As the Water Churns

[lydy]

I wonder if there's something seriously wrong with my 20 gallon tank, or if I'm just having a bad run of luck, or something else. I don't know. Friday night, one of my glass catfish was swimming in circles, with occasional darting. Glass catfish, also called ghost glass fish, or ghost glass catfish, are completely transparent. Really. They're odd and remarkable. Their usual behavior is to hang in place, undulating quickly, usually behind plants in a good current. Swimming in broad circles is not normal behavior. Neither is darting, especially not since he kept on running into things. Very bad. I put him in the hospital tank on Saturday, and have tried various medications on him. He's gotten a little better, and then a little worse, and as of last night, he looked pretty bad.

Tropical fish diseases are either remarkably under-researched, or the information is hidden from profane eyes as if it were the inner rites of the OTO. The woman at the fish store said that he had "whirling disease", and that it was not only incurable but genetic. The Web says that whirling disease is common amongst trout and salmon, and is caused by a two-stage parasite. So, yet again, common terms among aquarists have no relationship to the rest of the world. What does my pretty little glass fish have? I haven't a foggy clue. I'm going to have to put him down, tonight. He's still swimming in circles, he's stopped eating, and his body is becoming foggy. One of the fascinating facts about ghost glass catfish is that they become opaque after death, even though they are completely transparent while alive. I'm assuming that the fogginess in his abdomen means that tissue is dying.

I hate putting down fish. I use clove oil, so it's not a very gruesome process, but I always feel sorry and guilty. After all, the poor beast was my responsibility once I bought him. I bought three glass catfish last February. What can the trouble be, that he's dying now? It's not something from the outside, after all this time. All the new fish have been through at least a 2 week quarantine before being added to the tank. You know what's worse than putting a fish down? Putting him down while having absolutely no clue why. Is there a contagious disease loose in my aquarium? Is it an isolated incident? Are all my fish going to die? Is there anything I can do? And what about...Naomi?

I'm also down to one loach -- again. The clown loaches are another mystery. They must die, there's no way to jump out of the tank, but there are also no corpses in the water. I've lost, what, six or seven loaches, all together, and never a single body in all that time. Not in the filter, not in a hidey-hole, not floating, not on the bottom, they just vanish, without a trace. The last one to vanish was rather sickly-looking. He'd had a bad case of Ich, along with the green neons, but all of them had recovered from that. He'd been tooling about the tank cheerfully with the other loach, poking around and having fun for several weeks after being sick. He remained too skinny, and his tail was frayed, but I figured he'd recover over time. Guess not. It's less distressing to have a fish vanish than it is to have to put one down, but I'm left with the same questions, which really boil down to, "What the hell is going on?"

The bright spot is my 30 gallon tank. I bought a cute baby blood parrot, still all brown and stripey, and a turquoise severum, about a third the size of the full-grown one there. The larger blood parrot in that tank is called Wesley, The Dread Parrot Roberts, so I've named the little one Buttercup. I sing the Gilbert and Sullivan song to her, cross-threading my literary references. The severum looks blue/purple in some lights, and I've named him Hello, My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die. Usually, though, I abbreviate it to Inigo. (And before you start raving about the movie, please be aware that I have an extremely limited tolerance for the movie, and am often moved to hate it thoroughly. The book is the thing I treasure. [The first edition paperback also has what may be the most inappropriate cover art, ever.]) Last Sunday, I was in the fish store looking for medicine for the glass fish, and noticed that they were having a sale on angel fish. I bought 3 golden angel fish, each the size of a quarter. I can't tell them apart, so I call them the Three Silver Pennies.

I'd hoped to move the bristle-nose pl*co, Pachinko, over to the 30 gallon soon, but I think I'll wait a while longer. The 30 gallon needs a good algae eater, but it doesn't need a communicable disease.

I lost two mystery snails, too, just recently. They were in the 6 gallon. Could it just be the heat? 90 degrees is not a good temperature for fish. Hmm. Floating bags of ice can lower the temperature, but it's remarkably labor-intensive, and I'm not home during the day, so I have to dump the problem on my housemates, which I hate to do.

Fish! Plants! Arghh!

Comments

Pardon the intrusion ...

[kightp.livejournal.com]

... but one of the scientists affiliated with the program for which I work is Tim Miller-Morgan, DVM, who's known around here as the Fish Doc.

I mention it because he distributes an ornamental aquaculture newsletter with lots of information about fish culture and disease, via e-mail. And because he's affiliated with the Extension Service, he also takes questions.

See

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/extension/aquarium.html

for contact information.

(I came to your journal via pameladean, a friend from both our pre-LJ lives).

Re: Pardon the intrusion ...

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Intrusion, hah! Responding to a public post, and with useful information no less, cannot possibly be termed an intrusion. Thank you.

I wonder how much of the problem has been heat and pH. I don't know why the pH has been fluctuating, lately. We've also had some 90 degree days, and my house isn't air conditioned. I need to go bang my head against water chemistry, again.

I chickened out on putting down the sick fish, today. I want to be more certain that it's not curable. Since I don't even know what it is...

My last loach was in hiding most of today. When he finally came out, he looked weak and emaciated. I'm worried about him, he was the picture of health only a week ago.

Thanks again for the URL. I was poking about there this afternoon, in fact.

Re: Pardon the intrusion ...

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of help. Do give Tim a call if you feel like it - this is the sort of mystery he thrives on.

Missing Fish

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

You've probably thought of this, but is it possible that your other fish are eating the bodies of the fish when they die?

Re: Missing Fish

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I can't think of any other way to dispose of the bodies. It's the totality of it that boggles me. They're gone, without a trace. Poof.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I like the book and movie in differnt ways. It probably comes from watching the movie long before I read the book. For one thing I love that the movie ends with a kiss rather than the pickle ending of the book.

Sorry about your fish. I have difficulty with plants so I don't even try with animals.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I believe that I read the book long before the movie was in production. I was just young enough, when I read it, to be completely taken in by the framing story. I believed in S. M. Morgenstern. I believed in the skinny, frigid wife Helen and the tubular child. I believed in the starlettes and the book store and the several volumes and all of it.

When I discovered that the framing story was untrue, I felt a flash of betrayal, just a cold touch on the back of my neck reminding me that the world was not a fairy story, even though we need to believe in them. The book is very dark. It weaves a pretty fairy tale, made of air and light, but the structural supports are of steel and bone, and now and then there's the brilliant flash of gunfire.

It's the darkness I prize in that book. The cold fingers of death reaching through the archetypical tale of happy endings, creating a depth and shape that wasn't there, before. For me, the mixture of the bleak, Vietnam-era despair and the tale of a golden-haired princess meld into a true tale, where neither of them had been true on their own. I wish I had the book to hand. What's the Grandfather's description? All that.

It was once described to me as an anti-Vietnam book. That chimed, instantly. I understood it completely. I haven't been able to explain why I agree with that assessment, but I think it is a true one. The war in Vietnam was supposed to be the good guys riding in to save the downtrodden, chase the bad guys away, and everyone would live happily ever after. Real life and real death interfered with that ideal. There's a way in which many Vietnam War supporters seemed as if they were choosing to live in a fairy tale, rather than grapple with the fairy tale and it's underpinnings, pretending that the only thing going on what was on top.

If I can disconnect my brain from the book, the movie's all right. There's an occasional scene that I think is just horrible -- the sequence on the boat with Buttercup, for instance -- but over all, it's an average movie. If only they hadn't made it out of one of my favorite books.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I suppose I must be a romantic fool. I love stories where in the end everyone (or almost everyone) I like ends up dead. But it's got to be tragic, like a Russian tale.

I suppose part of it having seen the movie first I was expecting bitter sweet chocolate. Instead I felt like I got a pickle with a chocolate bar wrapper. I mean it felt like a horrible bait and switch when it look like a ride off into the sunset ending and then it turns into A Series of Unfortunate Events. I did like the first book, The Bad Beginning because I knew going in that it would turn out badly.

And I did really love the movie, so in a weird sort of way the book seemed like a bad novelization of a movie I really liked. Even though logically I know it came first.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear of your piscine losses, but smiled at The Dread Parrot Roberts.

Fishies.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, from what it sounds like is that it's an ammonia or PH kill off. I am currently have this problem with a catfish, who will probably die, but I'm going to give him a chance to fight through it. If this is a new tank (though I don't think it is), then there should be high levels of ammonia, but this will drop off as the nitrates and nitrites balance. Get something like ammonia lock (or something like that) to stop this, but your test kit (which you should get) will still test positive for ammonia. Just now, it won't be toxic ammonia. Loaches, meanwhile, are masters of hiding. If they are in that tank, you won't know about it. To find them, you have to dig up every ornament and look inside and they won't just fall out of it. Be careful, clown loaches have spines under their eye. Might even check the bottom filter if you're really desperate. There's sometimes holes in it even if the rocks cover it up, Loaches can and will get in there. Oh, and these things have to be in groups of four or more or they will get depressed and die. It's a very gruesome death. But you're trying to keep their numbers up. And yes, they will eat one another when they die. Look for sculls more than bodies and count your fish every time you feed them. Way too many fish in the tank, by the way. You're going to need a 55 or 75 to support the angles and the blood parrots (who will eat the angles and neons and anything else they can get their mouth around) and the loachs (of which get 9 inches each and then will eat everyone if the happen to breed.. only happens when they are full grown). Angles will also eat smaller fish and they get big (Aggressiveness has been only mildly bread of them. they are still mean little such and suches when given a chance). Over crowding might be some of your problem also. Rule is one gallon to one inch of maximum fish size. and two gallons to one inch for ciclids and other tall fish (loachs, angles, discus, oscars). Only problem with blood parrots is they are little mutants and will often have problems with eating as they get bigger. Snails don't like warm water and the loachs will eat them! It's their food in the wild. They only live a few months as it is, unless the water is cooler than normal tropical fish temp. Which, your tank should be an angle fish temp (go to www.fishprofiles.com for neat stuff on temp, PH, and about your fish). The heat probably has hurt your fish, big time. That's way, way above their normal tolerance range. Ten to one, this was what caused all the deaths and your catfish's spinning problem. Get that tank moved to the coolest area of the house possible and floating bags of ice will kill the fish as this is putting cold and hot spots in the tank. They are better off at the 90 than at swimming between the two and dealing with the temp going up and down and up and down... well, you get the idea. A bigger tank will also help to keep the water temp down, but unless you're willing to install an air conditioner, I would upgrade. Best bet. Don't by any new fish after a kill off. Wait for a few weeks and then add fish slowly. One group at a time starting with the least territorial. Angles and other ciclids should be added last. I also find quarineein tanks to be bad news also, unless you have the tank as well established as your main one. They cause ammonia kills on their own. Just make sure to buy fish from a trusty place which doesn't have ick on any of its fish or they keep it under control when they do. And, they dip their nets in an ick killing solution between tanks. Hope some of this helps, though I know it kinda jumped around (and a few spelling mistakes, I'm sure). I'm not an expert at any of this, but I've had some trial and error experiences. Good luck.

Re: Fishies.

[(Anonymous)]

Bad me! My e-mail is KeepersCompany@aol.com. oh, I pciked up another of your posts. Internal parasites are common in fish. Do not kill them (unless they are obviously suffering). Just let them be. Don't even by the chemicals for it, it's pointless. Most parasites have a seconardy bird or other fish host they need and so they will pass out of the fish in time. Also, blood worms will get your fish sick because it doesn't have enough of the right things in it. Don't feed them just blood worms. Use it as a treat, once a week or so. No more. Feed them fish food with lots of good stuff for them in it. okay, I'll stop posting now. hehe!

-Kim