weird illness and the cure.

[geaston]

I wanted to share this event and at the same time hope that some one could shed light, on this.

Last friday I left my office, all my clowns were fine and Saturday fine. Sunday 3 of the larger Clowns were hanging in mid water breathing rapidly the other fish were fine. No visible marks but very lathargic, the larger one appeared to have a cloudey eye. So I moved all 3 to my 20 gallon hospital tank
Then tried to to find the cause , I treated the tank with melafix and heavly airated the tank and brought the temp up all the fish were showing no signs of body fungus sores or ich. On tuesday I lost the bigger of the 3 fish and the other 2 were laying on their backs and breathing heavily colored out,but no visible signs of body sores or fungus. I went back to my loach book and decided to treat for ich and velvet and added coppersafe. Now as I write both fish and in full color and eating blood worm with voracious appetite.
I have studied for 3 days all my other fish in the main tank, nothing that I can see they are eating ,full color and up to their usual stuff. I dosed the main 80 gallon with melafix for 3 days and have done a 25% water change. My dilema is do I dose with coppersafe as a precaution? I have very nice Amazon Swords in the tank.

And I know Emma will ask! I tested and retested the water and dropped the water level and with the flow in the tank this has never been a problem.
What I can not work out is what the affliction is !

[Emma Turner]

Hi geaston,

Sorry to hear about this.

Was anything new added to the aquarium recently? You mentioned that you raised the temperature, what was it on before that? I take it that your water tests for ammonia and nitrIte were both zero? What are the nitrAtes on? Did any of the other species in your tank look poorly when the clowns were unwell?

Sorry for all the Q's, but it will help us build up a picture of what might be happening.

Emma

[chefkeith]

You probably shouldn't use coppersafe in a main tank. It's best to use it only in quarantine tanks. That stuff can become toxic and will never get 100% out of the substrate.