fish keep dying

scott36854

our setup is a little over 3 weeks old. 37 gallon tank. biowheel filter. lots of live plants. our goal is a community tank. each time we add fish, some of them die or some that have been in there from the beginning die. it seems that the bottom of their tail fin starts to disappear and one of them had had fuzzy looking stuff on its tail as it was rotting off. i have been using a natural medicine (artemiss) for a week now and it isnt helping. we bought 4 cherry barbs 2 nights ago and one has died and another one is on its way out. any idea what is causing the fin rot?

Tazman

What are your water parameters, such as Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH and General Hardness.

fish monger

Have you been testing your water with an aquarium test kit ? How many and what type of fish do you have in the tank ?

ashtricks

@scott36854: If your water parameters look good, try changing the shop where you get your fish from. Look carefully at the fish you are buying. The pet store people will sell the ones that are easiest to catch which have a high probability to be sick.

dmuddle

With aquariums, they get there fish from a wholesales. A lot of the time if your fish keep dying you can contact the aquarium of this problem and they will contact wholesales and let them know. Sometimes they will change the wholesales.SO just let your aquarium know

Tazman

While this is a good suggestion that may not be practical for the Original Poster, it is not always the case of bad / sick fish being sold.

Water Parameters in the tank at home can play a big part as well. Bad water parameters can cause illness / disease just as easy.

I suspected the levels will potentially be quite high with such a "young" tank.

Before offering help and advising on treatment, those number for water parameters are helpful to us.
Treatment also depends on what stock are in the tank already.

Please provide these and we may be able to offer more help to you.

ashtricks

@ Tazman: Agreed 100% :)

scott36854

i have had my water checked 3 times at the store and they always say everything looks good except ph is too high. i have a ph tester and mine reads high as well. for the last 5 days the ph has been normal. i had an artificial tree in the the tank. i was told to remove it, i did and added driftwood. ph is a lot better now.

fish consist of a few different type tetras, mollies and gouramis (dwarf), and 2 little angel fish. what gets me is that some of the original stocked fish get sick and sometimes a new fish will show signs within a day or so of stocking. we bought a new molly saturday night. last night her tail bottom was already showing signs of the condition.

scott36854

i just read on my medicine bottle to remove any carbon from filter while adding medicine. i have a penguin filter that has a biowheel and carbon/fiber cartridges. should i remove them?

Tazman

What the petstore tell you and what is good water parameters are totally different things.

Can you provide numbers when you get the water tested (numbers for Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH and GH and KH (Carbonate Hardness).

If a disease is already present and not eradicated then it will spread to any new additions.

PLEASE DO NO ADD ANYMORE fish until we can help you with this. Absolutely DO NOT remove the biowheel from the penguin, this is where 99% of your good bacteria will be. The cartridge you can remove as it does have carbon in it.

To compensate though, you would need to be doing daily water changes and vacuuming.

Can you perhaps post a picture of the diseased fish? to give us a better idea of what it might be and to offer the best solution for treating it.

What medication are you treating with?