Need help finding root cause of the fish diseases

[Nont]

Hi everyone,

Ever since I started fishkeeping 4 years ago, I have been stressing by the fact that I loss over hundred of fish and it’s mostly to my ignorant and stupidity (Believe in everything LFS told me to buy/ accidentally decapitated betta with a gravel cleaner, happens 3 days ago, still can’t get over it yet) and constantly fighting fish diseases, which seems to be dissapeared for almost a year after I added plants to several tanks. But it seems to be coming back again lately. And these make me incredibly stressed. These diseases includes Fin rot, Neon tetra disease in tetras and Internal parasites, and only happens to Cardinal tetras, discus, barbs, betta and mollies.

These are the list of tanks I have and the illness that have been happening.
190l Blackwater tank planted with some house plants with discus and cardinal tetras - internal parasites and Neon tetra disease
190l Non-planted Silver dollar, angelfish and various botias - oddly, no fish ever caught illness here.
75l H.tenellum Iwagumi with cardinal tetras - Neon tetra disease
40l Heavily planted fry tank with cherry barbs and mollies - internal parasite in barbs and mollies parents, mollies fry aren’t affected at all.
20l Heavily planted blackwater tank with betta - fin rot

I need help finding the root cause of the diseases.

* I keep water extremely clean by doing 50%-75% water changes every other day using well water.
** I’ve used medication including Metronidazole, Praziquantel, Pyrantel, Mebantel and Formalin

Cheers

 

[Djoko Sauza]

What is your well water like?
What do you feed your fish?

It really sucks to have sick fish, I hope you can find a solution.

 

[Nont]

What is your well water like?

It isn’t filtered.
NO3-, 20-40 GH ~4dGH, KH: 5dKH pH: 6.4-7.5 (tested using Tetra liquid kit and test strip)
TDS: about 70ish

What do you feed your fish?

Cultured mosquito lavae, frozen bloodworms, Hikari dried bloodworms and Tetra pellet.

 

[KirstyF]

Could be any number of issues and I’m sure other folks will chip in but I’m gonna kinda stick my neck out here. 50-75% water changes every other day seems an awful lot and certainly more than you should ever need to keep ur water clean, unless you were massively overstocked.

You also have what seems like a variety of different but fairly common fish diseases.

I wonder if part of the issue might be stress. There are many fish diseases that come from parasites or bacteria that are present in most of our fish but don’t ‘take hold’ unless the right conditions are present, so stressed fish are way more prone to these diseases.

You could consider slowly reducing the number of large WC’s you do, to reduce disturbance somewhat.

 

[PARAGUAY]

Must be really tough to lose fish like you are. Be frugal adding fish and have a lot less than recommended for tank size. Carefully go through all your routines eg how much you feed are fish comparable etc Could be water quality . I agree stress could be a factor. Adding medicines need to be careful . If adding new fish have a quarantine tank. I don't know much about well water but people do use it

 

[swyftfeet]

that's a lot of disruption to the tank with all those WCs =/
50% once a week should be fine in an EI dosing tank, less if your not flooding it with ferts.
I do like 30% once a week in my non planted tank. 50% once a week in the guppy mill.

is there a lot of temp difference in the tank and the well water?

high or low tech?

 

[Nont]

Could be any number of issues and I’m sure other folks will chip in but I’m gonna kinda stick my neck out here. 50-75% water changes every other day seems an awful lot and certainly more than you should ever need to keep ur water clean, unless you were massively overstocked.

You could consider slowly reducing the number of large WC’s you do, to reduce disturbance somewhat.

Will try reducing the amount of water changes.

Most advice I got are from the fishkeeping forum I just left, they kind of forced people into doing large water changes daily or it will be animal cruelty

Must be really tough to lose fish like you are.

It really is and it really making my Ocd worse.
I don’t have a heart to buried them at all, so I ended up learning how to preserve their body by clearing and staining them instead.

high or low tech?

Not much difference in temp. Low-tech

 

[KirstyF]

So maybe we can work through a few things with you here.

You’ve given the size of your tanks, which is helpful, could you maybe give us some more stats.

How many fish are you keeping in each of these tanks? What are the temps?
Are you running filtration on each tank?
Are you adding new fish or are these established colonies?
Are you suffering losses following additions of new fish or just in general?
How is your well water getting to you, is it the supply for your house or are you literally drawing water from a well?
Is there anything in your local area that could maybe pollute this water?
Are you heating the water before adding to your tanks and just how close are the temps to your tank temps when you put the water in? (You said not much difference)
Maybe some more questions as we go along but see how you go on with these. 😊

 

[Greengeek]

Sounds like you have been unlucky but it’s all quite common ailments and the sort of dieases that could of been present when you purchased the fish, internal parasites are common in certain wild caught fish or from intensely farmed fish. Neon Tetra disease (another parasite) is caused by fish ingesting the bodies of infected dead fish or from eating infected live foods. Again its common in poorly maintained intensive fish farms.

If it’s not a water quality issue you could try buying fish from a different source (but unfortunately it’s difficult to expect retailers to treat every fish for everything and the odd sick fish is inevitable) and see if you have better luck, it’s also useful to have a quarantine tank for new stock where you can either wait too see if any issues come up or proactively treat for things like internal parasites, flukes etc (I use Kusuri Wormer Plus on fish prone to IP’s) that way you don’t risk introducing diseases to a established tank.

Fin rot is pretty common, can be caused by various issues from water quality to aggression and can happen to any one at any time.

It sounds like you really have a good grasp of the basics, but unfortunately buying new fish is always a gamble. I’d invest in a simple quarantine tank. Another thing you could try is getting your water sent away for testing to make sure there are no contaminates our standard test kits don’t test for ie something leaching in externally . However apart from the fin rot the other issues are parasite related and highly unlucky something that would come out a tap.

 

[Nont]

How many fish are you keeping in each of these tanks? What are the temps?

Are you running filtration on each tank?

1# 190l Blackwater tank have 2 canister filters - 2 discus and 15 cardinal tetras
2# 190l Fish-only tank have canister and undergravel filter - 1 silver dollar, 1 angelfish, 1 clown loach and 2 Botia kubotai, Non of the fish in this tank ever have illness.
3# 75l Iwagumi has a canister filter - 5 cardinal tetras
4# 40l Heavily planted tank has an air-operated HOB filter - 1 cherry barb and mollies fry
5# 20l Blackwater tank has HOB filter - 1 betta

Are you adding new fish or are these established colonies?

The 20 cardinal tetras were bought about 2 months ago

How is your well water getting to you, is it the supply for your house or are you literally drawing water from a well?

It was drawing from the well using pumps.

Is there anything in your local area that could maybe pollute this water?

There are some people washing their cloths in the creek 10 meters from the well, but I don’t think it’s the case.

Are you heating the water before adding to your tanks and just how close are the temps to your tank temps when you put the water in?

The temperature of well water is around 29c, the tank is 28-30c.

Cheers

 

[swyftfeet]

I know theres likely not a lot you can do about the tank temps, given your location and ambient room temp short of buying a chiller which is likely epxpensiv or overkill, but your temps seem pretty high for the breeds youre having trouble with, 82-86f if Im reading correctly. I noticed a decline in fish sickness when I lowered my temps to 23-24c


most of the following like temps lower than 82f which is the floor value you provided.
Neon Tetras like cooler temp than your tanks
Cardinal Tetras like cooler temp than your tank
cherry barb like cooler temp than your tank

Discus and betta are prob very happy! I think you may just have to be more selective on the breeds of fish to ensure that your water temps fall in the midrange of acceptable.

 

[KirstyF]

Hi There

I think @swyftfeet may be right that you are pushing temps for the fish you are keeping and it may be no coincidence that all of the fish in the tank where you have had no illness, are better adapted to higher temperatures.

Whilst fish may survive outside of ideals for a time, disease and short lifespans are often a result of extended exposure.

I suspect your well water would be ground water and perhaps less likely to be contaminated from the local creek (but maybe some of our geologists on here might confirm) and with one tank doing ok, water source is less suspect.

I would try for some different fish and see if they do better, and a quarantine tank is also a good idea as mentioned by @Greengeek, particularly if you are not super confident of your stock source.