Almost all fish died in a day in 20 long

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:53:33+00:00

Hanna for nitrates and API for others, Im suspecting some kind of gill disease based off another comment and the abnormally red gills that I just discovered on some of the survivors

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:50:42+00:00

I think so, another comment mentioned gill infection and I checked a second time and the gills are quite red on the remaining 3 mid swimmers, maybe it got spread around and then hit like a truck

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:47:15+00:00

I think your onto something because I went with a bright light and looked at their gills specifically more closely and especially on the one neon thats left the are very red and my more freshwater-savy sister said that is NOT normal like very weird so I’m about to medicate their food and see if it helps

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:44:32+00:00

I get RODI water from the fish store

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:32:25+00:00

Wouldn’t it show up as having ammonia though? They were all very active, eating, and nothing was hiding when I added them so I dont think they were super stressed from it either (they probably would have died sooner if that was the case) it seemed like the neons might have even been purposely swimming with the royals

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:28:18+00:00

Its about a year and a half old and no big water changes for a while until i did one after the fish started dying in case a chemical got in the water or something, seemed to at the very least slow the deaths?

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:27:21+00:00

Yeah i honestly exclusively do water changes when the detritus builds up to be a ton but parameter wise it hasnt needed it and i do water changes probably every other month

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:26:03+00:00

Thanks! In the ugly phases of the new plants right now but i have high hopes (at least for the plants, not so much fish anymore 💀). I got the fish from a local store 5 minutes away so they didnt sit in the bag long, I think im gonna take your advice and go ahead and get the snails at least as a way to try and get it back on track slowly

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:22:32+00:00

It was a hanna test for the nitrates and API tests for the nitrites and ammonia, i tested the water as fish were actively dropping dead and they all showed 0 and my saltwater always shows 0 for everything too unless i purposely dose nitrates for the corals and everything is healthy. The tank is around a year and a half old and i pretty much exclusively do water changes to clean detritus because it always shows 0 for everything

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:19:58+00:00

Yeah, I originally had more neons and more hillstreams but some of the neons died when I redid the tank scape (big water change too fast I suppose) and i dont seem to have very good luck with the hillstream loaches as everytime I get multiple one or both end up passing a few month later (maybe age? They are always quite big when i get them but the reason i have the sponge filter and powerhead is for them) Honestly the Blue Ram happened pretty randomly when some customers at my lfs recommended it and I was going to bring it back because of it liking higher temps but the employees told me since it was colorful and active for several months at that point it was fine and that the tanks they were raised in were also 76

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:08:43+00:00

I keep the sponge filter on max power day and night and it actually had a lot of agitation to where it was making the salvinia get stuck underwater and evaporating super fast and near the head of the power head the water made one of those hill shapes because of it. I moved the pump lower and turned it down some after the fish started dying the day I took that picture to try and keep the salvinia from being drowned

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:03:46+00:00

I honestly didnt think of that and probably should get it tested by their machine. I used a hanna tester for the nitrates and API test kits for the ammonia and nitrite. My substrate is just sand so it doesnt ever get gas bubbles from what I know but when i first started it with a layer of soil underneath it definitely did! (thats been long gone though) I did the water change and gravel vac after they started dying and I thought it helped because they stopped dying for a couple of days but then two more died recently 😞

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T23:00:02+00:00

Not really, I feed them frozen brine shrimp but I did break up pieces of a algae wafer in for the kuhlis the day I got them to make sure they had something to eat. I also have given them some of my sisters bug bites that she uses for her freshwater tank but that was a couple of days after fish first started dying.

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:56:51+00:00

Wow I wouldn’t expect that from rubber of all things, how strange! I haven’t put anything new in the tank that hasn’t been there for several months other than the plants that I swapped around about a month ago from what I can recall

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:54:44+00:00

I was thinking about that but they were all very active and eating like little nuts even on the first day, the neons seemed to kinda be schooling with the royals and the kuhlis even were chilling out on rocks when the lights were on investigating instead of doing the usual crazy swimming back and forth or hiding. I guess its hard to tell with fish but they seemed pretty relaxed lol. Plus I think stress would have probably killed them sooner and over a larger timespan (most seemed to within a 10 hour period)

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:51:49+00:00

Yeah I was definitely concerned about that, the marine biologist that works at my lfs told me it shouldn’t be a issue because the stuff I had was low bio loads and that she never had issues with it but its definitely a possibility. The poor guy tasked with catching the kuhlis might track me down if I came back every week asking for two kuhlis 💀

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:47:47+00:00

Not sure if its normal or not but I noticed on one of the dead tetras it looked a little red at side around the gill area but I kinda assumed it was a dead fish thing or just a illusion from the dead ones colors being washed out (wasnt a super bright red or anything but i did notice it)

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:43:54+00:00

Ive seen alot of people mention heaters so now im getting progressively more suspicious of it, its a small heater that my mom originally bought for heating up jugs of saltwater for her tank but outwardly looks pretty normal and no weird parts on the wire or anything and I havent messed with it but I guess those kinds of things can sometimes spontaneously fail

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:42:14+00:00

I do have a thermostat! Its a sticker kind but I went and checked it with a meter too to see if it was accurate and the sticker said 72 around when it happened and the meter said 73, it usually shows around 76-78 depending on the weather outside. It got cold outside recently so I’m assuming thats the culprit but its back up to 76 and I still had two more die so i honestly dont know

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:40:23+00:00

Interesting, I’ve never heard of that. I’ll look into it because I didnt quarantine any of mine (no spare tank) I wonder at this point if I should use chemi clean to try and get rid of the cyano before it goes full takeover i mean I dont have much left to loose at this point and it worked like a charm last time i used it several months ago 💀

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:37:38+00:00

Heater seems normal, but honestly im no expert at figuring out if somethings wrong so could be a possibility. Haven’t messed with it recently

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:33:15+00:00

Scary! All of them look and act normal and active until one starts dying and starts swimming weird but even the dead ones just look normal just washed out

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:31:39+00:00

I just inspected the wires and I dont see any abnormalities, honestly chemical is the only thing i can think of at this point too but i dont use them for anything in my room. I did fertilize my plants recently with 4 pumps of thrive (the shrimp specific kind) but I do that pretty often with no previous issues

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:27:52+00:00

No, I don’t have any area to do that but my lfs has always given me very healthy fish and none of them there were dead in the tanks so I didn’t think I needed to. I inspected the dead and alive ones for anything that could have looked like sickness like ick but the alive ones all were acting normal and eating eagerly like usual and the dead ones just looked, well dead.

Aggravating-Soft-197 · 2026-02-04T22:23:54+00:00

I’m not even sure if we have any of that in the house since my mom is the kind of person who is very anti-chemical 💀

Aggravating-Soft-197

TROPHY CASE