally I was down to a single female, so I decided to buy another male and try to get a spawn, while the male was in quarantine I noticed that the female was starting to get a little cottony fungus where a scale had been torn off somehow. I elevated the temperature to 82 and added some salt to the tank and she has shown some improvement, she is more active and seems to search for food a little more than a few days ago. Today I bought some Kordon Rid-Ich + (formalin & malachite green) and did a 5 minute dip at about 5X the recommended dosage then moved the fish to a quarantine tank with a higher concentration of salt.
One sick fish usually doesn't bother me too much, but when 5 of the same species get sick at different times and nobody else is affected I start to wonder if I've got something going on in my tank that is just not suitable for Agassizis. I really don't want to put the new male in this tank if it's just going to kill him too. The tank is a 29g flat back hex, I have 3 Corydoras Aneaus, I had a dozen or so Endler's livebearers but they were moved to their own tank shortly after the Apistos moved in, last month I added 6 healthy Hasemania nana. The tank is filtered by 1 sponge filter and a Whisper HOB, the HOB has only a sponge and recently I added a bag of sphagnum peat but I can't tell that it's done any good, the water isn't stained and the pH has not dropped. I have the tank planted with a couple crypts, 1 anubias, several small pieces of java fern, a couple clumps of java moss, a little bit of vallisineria and some rotala, once a month I scoop out most of the water lettuce and within 30 days it will spread to cover the entire surface, the substrate is just a plain gravel and some big lava rocks. My water is usually at 78F, pH is very stable at 7.0, there is almost no hardness out of the tap the water company reports <10ppm, I don't bother to measure it. I do water changes every 7-10 days, nitrates are usually around 10ppm before a water change. I usually change about 30% of the water and refill with slightly cooler water treated with dechlorinator.
Any ideas? Should I treat the whole tank with the Rid Ich+? I really don't want to stain the tank with medications, if it is necessary to treat the entire tank I'd like some recommendations on meds that won't stain, I've read melafix may work, but I haven't ever used it, will it stain like most any other med containing malachite green or methylene blue? Will anti fungal medications affect my plants and/or bio filter?
One sick fish usually doesn't bother me too much, but when 5 of the same species get sick at different times and nobody else is affected I start to wonder if I've got something going on in my tank that is just not suitable for Agassizis. I really don't want to put the new male in this tank if it's just going to kill him too. The tank is a 29g flat back hex, I have 3 Corydoras Aneaus, I had a dozen or so Endler's livebearers but they were moved to their own tank shortly after the Apistos moved in, last month I added 6 healthy Hasemania nana. The tank is filtered by 1 sponge filter and a Whisper HOB, the HOB has only a sponge and recently I added a bag of sphagnum peat but I can't tell that it's done any good, the water isn't stained and the pH has not dropped. I have the tank planted with a couple crypts, 1 anubias, several small pieces of java fern, a couple clumps of java moss, a little bit of vallisineria and some rotala, once a month I scoop out most of the water lettuce and within 30 days it will spread to cover the entire surface, the substrate is just a plain gravel and some big lava rocks. My water is usually at 78F, pH is very stable at 7.0, there is almost no hardness out of the tap the water company reports <10ppm, I don't bother to measure it. I do water changes every 7-10 days, nitrates are usually around 10ppm before a water change. I usually change about 30% of the water and refill with slightly cooler water treated with dechlorinator.
Any ideas? Should I treat the whole tank with the Rid Ich+? I really don't want to stain the tank with medications, if it is necessary to treat the entire tank I'd like some recommendations on meds that won't stain, I've read melafix may work, but I haven't ever used it, will it stain like most any other med containing malachite green or methylene blue? Will anti fungal medications affect my plants and/or bio filter?
