sick fish in brakish water

Hi prof
almost all the fish in my 1.5m brakish tank seem to be ill,the information im getting online is giving me conflicting advise and im a bit stuck as how to proceed, fish and symptoms are :

two 2 year old Archers...very litle swiming ,hanging around bottom of tank with sudden explosive bursts across tank ,very black in colour but mouth area red.

3 Green chromides .displaying ich like symptoms ,scratching and rubing ,no spots. all very orange in colour and gills red, one has pop eye.The smalist one died today no swelling no spots ?

4 Mono Angels , black in colour no swimming just at bottom of tank .one also has pop or cloudy eye

Ph ,Nitate ,sg levels are normal and constant as they have been for 3 months or so.
I am sure the ilness came from 3 Archers I introduced on tuesday but I had them in a quarintine tank for 5 days and they were fine .once introduced ,the larger Archers chased them around so badly I had to remove them,they have all 3 died since .no swelling, no spots
.The only change I have made is using a diff anti chlorine to normal .

Is this some type of infection or poisining of some kind ?
I have done a 25% water change added normal aqu salt and raised the temp to 28.
What further steps would you recomend ?
thanks in advance

 

Please tell me what and how much filtration you have. How regularly have you done water changes? How much and what do you feed?

What are your nitrate levels, and I mean nitrAte not nitrite.

Perhaps I can sort this out after this info.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Thanks.
will get you the nitrate levels when im home tonight,but it was normal when i checked on wed
its a 1.5m x 50 x50 with internal 30cm x 50cm x50cm filter so i guess 70l of filtration ,
filter coton 5cm x 30 x10
activated carbon 5cm x 30 x 10.
2cm x 30 x 10 filter cotton
20cm x 30 x 10 of ceramic rings
10 x 30 x 10 cm lrg bio balls all in one chamber
in the next chamber 10cm x 30 x 10 of small bio balls some with AC inside them in pump chamber (1600 lph pump ) lrg airstone and air into pump outlet lots of water movement
water changes done once a week @ 25% I keep the s.g between 1010 and 1005 only adding red sea salt when level drops below.
I feed them a combenation of Hikari gold cilchid mix and the Hikari arowana sticks @ a teaspoon a night and crickets mabe once a week .normaly skip monday night feeding as they get worms on weekends from garden ,there are 11 fish in total the 2archers are about 10cm the 4monos about 6cm the 3chromides about 3cm and 2scats about 5cm.
thanks

 

quick update . biggest archer , green scat have died
I checked all levels again using a sera test kit and a new red sea kit , levels on sera were all just over o and ph7..... but on the red sea kit
nitrite 0.2
nitrate 5.0
ph 7.5
alk 1.6
so that is a lesson .can these levels go up from removing fish ? as im sure i am not over feeding and my other tanks all have similar filtration and bigger fish
when i started this tank i had 20 sailfin mollies and 10 guppies to cycle .then removed 5mollies added 2 archers waited 4 days added monos removed more mollies and repeated the process untill the last 3 archers were added ,did I add fish to quickly ? or could it be something from one of the added fish .
is 5 day qauranteen to short ?
thanks

 

Hi Storm,

Your water parameters all seem to be within limits, but if I was to take a guess at what your problem is, then I would assume that it is as a result of the introduction of new fishes. It is difficult to say which at this point. I would not only quaranteen for 5 days but for longer, but it is difficult because fishes become immune to the disease forming organisms in their environment but if you move them to a new environment, they can pass on these organisms to other healthy fishes and make these sick, whilst picking up a disease to which your fishes are immune. What this tells you is that any mixing of fishes from different environments is risky and longer quaratining is the only thing that can help.

At this stage, my advice would be to treat with an antibacterial medication but it may be too late for many of your fishes as you have already experienced.

Sorry about the bad news.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

thanks prof.
a lesson learned .will def quaranteen for longer periods.
as for current situation , the other lrg archer died and all green chromides only red streeks in chromides and distinct orange colour and pop eye as indicator of why, I did a 45% water change removed all decor and major clean up of substrate redosed with salt and all monos and scat are looking normal, i will keep a close eye on levels for any changes
thanks for advise.