Post by beardedtetra on Aug 8, 2020 18:50:39 GMT -5
I'm not sure if these two problems are related or not, but they happened back to back in a matter of a couple of months.
I work seven on and seven off. I had sucessfully kept, bred, and sold several strains of guppies for over a year and decided to bring in a few new strains. I had some plants(snails) and guppies arrive the day before going back to work. I put them in a cycled 40 gallon that only housed ghost shrimp and other live plants. I noticed that the guppies gills were inflamed and assumed that it was ammonia burns from shipping. Fast forward a week, a few of the plants were dead and decaying. The guppies were flashing (gill area) and later developed excessive slime coats. I put one of them in a drinking glass and took a couple of pics (see attachments).
Before this guppy issue, I bought a used 125 gallon tank. It came overstocked with African Cichlids. I started to notice that some of them also had excessive slime, black dots all over them, what looked like pimples, worm/hair like growth. (see attachments).
I read a ton of stuff on fish disease and parasites. I was completely overwhelmed with information. I spent hours reading, trying to determine what I was dealing with, but the more I read, the less confident I became in making a "diagnosis". I assumed it was flukes and treated with general cure, then retreated with prazipro. It didn't help. I also tried Kordon Rapid Cure and Seachem Paraguard with no results. The only time that I thought they were getting better was when I added salt to the tank. When the salt was removed, the problems returned. I slowly started losing fish and ended up euthanizing the last of my stock b/c they looked terrible and I couldn't figure out what I was dealing with.
All of the fish are gone, and the tanks have been fallow (with the exception of a booming snail population) for a few months. I'm hoping that you guys can help me identify what was going on so that I can determine if it's safe to restock the tanks, how to prevent recurrence, and how to treat should I have recurrence.
I work seven on and seven off. I had sucessfully kept, bred, and sold several strains of guppies for over a year and decided to bring in a few new strains. I had some plants(snails) and guppies arrive the day before going back to work. I put them in a cycled 40 gallon that only housed ghost shrimp and other live plants. I noticed that the guppies gills were inflamed and assumed that it was ammonia burns from shipping. Fast forward a week, a few of the plants were dead and decaying. The guppies were flashing (gill area) and later developed excessive slime coats. I put one of them in a drinking glass and took a couple of pics (see attachments).
Before this guppy issue, I bought a used 125 gallon tank. It came overstocked with African Cichlids. I started to notice that some of them also had excessive slime, black dots all over them, what looked like pimples, worm/hair like growth. (see attachments).
I read a ton of stuff on fish disease and parasites. I was completely overwhelmed with information. I spent hours reading, trying to determine what I was dealing with, but the more I read, the less confident I became in making a "diagnosis". I assumed it was flukes and treated with general cure, then retreated with prazipro. It didn't help. I also tried Kordon Rapid Cure and Seachem Paraguard with no results. The only time that I thought they were getting better was when I added salt to the tank. When the salt was removed, the problems returned. I slowly started losing fish and ended up euthanizing the last of my stock b/c they looked terrible and I couldn't figure out what I was dealing with.
All of the fish are gone, and the tanks have been fallow (with the exception of a booming snail population) for a few months. I'm hoping that you guys can help me identify what was going on so that I can determine if it's safe to restock the tanks, how to prevent recurrence, and how to treat should I have recurrence.