110 gallon corner tank, last water change last weekend, and the owner changes 70% at a time. (yes, a little much, I know. Not my tank unfortunately.) We haven't painted or cleaned recently. I used Jungle strips for the ammonia, and Virbac 5-in-1 for the others.

Around 0.20 ppm Ammonia/Ammonium
40-50 ppm Nitrates
0 ppm Nitrites
120 ppm Hardness
80 Alkaline/Buffer
6.0-6.3 pH (it was off the scale of the strips, estimating by color.)

I don't have the pre-existing values, as it hasn't been a tank I've usually been involved with. She has a biowheel filter, I'm not sure of its capacity, but it seems physically proportionate to the tank... and to move through a lot of water. The water is generally mostly clear, no huge algae buildups, she has a plecostemus and a couple of mini catfish.

Yesterday, I noticed in my mother's tank that one of her angelfish was gasping occasionally. She has four, all about four or five inches across at the fattest part of their body, and the rest still seem healthy... though one DOES headbutt the others often. So, I wasn't concerned that it was a tankwide issue. The sick angelfish also had a small red dot, about the size of a period on a sentence, on its right pectoral fin, towards the base. Maybe a touch of white.

Today, the dot is larger -- about the size of a pinhead, and mostly red with a touch of white still. The fish hasn't shown any other symptoms, ragged fins, fur anywhere, the scales are down still.. but it's waiting in the front corner of the tank and gasping constantly. It's treading water, not laying on the bottom, and not arced.

My mother has had extremely bad luck medicating fish in the past, and so is very hesitant to do anything other than the "wait and hope" approach.

Is there anything I can do, as I'm fairly sure she would give me the go-ahead, or suggest to her?

It sounds like a bacterial infection and you should do a 50% water change each day with temp matched water and to use a gravel vac as well.
Have you seen the filter get cleaned? If you can find out when the last time was and how it was done then that would help too.

Bullying can also weaken a fish so it may be wise to take the ring leader our.

You are also showing ammonia and high nitrates which suggests not enough water changes or the filter is needing cleaned or upgraded. Whats the media in the filter?

Once you get the water quality back on track then the fish should get better.

Maybe in the future it may be better to do 50% twice a week for a month to see how that goes.

The filter media are activated carbon, and the wheel itself, with the spokes of semi-cloth-like material... sorry if I'm not stating it clearly, I can't think of a good way to describe it. :/


She already uses a gravel vac and stirs the gravel around a little on each weekly cleaning. Every few cleanings, she rinses out the wheel and entire HOB assembly, including scrubbing out the pipes, under the tap. Yes, another no-no, though she has lots of rocks and fake plants that may keep the bacteria...

By the time the filter is washed out, it generally is saturated with what I assume to be algae, and the pipes are half-solid with it. She has four or five algae eating type creatures.


50% water change daily for how long? And is that likely to shock the other fish?

I'll try volunteering to change the water twice a week, or just once if she wants to keep doing it once a week also.. I think it's one of the very few relaxing things in her schedule. Which is why I bother to pester you guys about her tank!

Any other suggestions? I think she wouldn't mind me adding something into the water, so long as it was carefully researched and cautiously dosed. Just that she herself doesn't want to.

If you can take out the carbon and swap it for either filter sponges or ceramic noodles then it would help a lot. If you add medication to the tank then the carbon will nulify its effect.
As no other fish are sick then i would go with keeping the tank and filter clean and doing the water changes. Do the changes for a month and see if theres any improvement in the fish, but if its stressed through bullying then it may die as angels will only tolerate so much aggression.
Can you get a quarantine tank for it? 15 - 20 gallons with a height of 18 inches would be ideal and it would give it time to recuperate.
Feeding it protein foods would help as well, such as bloodworm and daphnia.

Try and ask her to wash out the filter once every two weeks to begin with and ask her to use old tank water to keep the friendly bacteria.

The aggressive angel seems to leave the sick one more-or-less alone, though the idea of a quarantine tank ain't half bad...

She feeds a melange of foods each day -- frozen krilldrops, an algae wafer, some flakes and some bloodworms. Not a lot of each, but given the angels, dwarf gouramis (peaceful ones), and the algae eaters altogether... But I can mention upping the bloodworms potentially, or loan her my krill pellets.

I emailed her to ask if I can take up some of the water-changing duties, so we'll see how it goes...

Thanks for the advice, Sandy!

No problem, here to help

Maybe others can give you more info and suggestions so keep us updated and let us know how things go.
If the angel gets worse then let us know

I got my email response.

She declined my offer to help in changing the water more frequently, as she is under the impression that it would get rid of the good bacteria.

I'll focus on the bloodworms if I'm ever the feeding party, other than that...

The fish hasn't gotten any worse, and hasn't gotten any better that I can see. He's unmolested by the other angelfish, or anyone else for that matter... still in the same corner that he was in.

I suppose you can only try cant you.
As for the bacteria, most of it lives in the filter so you could change out all the water and still your bacteria level wouldnt change.
I hope the angel gets better.

The good bacteria don't live freely in the water and there is no harm, and much goodness to come from frequent changes. I also second the suggestion of changing out the carbon for a better filter media, such as sponge, which will help with the good bacteria. Carbon really isn't that useful unless you're trying to be rid of a chemical in the tank.
I also agree that quarantining the angel would be a good idea.
Mary

Good news.

My mother stopped by my tank and asked what I had in my tank.

I explained the weird thing was a bag of filter material, to colonize good bacteria on it... the whole sessile thing.

I don't know if it's related, but that night she changed out quite a bit of her water.

I found that out because today I noticed the angel is doing a LOT better -- swimming around not as quickly as the others, but not gasping, and the spot on its pectoral fin is gone.

Thanks to Sandy and Midnightt for their help.

Good news.
Ask her to do more water changes each week and she should see a good improvement on the fish in general

That's great Johnny Five

Sad update.

One of the angelfish died a few days after my last post...


Today, there is a dead fish beneath a rock, I couldn't see what type, but potentially another angel or one of the dwarf gouramis.

The angelfish that was aggressive is no longer charging the other angels...

Though now one of the angels is drifting around the tank gasping, with long trails of clearish-whitish strands hanging from his dorsal and tailfins. The angels are all about three or four inches deep, bodywise.

The water is almost completely changed every two weeks, and I believe the owner is still unwilling to let me change it more often.

Is there a viable way I can set up a five gallon bucket as a quarantine tank? I have aquarium salt, an air pump, though I have no way of getting my hands on a filter at this point. I think I may be able to convince her to hand over the sick fish in interests of seeing if I can do anything about it.. at least until it gets better.

And if there IS a way, then what kind of treatments or methods can I use to help the little dude? I'm not against sedating him with clove oil and dabbing something on the sites/removing the strands, if that is one of the suggestions, or against salt-dosing him or buying a modest amount of medications. *eyes his budgetbook*

Its a shame she wont look after them properly. Can you set up a tank yourself for the sickest angels?
The bucket would probably stress it out but maybe a rubbermaid would do?
The slime coat is coming off the fish which is why you are seeing the stringy bits.
Has she added any new fish in the last month or so?
Salt will really only help if its a parasite and then you have to be careful with dosing.
If you move the fish then you must have a heater in the tub to keep it warm.
So how long has the dead fish been in the tank?
Im sorry but I just think its terrible that she lets her fish die and does nothing to help them.
How many gallons is the tank holding and how many fish and types?

I can't set up a tank, but I can potentially get a rubbermaid.

I currently have a heater, that I haven't started using yet -- a 100 watt one, that I was planning on using for my goldfish until I realized the temperature only drops to around 65-67 at worst here during the day. I thought it was more like the 50s, until I plastered on a thermometer.

At any rate, I have an air bubbler and heater already that I can use, and can pick up a rubbermaid, definitely.

My best guess is that there's either 2 or 3 angels left in the tank, though I could only find one of them with a quick peek.

She added some new fish a few weeks ago, right before the whole thing started, and doesn't generally quarantine. Then again, I inherited that, and only quarantined the last oranda for 24 hours, so I can't point fingers.

The dead fish has been in the tank.. well gauging by the lack of any decomposition or pecking marks, I'd say probably sometime after 1am today. Probably early morning is my best guess.



(edit)
The main reason I can't set up a tank is not having a spare, and then having the difficulty of finding a place to store it once the quarantine hopefully completes. Aside from which, the family and friends would be furious if they found out I was back to more than one tank... while I'm old enough to do my own thing, living in my family's house means discretion is the better part of valor. :/

With a rubbermaid, I can store things in it once they're done, and thus have a valid excuse for the sale... *halo*

The rubbermaid is deffinately a better option so if you can get one that can hold at least 25 gallons then you can help those angels. Get the water to the right temperature, add the filter with some old sponge and put them in.
If its only angels that are dying and she brought in new angels then they could have a viral disease which only the strongest will suvive. If the water isnt up to much then the immune system wont help them. Once they are in get the water to 84f.

She did not buy new angels -- though after this, I suspect she will be... more gouramis and a couple otocinclids, I believe.

I can get the rubbermaid up and running within the next couple of days, though I haven't bought it yet.

My main question would be if a filter is necessary? I can do partial changes daily, or twice daily, as hopefully this would only be for a few days while they recover, or maybe a week... But I don't have the $80 to spare that it would take to get a 20-gallon-plus rated filter.

The water temp I can get to 84 though, definitely.

(edit)

Oh, and she was doing the every-other-week water change today, and there had been something very large that had died in the tank awhile ago, from what she guessed.. stringy chunks of fluffy junk everywhere.

Even after a massive water change, there was some left...

Though it seems as if things die, which compound the water quality issue, then more things die...

Theoretically if I can convince her to let me quarantine the angels, that might disrupt the death-badwater-death-badwater sort of cycle that the tank seems to get into sometimes.

(end edit)

Decomposing fish give off ammonia so its no wonder the angels are popping their clogs.
If you can break the cycle then its good.
You dont need a 10 times filter, just something to keep the water turning over is fine for them.

Hope she lets you take the angels out.

angelfish need 10 gallons each, so she needs to think of that when stocking.

She has 110 gallons, at my best estimate, so there's enough room for everyone.. two angels, now, one plecostemus(sic), two catfish, two otocinclus... I think three blue dwarf gouramis, and two or three black skirt tetras. (whew!)

So averaging out around 10 gallons a fish, or so?

The most recently dead angel was underneath a fallen rock.. odd that it turned over, and quickly enough to pin the angelfish. Either that, or the fish croaked, and -then- it fell over.


But, I'll continue pestering her on the quarantine thing, and let you know how it goes. Thanks yet again for all the info, Sandy.

Sorry, i didnt see the 110 gallon bit.
There is deffinately enough room so maybe she needs to up her water changes. I do mine every two weeks and its a 55 gallon but i do at least 70%.
When she does do a change ask to help and maybe offer to do the filter clean for her or maybe just through the week do a water change when she isnt looking.

Good luck with it all and I hope the angels recover for you and your mum. Maybe she could use the rubbermaid for quarantining

Everything becomes clear, now!

This morning as she was headed out to work, I noticed a more solid and stripey floating mass than the others had been.

When she took it out and tossed it, it was a most likely week/two week-old catfish corpse. Which, if it was in there poisoning everything... would be the cause of all the crazy water mixups... The timeline's right.

And the cleaning yesterday took out most of the larger buildups...

And the catfish were new. I was reading about how they're caught with cyanide and other toxins from the wild, and thus get the short end of the stick as far as early survival goes.. so...

Victory! We have, I believe, uncovered the source of the sickness and excised it...


Her fish all already seem perkier today, and the water's distinctly clearer. I re-mentioned the quarantine tank idea, and my stepfather seconded that idea at the dinner table last night, so it is probably in the works sometime in the next month or two.

I'm thinking I WILL do a bit of water changing behind her back sometimes though. Just a 10% or something now and again, nothing too noticeable. Once I manage to find out exactly what her water-change routine is, on a standard day.

Im pleased you found the source but shame for the poor catfish. Is there too many ornaments and things to see clearly into the tank?
Anyhoo, glad the water is clearing up for you and the angels

Yeah, there are a lot of silk plants and a few bits of lavarock statuary. It's a corner tank, so the back of it can be fairly easy to overlook, along with some of the corners.

The top is clean, though, so when something floats or is swimming in the middle and not doing so hot, it's more immediately apparent than something on the bottom layer.