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This evening I found Simon, our beloved Red Capped Ornigta (sp?) floating on his side near the top of the tank, he responded to provation but would only move in a sluggish manner near the very top of the tank. He did go all the way to the bottom at one point, however he was still on his side. There was very visable fin rot, and lots of missing scales over his main body with others looking like they were going to pine-cone off. There were no white spots or other odities on or around his mouth or gills. His eyes did not look distended or clouded. I have noticed a few other fish with mild fin rot, and a few others with swim bladder issues.

I have ruled out water quality issues. Our Nitrates tend to be high (>100ppm) but Nitrites remain at 0, and all attempts to lower the nitrates have been unsuccessful. However more recently I have noticed a large increase in algae growth which I have not been able to remove.

This is a 90 gal, fresh water tank. With about 60 fish (tetras, barbs, catfish)

Any Ideas on whats killing Simon? Removing the Algae?
-Jared

The algae is not causing it, it's the water quality. In fact, encourage the growth of algae as much as you can - it eats nitrates.

Your extremely high nitrates are stressing out the fish and making them more suceptible to diseases, hence the dilema you are in now. You say you have tried to lower the nitrates, and yet you still have 60 fish in a 90 gallon tank. Fish cause nitrates. And many fish you have, such as the goldfish and catfish, produce more waste than other fish of comparable size.

Unless your tank is filled to the brim live plants and you do 50% water changes every week, there is no way you can get away with 60 fish of that size in a 90 gallon tank. It's just impossible.

You can toss in all the medicine you want, but the quality of your fish is going to keep deteriorating until you reduce the number of fish in your tank to at the very most 30, and even that's a lot and weekly water changes will be necessary. At this point, medicine will do you no good, only stress out the fish more. Fish cannot heal under those conditions.

Get rid of fish and do water changes until your nitrates are 50 at the most (and even 50 is considered very high), and then you may have success in treating your fish with medicine. There is not much to cure dropsy (some suggest PimaFix), but finrot is generally easy to cure under clean conditions with one of the Maracyn products by Mardel (see which one is best for your tank depending on your livestock).

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

wow 100 nitrates.
I agree, this is probably whats causing your problem.
Solutions:
Water changes water changes and more water changes.
Test the water coming from the tap to see if there is Nitrates coming in from there.
Buy some Prime water conditioner. It detoxifies Nitrates, which may help.
If your fish is suffering from NitrAte poisoning, then clean water with little to no NitrAtes is the key.
Goldfish shouldnt really be kept with tropical fish.
My suggestion, do a 50% water change. Add Prime.
Wait 3 days, Do another 25% water change.
Are you vaccuuming the gravel? If you arent, this could also explain the high nitrAtes, or possibly you have a dead fish in there rotting somewhere. Check for that.
Have you cleaned your filters recently?
What kind of filtration?
Do you have any live plants? If no- go get some. Hornwort, Anachris, Cabomba, Wisteria, Ambulia/limnophilia, are all NitrAtes sponges. Buy a lot and get em in there.
That should also help.


Last edited by So_Very_Sneaky at 01-Oct-2005 15:12

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