please help with fish disease

monya

I have now built a frame and wrapped the fish tank area in the shed with wall wrap sisalation, looks like a massive dope growing room lol was using the fire to keep them at around 16 degrees, but I have been so busy of late, some days I can't even make it up to the shed. The insulation has meant the temp stays stable so that is a real bonus..

BullwinkleII

These fish are in my small test system and its heated.

Any recommendations on what temp i should keep it at where disease prevention is the priority?

Its currently sitting around 22 deg C. I think my heater maxes out at 32 or so.

the plants dont matter but the bacteria Id like to keep. If need be I can plant a bush from the beach to eat my nitrates, but what would be the best salt concentration in the FT to prevent/cure disease and not do damage to the bacteria?

chillidude

shiiiiit - really - 22C should be absolutely fine !!

monya

yeah, 22 sweeet. the bacteria can handle up to 5 parts I reckon. If you lose these fish, come see me and I will replace them

BullwinkleII

thanks stu but thats not necessary.

I dont think it has anything to do with your stock. They were all healthy until I got hold of them

Are marron tough, tolerant of different water conditions, tollerant of a range of temperatures, and resistant to disease?

Perhaps I should grow clams or something

or just put a mangrove tree in my GB and feed the fish nothing but salt

Nocky

marron are bigger sooks than trout, marron will try to escape if not happy and generally die trying,

Nocky

BW I notice in your blog that water came from rainwater tank, is the tank corry? if so is it lined or aqua coated

monya

damn, never asked that question should be the first one asked... if it is zinc.... you have your answer.

BullwinkleII

tank is concrete
water from it reads...
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates 10
pH 7.6 (same as my FT) (checked high and low)

and I just found another dead one

Nocky

No worries BW if it was uncoated corry then your sorce may have been found, so NFI now from me

BullwinkleII

thanks for chipping in anyway.

gemmell

From what I know the "fungal" (more often bacterial) infection is a secondary infection - generally the fish are stressed by something and can't fight it off. Something like highly fluctuating temperatures or pH, heavy metals in the water (inhibits the immune system), not enough oxygen etc. Definitely add that salt - this eases their woes, but you might want to look for other causes. e.g. some metal with the water, run off from something, sprays etc.

BullwinkleII

I lost yet another fish today

I noticed it just after I decided to do a "all clear yeah Ive solved my problems blogg post"

I thought I'd see if I could come up with a correlation between deaths and ph events as one of the potential causes of my fish dying according to this diagnostic site http://www.fishyportal.com/diag/ was Alkalosis http://www.fishyportal.com/cgi-bin/pub/diag?c=v&id=8

If this was the case I figured rain could be the culprit. I got some data for rainfall near my area.

Given that I lost 3 more fish that I dont have records for, and that its quite possible that they fell on the events B and C .

With the early fluctuations (A), and the rains, its possible that there was a pH drop on every occasion that I had fish deaths.

- Is it possible that the rain dropped the pH, damaged my fish, then bounced back before I did my tests?

- Am I seeing pattens where there are none?

Attachment:

rain chart.jpg [ 92.2 KiB | Viewed 492 times ]

The water is buffered with shell grit to pH7.6 (you can see where I added it on the graph)

the figures on this graph have been warped to magnify differences eg ph shown here is really

( pH - 7 ) * 5

so its really only the decimal places being shown in order to exaggerate change over time.

The fish seem otherwise (death aside) active and happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAQoS23h_Ms

RupertofOZ

Probably more likely to be tank temperature Bullwinkle... I lost 4 small Silver Perch over the last (cold) week...

BullwinkleII

RupertofOZ wrote:

Probably more likely to be tank temperature Bullwinkle... I lost 4 small Silver Perch over the last (cold) week...

It's heated to 22 deg C (put the heater in at the first death as this is just my small test system, I thought I might keep it as a nursery / isolation tank so I wanted to be able to control the temp).

Or did you mean in spite of the heater it might be rain causing a drop in temp?

its a 300 watt heater in 90 l of water so it can deal with quite a bit

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