sick cory

[mishakaal]

Hey !

On december 31st I bought some trilineatus cory and some panda cory too.
I put them in a 10g (that was already cycled) to quarantine them.

2 or 3 days later, one trilineatus died ( he was swimming weirdly and the next time I checked he was dead) I brought it back to the store, they gave me a new one (plus a nice speech on how they are very hardy so it is mostly my fault it died)

2 weeks later one trilineatus started looking paler than the other but he was still eating and active so I waited a couple of days to see. I then isolated him and 2 days later he died. Last week a panda died, it was swimming weird before its death and now a trilineatus has gotten paler and stays away from the other corys.

I've been doing small water changes every 3-4 days and testing water like crazy to make sure the problem wasnt my water parameters.

Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 10
pH 8

I'm gonna remove the pale cory from the 10g today but I'd like to know what they have so I can save the rest of them.

[Pamelajo]

Hi April,
Corys usually like a lower PH, but I have kept Pandas, albinos, weitzman, dwarfs and bronzes at 7.8 will no ill effects.
Did you get them locally? Maybe the ph is was very different from what they are used to.
Are they skinny? Is their feces stringy? Possibly parasites?
You have probably already checked for these but if not take a look. Anything on their bodies, salt looking spots, cottony spots anything around the mouths or on their tails?
Sorry I am not much help, this is all I can think of, hopefully someone with more knowledge will help.

[mishakaal]

(It's Isabelle not April hehe)

I have peppered cories in my other tank with a pH of 8,2 and they are fine, they even reproduced last year :)

All the other cory in the 10g are fine. Active, eating a lot, playing together etc
Nothing visible on them, just the one that got paler ( he is dying at the moment)
It's not something white on him it's really his body that gets paler and greyish instead of the nice silvery color they have. All the others are round and a nice color. No weird poop.

Thanks for your help Pam

[mishakaal]

I got them from Big Al's in Barrie. I took the time to transfer some of my water gradually in their bag before taking them out of it and putting them in the tank. ( didn't pour the petstore water in the tank either)

[Pamelajo]

:Embarassing: Sorry Isabelle.

[Melody]

I'd say that's the store and not you. That's when we learn which stores to not return to - maybe someday they'll get the message. Very frustrating for you I'm sure. Make sure you don't use the same net, etc, in your healthy tanks without disinfecting them. I would also suggest taking down the 10G once this quarantine is done and disinfecting that too. Superbugs are rampant in some stores these days and nothing kills them.

I try to stick to the small, privately owned stores. The odds of them having quality livestock is much higher as a rule.

[mishakaal]

Yeah I've been very careful not to contaminate, I got 2 sets of net/siphons/containers/buckets to make sure I don't contaminate my other tanks. I'm so scared of losing the other fishes!

What should I do with the other cories that are fine for now? How much longer should I quarantine them? It's already been a bit more than a month and the disease keeps coming back about every 2 weeks so I guess they'll stay there for a while or until every other one has died. :S

Let's say I wait 2 months, nobody dies and I put them in my other 2 tanks.. then why should I take the 10g down.. I mean could the disease still be on the surviving cories and they would spread it to the other tanks? Can the disease hide in the substrate?

I got real plants and snails in there, what should I do with them if I take the 10g down?

I got my cories and otos from Big Al's too and got no problem. The local petstore is so bad, the tanks look like fish cemetaries, a 1ft oscar in a 10g, and the only time I tried to save a snail from there, I introduced that weird bump disease which I still havent found a cure for. The guy uses half of his store to sell ice cream in the summer if that's giving you an idea... :(

Thanks for your help

[Melody]

Sounds like you know what you're doing, which is what makes me sure its the store. Not all fish in the store will die on you, but the ones that do usually outnumber the ones that don't.

They can build an immunity, just like we do to bad bacteria. I would give them a two month quarantine from the point at which there are no more sick fish, then strip the tank. It may be extreme but I've watched a superbug rip through a tank for months and months until I finally gave up and took the tank down for disinfecting. You don't want to introduce something like that to your main tanks.

We have an awesome community of fish-traders and sellers here. As the weather warms up you'll find more at the auction (http://www.canadianaquariumconnection.com/ClassAuction/). When you think of how many fish a person can flush, shipping doesn't cost much. We have some awesome stores that ship too, like Pacific Aquatics (http://www.pacificaquatics.ca). His catalogue isn't in full operation yet, but if you PM him with what you're looking for he'll fix you up if he can. He happens to run one of my neighbourhood stores and its a fave of mine. Canadian Aquatics (http://www.canadianaquatics.com/) is a site that offers livestock from private breeders and one of those involved is an all time fave breeder of mine.

[mishakaal]

So the cory died and the next day another one started looking pale.. I didn't wait for it to become more ill : he went straight into a bucket.

I went to the store yesterday to ask them if they had a problem with the tank my fishes came from .. they denied it (obviously, but I know that 2 weeks after I bought mine some were dead in their tank) The first guy told me it definitely sounded like a disease or parasite and told me to go ask the other guy for a medication .....the 2nd guy told me it didnt sound like a disease and told me it was the way I acclimated them in my tank etc etc then pointed me the melafix bottle in a desperate way to sell me something.

I've tried to google more since nobody seems to know what it is.. and what fits the most would be the neon tetra disease..

description on aquahobby.com "...will show signs of becoming pale in color (white patches beneath their skin). The fish will not school with the others and become listless. Through the latter stages of the disease the fish´s body will begin to degenerate. Usually the tail end of the body will seem dwarfed and becomes useless, this will cause the fish to have trouble swimming. Upon witnessing these symptoms, death is imminent"

Apparently there are no treatments for that.. Y/N ?

[Melody]

Unfortunately most bacterial infections or viruses share some or all of the same symptoms. On top of that, most really sick fish end up with secondary infections so you often see symptoms of more than one affliction.

I've never had any luck curing anything bacterial with a medication and I've tried them all. The only effect that antibiotics have ever had in my tanks are to make matters worse. The bugs in some mass bred fish are way too tough for the weak med's available to us. What the med's don't kill, they make stronger.

Internal parasites are another tough one to tackle but garlic, PraziPro or soaking food in anti-parasite med's sometimes works (getting them to eat that can be a challenge). The first two options works best for me. External parasites are still relatively easy to conquer as long as there's not another underlying cause.

Overall we're better off saving our money. Keeping the sick fish quarantined as you see them and disinfecting your equipment is about the best you can do, in my experience. Luckily the market is opening up across Canada and we're no longer stuck with bad stores. Once the weather warms up, I'm sure you'll find many high quality fish available for order.