Lost a Beauty

[fishme]

Lost one of my favorite fish today, a male Ruby Red that was the boss of my 75 gallon peacock tank. In fact, he's the fish in my ID photo here. He had a body fungus that cropped up really fast. The tank is in my home office where I spend most of my time, but I didn't see anything amiss until last night, but by then it was too late. Found him under a rock this morning.

From what I've read, this is fairly normal for fungus. There are no symptoms until it is pretty far advanced. So far, only a Yellow Lab is also showing symptoms. I treated the tank with Fungus Clear tablets, shut down my fluval 404 and took the carbon out the 300 gph HOB filter. Hoping this will clear things up. I'm just hoping the Lab will be OK in the meantime.

Can't put my finger on why the disease cropped up, which is not so unusual I guess. The literature I've read often mentions poor water quality, but that's not the case here. I change 25 to 50 percent of the water weekly and almost always vacuum the substrate when I do it.

Looking on the bright side, I have a Red Shoulder Peacock in there that has already stepped up and taken over the tank. He's beautiful when he's strutting around being all manly and stuff.

[sirknight]

Sorry for your lose.
From the small ID picture he looked like one beautiful fish.

Even doing the weekly water changes, you may still want to test for nitrates, somtimes they can be high from your water source. This happen to me when I lived in Hendersonville. During the spring, the water out of the tap had nitrates higher then my tank water.,Unfortunatly I didn't figure it out until I lost 6 spawns of show bettas both in jars and tanks.

Joe

[fishme]

Thanks, Joe. Good tip, and I will do that. Never had any problem before but who knows, something could have changed without me knowing it.

[jon carman]

Let us know if the meds you used did the trick

[angel]

Lost my tramitichromis to bloat, too. Sorry to hear it, fishme. I know it hurts.

[fishme]

So far the Yellow Lab is hanging in there. Still not eating but out swimming around a bit. I'm keeping blanket over the tank except a few hours a day to keep things peaceful in there. So far, none of them seem to be picking on the sick one. On the bad side, the medicine started out an OK blue color, but after two days the water is a sickly yellow color. Can't wait to do a water change Tuesday.

[fishme]

Everything seems to be pretty normal at the end of the four-day cycle of treatment in the tank. The Lab seems to have no more visible fungus and is swimming around a lot more, though still not eating. The best thing is none of the other fish in the tank show any sign of illness at all. I treated the tank with a Jungle product called "Fungus Clear." Comes in a batch of eight big tablets. Each is good for a 10 gallon tank, so I used all eight in the 75 gallon. Cost $4.99 at my LFS. For those interested in such things, the active ingredients are "nitrofurazone," "furazonelidone," and "potassium dichromate."