It is nice to find a site of others interested in tropical and other fish. I have a new 60 gallon tank that is filled with bala Sharks, angels, catfish, mollies and tetras. I have had it established now for 6 months but lately have been having some problems with fish dying all of the sudden. I did the test strip and the nitrates were a little high which I fixed. I think my fish have some sort of fungus growing on them. It is eating away at their mouth and they have small puffy white stuff on their side. It is not "ICK" any suggestions?

By the way, my name is Michele and I am a stay at home mom to a 4 yr old boy named John. He is the one very interested in fish and that is also what made me get started and I just love it. I hope to meet alot of you and hear stories about your fish, tanks, etc.

hi michele and welcome to the forum .ohhh all the way over the other side of the world nice.hmm im sorry but i cant help you with your fish problem but someone here will be able to its cause i dont know to much about fishys either.nice to meet you

Thank you and it is nice to meet you.

Hi Michele. It sounds like your fish has fungus. Med names and availability differ from country to country so go and find one that says it treats fungus. This may have been a result of the poor water quality as fungus is a secondary infection. If it is the bottom dwellers getting it, it is usually because of the substrate. Either you are not vacuuming it well enough or it is too sharp for the fish's mouths and barbels.

Hi Michele and welcome.

How often do you do water changes and what % of water is replaced? Also where do you get your water from and do you do anything special to it before use? The local water company may have changed how they treat the water. – Might be good to re-ask this question in the Disease section.

Cheers and Welcome!

KA

welcome michele, always neat to have members from other countries

if its around/in the mouth area i would do some research into 'cotton mouth', i beleive its quite easy to fix in the early stages and finding meds to deal with it shouldnt be a problem.

60 gal is about 260 ltrs,how many fish in total and what size?,how often are your water changes? I personally believe water changes to be more important than meds.

jim.

Thank you everyone for your wonderful suggestions. I do a water change every 3 weeks and recently just did one. I cleaned all the rocks, plants, etc in the tank and do a test strip on the PH levels, etc every week. It could be I did not clean the gravel well enough and they did get a fungus. I am going to take them down to be looked at today from this tropical fish expert and maybe he can help. I did add more salt to the tank and now the fish are at least swimming around today and not at the bottom of the tank. My tank is not over populated. I have 2 black mollies, two white, 2 orange, one angelfish, 2 small bala sharks and a few bottom feeders.

Hi and welcome. I hope you manage to get the problems sorted out quickly.

Cheers

Jude

Thank you!

I do a water change every 3 weeks

that may be your problem. do you have a nitrate test kit? normally your average tank will get once weekly water changes (some planted tanks etc dont though).

cleaned all the rocks, plants, etc in the tank

did you give the rocks a siphon or did you take them out and clean them with tap water (might sound silly but some people will remove their rocks each week to clean them)

i hope your fish friend is able to help you diagnose your problem and you can sort it out quickly and easily

Sharn I do water changes about once every 2 or 3 months!

Welcome.You will learn loads here.

caryl isnt your tank heavily planted with a smallish fish load?

Hi Michele

Nice to hear from someone from the northern hemisphere. good luck getting your fishies healthy again. I would use melafix to help with a fungal infection, but don't know if you have that over in the states, maybe under a different name. Anyway your tropical fish expert should be able to help you.

all the best 8)

Heavily planted with a good fish load these days

Thank you everyone so much. I do syphon the bottom of the rocks to clean them and I have fake plants which I take out and clean with tap water. So, I should then do the water changes once a week? I will start doing that. My fish seem to be doing better now. I put some fungas stuff in their tank and now they seem to be doing just fine this morning. I have to go now and do that water change. Thank you again.

not every tank requires weekly water changes but thats normally how often most people do them on your average tank to keep the levals nice and fish happy. planted tanks can go longer without water changes because the plants absorb wastes and keep the water nice. some tanks require 3x weekly, some require daily and some require monthly depending on the stocking density and the fish.

i purchased a nitrAte test kit for this reason as i like to keep my nitrAtes below 10ppm on one of my tanks and the test told me how often i needed to do them (tested daily until it hit 10ppm then did them that often). that tank gets 30% water changes every 2 days but all my other tanks get a weekly regardless, fish love clean water and its pretty hard to do too many water changes. they double as a good excuse to get out of things aswell- 'i need to do water changes so i cant sorry' and help ease boredom :lol:

generally you are wanting to keep the nitrates in your tank under 40ppm but up to 80ppm is acceptable for some fish for short periods of time im told.

I would use melafix to help with a fungal infection, but don't know if you have that over in the states, maybe under a different name.

Yes it's Melafix here in the states also , and it's wonderful stuff! I keep a large bottle on hand (Just in case!)

Good Luck!

Thank you all for your advice. I am now doing the weekly water changes and have not lost one fish. They all seem very healthy and happy now. I was also wondering how often I should syphon out the rocks. Should I do this once a month or every few weeks as well?

Rocks as in the substrate etc? If thats what you mean then it would be best to do it everytime you do a water change, but possibly every second time or something...

depends how messy your fishies are and how many plants you have. most of mine get a siphon every time i do a w/c though just because its easy to do both at the same time.

if your fish arent real messy and you are feeding 'clean' foods then you could probably do it every 2 weeks if you wanted

depends how messy your fishies are and how many plants you have. most of mine get a siphon every time i do a w/c though just because its easy to do both at the same time.

if your fish arent real messy and you are feeding 'clean' foods then you could probably do it every 2 weeks if you wanted

Thank you! I guess I will be cleaning rocks tomorrow on saturday. Hee Hee.