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I have a strange illness attacking my school of glowlight tetras. I have lost two so far and one is sick. There are no obvious external problems. The first thing that happened was that they lost their bright color and got very pale and greyish. Then I noticed that they were breathing very rapidly. They were also opening and closing their mouth rapidly. Almost like they were unable to get enough oxygen by breathing through their gills. They would then stop swimming and lay on their sides.

Does anyone have any ides what could be afflicting my fish? They got sick one at a time and I'm sure that the rest will get sick eventualy if I don't do something. Could it be some kind of parasite in their lungs? What should I do for them?

I scooped them off the bottom of the tank and kept them in soft nets close to the air from the airstone. I stopped feeding all the fish, took the carbon out of the filter and treated the tank water with some melafix. I don't know if that helps or not. Only one is still alive. I do weekly water changes of about 25%. I figured that I should do smaller changes every other day now.

My readings are:
PH- 7.3
Ammonia- 0
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- 40ppm

Thanks.

- Meow -

Uhh... Well most fish don't have lungs, so you can probably rule out lung parasites.

I'd be more concerned about the discoloration than the heavy breathing, because heavy breathing is something that occurs in just about all illnesses or stressful situation.

Anytime someone mentions whitish or greyish discoloration, I think of bacterial infections. Were the fins frayed at all? Without a picture it's going to be harder to figure out what's wrong with your tetras.

Take a look at this, particularly the picture that I submitted of the Corydoras with grayish discoloration near the tail. Does your fish look anything like that?

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Carbon can be very good after you have been using meds but and a very big BUT if it is in the filter and it is well passed its used by date by that I mean it has served its purpose it can and will cause many polution problems by releasing some of the poisons back into the tank.

How long has the carbon been in the filter? How do you go about cleaning the filter material?
How big is the tank? A 30%+ water change would also help. Do you add a Bio Starter at every water change this helps to keep the good bacteria in its origional state.

Finally it is very possible that you could have also introduced some problem into the tank via your water changes meaning it could be coming through your water supply.

Also increase the airstone rate as much as possible this will help to remove any unwanted gasses if it came through your water supply.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

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oh yeah, fish lungs.. hee hee

Sorry about that. I can be mildly dense at times.

I will post a picture tomorrow.

None of those pictures really looked lke my fish. The fish looks realatively normal except for the color loss. It kind of looks desaturated. The belly area is very white, but in the healthy fish that area is light as well so I don't think that it looks too abnormal. Maybe I'm wrong. One of the fins looks a little frayed. Also, it looks like the belly is protruding and the spine has contracted or something. Like something is drawing it upwards from both the head and tail.

I change the filter media, carbon and all, out completely every two weeks or so. I don't really think it has time to go bad and leach contaminants back into the water. I add Cycle (a bacterial starter) at every water change and filter media change.

The tank is a 20 gallon high. I don't think anything came from my water because thus far my other tank is fine. I think whatever this is came from the surviving bleeding heart tetra that I put in the tank following the great tetra munching that occured in the 55 gallon. It is the newest addition. Its eyes have gone cloudy but I thought that was because it had been attacked. Could that have been the souce of this infection?

- Meow -