Disaster please help

boep

ok seems like i only post on here when i need help well i need help i have 2 silver dollars one is showing some kind of weird fungus / growth on it white coliflowed kind of deal on its side when the growth went away the scales under it where darkend and its now back again 100% sure its not ich he is also showing some fin rot but its starting to heal after the a few days went to 2 LFS and even one that was out of state no one could tell me what this was also my nitrates where high about 2 weeks ago i did a water change and they dropped now they are way back up even higher then before
here are the stats on the tank and feeding schedule please help me!

i feed the fish 1 cube of misis shrimp and half a cube of blood worms per day in the pm and in the am i feed them a very small amount of flakes
1 day per week the fish fast ( no food)
i change the water 25% per week and the filter about once every 3 weeks unless it needs it before then

tank is a 60 gal bow front
im running a standard light you can pick up at petsmart
along with a small led light white during the day running with the normal light
blue at night with no other light
i have 2 small air stones under 2 large rocks in the tank for some air flow
substrate is black sand and aquaflora ( dunno if thats correct ) to help stimulate the live plant growth
2 med size pieces of bog wood
temp is 78-80 24/7
bio wheel filter dont remember the model number but its for a 70gallon tank
2 med size african sword plants

animals in the tank

2 blue/gold gouramis
2 silver dollars ( came with the tank)
1 african brown ( not ghost) knife fish
1 albino bushy pleco
1 small black clawed frog

just did a chemical test these where the results

ph 6.0 > i would like for it to be around 6.6ish
ammonia .25ppm
nitrites ? dont have the chemicals to test because i spilt it
nitrates 80ppm!

the only chemicals i have used in the tank are stress zyme when i do water changes to get rid of the chlorine in the water!

pleeeease someone help i dont want my fish do be sick or die

note also none of the other fish show signs of anything other than the silver dollar

Chris7

To me it sounds like some kind of fungus? Why are you useing Stress Zyme for water changes? People reading this but Isn't this is wrong, I only used this to establisled the bacteiria in my "new tank"! When doing water changes I use Prime water supplement. Hang in there Man, There is alot of help on this site!.

Chris7

The "Big Guns" will help....Trust them they help me..

Romad

If it looks like a little clump of cauliflower it could be the lymphocystis virus.

Try google imaging it and see if that matches up with what you see on your fish. There are good articles out there on this virus and although not treatable with meds (virus) the area left exposed after the virus sloughs off is prone to secondary bacterial infection so keeping the water super clean is important.

Good luck and keep us posted.

boep

it doesnt look liike any of the pictures of lymphocystis virus and what do u mean chris7 ??

Romad

It sounded like it could have been that virus based on your symptoms. Do you detect any fuzz or can you find something online that looks closest to what your fish symptoms are?

You should not have any ammonia present in a cycled tank. When you say you replace the filter, do you actually throw out the old media and put a new cartridge in? If so, you could be losing a lot of your beneficial bacteria and causing ammonia spikes in the tank. I'm assuming you mean you replace the cartridge and not the bio-wheel?? If so, the cartridges can be given a swish/rinse in tank water during your water changes and don't replace them until they're falling apart. And then you'll want to keep the old media in with the new media for a week or so before you throw the old filter media out.

OK, back to the fish. Without being able to diagnose what's wrong, the fact that it had fin rot tells us that it had and could possibly still have a bacterial infection. Isolate the fish into a hospital tank setup if possible, keep the water super clean with 50% daily water changes and use a little AQ salt.

Then try to identify those symptoms online or post a picture if possible.

boep

im really worried about using salts due to my knife and my frog and yes i normally toss the whole filter catrige but i never toss or clean the wheel what about the high nitrates ? ill post some pics if i can take them i dont have an extra tank or the room to set up one because i live in such a small apartment

Romad

Understood but the salts were meant to be added to the hospitall tank.

Are you sure that you can't set one up temporarily (a 10 gallon kit would work fine)? It's always a good idea otherwise you can't isolate a sick or injured fish and you can also use it for quarantine when you get new fish.

gwynnie

soory posted in wrong place again

Romad

Hi gwynnie. I moved your post to it's own thread in Tropical Fish Diseases.