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I am new to this site and hoping someone can give some advice. Sorry, this is REALLY long, but I know I will get a lot of questions, so I'm trying to cover everything. I set up a 75-gal freshwater planted tank a bit over a year ago. My first tank. I did lots of reading first & thought I had a decent handle on stuff. Got a real nice setup. I have a Fluval 405 canister filter and a CO2 setup. Nice lites (don't remember wattage), extra aeration. The tank did a nice quick textbook cycle in a few weeks (with a few danios & platies and plenty of plants). Then I started gradually adding fish (Careful not to overstock). At first, everything was pretty good. I lost a fish here and there, but put that down to being new. Then after about 6 months, I started losing more, including my 2 beautiful Koi angels. I had had them almost 6 months and they had been thriving and had grown from tiny to huge. The deaths were not all at once, they have ranged over months -- sometimes going weeks with everything fine. I have a good test kit and do regular testing. All my parameters are always perfect: Ammonia 0; Nitrite 0; Nitrate about 10; pH about 7.4 (we have hard water). I even bought another test kit for gh/kh and one for phosphates. My gh is a bit high (8) and kh is low (3). While not ideal, they don't seem too bad. I tried using baking soda for awhile to raise the kh, but it didn't seem to make any difference. I prefer not to mess with the natural water parameters. The tetras seem to do best, but even some of them have died. Also, platies, cories, angels & danios (all of which should be very hardy). There is no real pattern. Some seem to be fine one day then dead the next. Some seem lethargic and stop eating for a few days then die. One fish showed popeye, but not the rest. One acted like maybe swim bladder disease, but none of the others did this. There are no other physical symptoms I can see -- no disease. I treated the popeye in quarantine with Maracin, but the fish died within one day. Otherwise, I mostly haven't messed with them, since I don't want to treat something when I have no idea what it is. Only one fish ever dies at a time, then it can be days or weeks before another dies. The other fish all seem healthy and eating well. I do water changes every other week (25-30%) but even before the water changes my parms look great (of course this huge tank now only has 8 very small fish). When trouble started, I removed all driftwood and rocks, but they were all from a good aquarium store so should have been OK. It didn't make any difference. I feed a good mix: flake, pellets, freeze-dried, frozen. Overall I have probably lost 30 fish over 9 months. I am careful to use only buckets and stuff that are just for the aquarium. I did have some algae problems for a while, but figured out I wasn't feeding the plants enough and it has cleared right up with fertilizing. The fish deaths occurred both before and after the algae problems. I have a 10 gallon tank I use for QT. I keep 2 platies in there to keep it cycled and they have been fine while all these problems in the big tank have happened, even though I have occasionally moved one of the 'sick' fish in with them. I thought big tanks were supposed to be easier!!! No fish seems to survive in the 75G tank for more than about 6 months, although they seem happy and healthy until just before they croak. I don't know what to do from here. Does anyone have any ideas how to figure out what's wrong? I've spent a fortune on this (and lots of research time), but I'm about ready to give up! Anybody need a really nice (but jinxed) second-hand setup??

Welcome to FP!

The deaths all sound like average bacterial causes, id be surprised if the tank setup, waterperameters etc were anything to do with the problem, but there are a couple of things that might be causing reinfections, there are a couple of places you could tighten up the ol' operation to try and stop the disease continuing.Its a common mistake, Most people quarantine too late, and often when the individually seperated fish is too sick for treatment to be of any use.

1) You qt sick fish which is good, but ultimately if the disease is contagious its usually contagious before any physical symptoms are seen, therefore the contagion is in the tank, and youre only using meds in quarantine. In your situation it might have been better to treat the main tank. Quarantine is usually observed under certain conditions, and in your case with high ambient harmful bacteria in the main tank its probably a waste of time, and fish relocated into an uncycled quarantine tank can simply expire from the compund effects of sickness and environmental shock.

2)There may be other causes to a cycle of reinfestation, dodgy tapwater, dirty cleaning implements etc.

3) If you have the budget, you can save yourself a lot of bother by installing UV sterilisation, this will ensure transmission rates stay extremely low, and will prevent new tapwater etc from infecting fish. It also means you have to worry a great deal less about quarantining plants, which are also a major vector for many diseases to be introduced into a tank. Having a UV system in the main tank can often make quarantining the sickest fish more effective, as you can get away with just treating the sickest fish and not having to treat the others. There is a very good chance a UV system will eliminate your sickness problems entirely with no other steps needing to be taken.

4) You could do occassional treatments in the main tank of meds like pimafix and melafix which will confront basic bacterial and fungal issues like yours without harming the filter.

Basically I would say that the diseases came in with your very first fish, and have been weeding out specimens that have periodically come off conditions for many months, and this is not at all uncommon. The infection level is not that severe but always available to cause harm, and until the disease in confronted within the main tank, either with UV or treatment, problems will persist.

Tank cleanliness helps sometimes, but is no guarantee of avoiding pathogenic activity, after all, all the media needed for harmful bacterial growth is actually in the filter even if you keep the tank spotless.

You sound like a pretty committed fishkeeper who has gone to a great deal of trouble to make a worthy effort of fishkeeping, but you made but one mistake. That main tank has to be treated.

Your efforts are being made a laughing stock of by common bacteria and fungi. Make them pay Eliminate them! Its all about closing every window of transmission, and leaving the bacteria no place to hide. The main tank is the problem, and it has to be dealt with.

If you need any med advice etc, dont hesitate to ask.

Hope this helps, and good luck

Hi,

sorry to hear about your troubles! Don't give up, though. I have one question: what do the feces of the fish look like? Did you ever observe stringy, whitish stuff hanging down the fish? I know it sounds disgusting but chekc on your fish and let us know

Also we need to know the temp of the tank aswell. The temp may be affecting the fish or the infection allowing it to spread. I say dosing the main tank with melafix and primafix for a week and then try again. Also I would suggest you using your QT for new fish when you get them. Leave them in the QT tank for about4-6 weeks to allow any infection to be seen or found. I can see you are a patient person, so allowing the QT of all new fish would not be a problem for you. Please don't give up. Fish keeping has its times when frustration gets the better of you. But there are also times when you can sit back, relax and enjoy the pleasures of keeping tropical fish in your home.

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
http://thetanklog.blogspot.com/ - [ Thanks to ScottF ]
http://www.natureaquariumclubofutah.com/main.html

No abnormal feces. I keep the temperature right around 80 in the winter, between 81 and 82 in summer when the house gets warm. I have ordered the melafix & pimafix and will try those. Later, I will look into the UV sterilizer. I have been a little sloppy with the QT but will do better going forward. Thanks.