Dead Fish

dSerk · Post by **dSerk** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:02 pm

Woe is me. This morning most of my fish were belly up. There were tiny worms swimming in the water. Never seen them before. I caught a couple in a little cup to have a look later.

I don't know what happened. I imagine the oxygen levels crashed. Everyone was alive and well last night. I didn't have enough time to do any more tests than just a quick pH test. pH was below the threshold of my kit (about 6.0 on the API kit i think). CO2 is on a timer; I've had the new pressurized system running for a week. Diffusion is through a ceramic disk/bubbler. CO2 runs from an hour after lights on through 1 hour till lights off.

Here's a couple things that I did during my weekly maintenance yesterday:

--- heavy pruning, including culling most of the duckweed

--- 1/3 WC

--- moved my filter return to blow across the tank instead of back-to-front. The flow doesn't perturb the surface as much as it did before the change. Perhaps I should've been running an airstone at night?

--- added nematodicide (levamisole).... I administered it by powdering and added to my filter media. I wonder if this has anything to do with the little worms swimming around. I had already treated another tank full of platys and platy fry with this medicine.

Most of the "big" fish are dead, except for my 4" killi. I couldn't even find my other ram so he may be alive and hiding or I have a big nasty dead fish festering in my tank; I had to leave for work and was already late. Most of my Harlequin Rasboras, platys and my killi fry are still alive. I guess whatever happened hit the big ones hardest. Most of my Pristella Tetras died, too. Not sure about my Corys and Otos.

Thoughts? Anything I should test for?

Ghazanfar Ghori · Post by **Ghazanfar Ghori** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:51 pm

levamisole causes O2 levels to plummet - you need to add an airstone whenever you add it to your tank.

dSerk · Post by **dSerk** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:36 pm

Ah. I guess I missed that advice when I was doing my research. I had heard one story of a whole tank going belly up but no hypotheses as to why....

And the little worms swimming around... those are probably nematodes, correct? Did they leave the fish because the fish were dying/drowning or in reaction to the meds? I suppose it could be both. The levamisole should "finish them off", correct?

ddavila06 · Post by **ddavila06** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:43 pm

oh man! that sucks...i had little tiny worms in my turtle tank, i think i got them because i got lazy with my fluval 405 filter and they just kind of started to show up...since is turtles is easier to treat, i poured everything under water in the tank and put like two cups of bleach even with the filter working overnight. for fish i don't know, before the bleach i was told that coppesafe would work but the worms laughed at me....

sorry for the loss....

Ghazanfar Ghori · Post by **Ghazanfar Ghori** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 10:16 pm

I bet those worms are not the ones that infected your fish, but the ones from the
substrate driven out by low O2.

dSerk · Post by **dSerk** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:02 am

How 'bout some good news? My 3 Sterba's Cories all survived, as did my Golden Wonder Killi fry. I hope the fry will be mature enough in a month or two to bring to auction.

I never found the remains of my most massive fish in the tank, my other Bolivian Ram. I must've spent an hour pawing around my plants looking for dead fish, but never found anything. I guess they're snailfood. Literally.

Plants looking good though. Lots of extra nitrogen this week

. My Crypto spiralis has at least 3 new plants popping up.

Still.... can't believe I drowned my fish

RTRJR · Post by **RTRJR** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 12:23 pm

I'd second Ghazanfar's comments on the low 02 driving the nematodes into the water column. They are not very demanding -being largely substrare critters - but do need some o2.

The Cory cats are able to use atmospheric air for O2 - when they run ti the surface, they take a gulp of air and their gut extracts O2 form it, spent gas is expelled from the other end. Be glad that we do not breathe that way, but it save them.

dSerk · Post by **dSerk** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:39 pm

Good point on the Cories, but on the morning of the disaster the one I could find was lying on his side gasping. I expected them to be dead by the time I got home.

Regarding the substrate nematodes, can anyone direct me to more info on them? When I was discussing the intestinal nematodes at the LFS, they basically accused me of keeping a filthy tank and said I had to vacuum the substrate. I thanked them for their help and did not mention that my substrate is covered by a thatch of carpet plants. I had never had any indication of any worms in my tank beside the intestinal nematodes I could see coming out of my platies and a few blackworms/bloodworms that escaped into the substrate.

Are substrate nematodes a problem?

Kets · Post by **Kets** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 5:29 pm

Are you sure they are nematodes and not planaria?

dSerk · Post by **dSerk** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:34 am

Kets wrote:Are you sure they are nematodes and not planaria?

Fairly certain. They wriggle through the water in a serpentine motion, and they didn't look flat. I haven't seen any worms crawling on the glass.

Dead Fish

Dead Fish

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