# Danios dying off - please help!



## luckyd (May 11, 2010)

Hello all. I'm new to this forum and hoping you can help me. 

I had six danios in a 34-gallon tank. In the past month two have died, one is in the "hospital", and two others are showing signs of distress.

They share the tank with 2 platys, 3 albino corys, one dojo loach, and one golden algae eater. None of these tankmates show any obvious signs of distress.

The tank has been operating for about 4 months and is cycled (Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10, chlorine 0, pH 8.5, temperature ranges from 80 to 81.5). We gravel vac and change 30% to 50% of the water every week. We have done two large water changes since symptoms started. We recently noticed a few snails and small dark "bugs" in the water, which the LFS said may be snail larvae.

The early sign of a problem is that they start "pacing" back and forth in a particular spot, sometimes near the bottom of the tank and sometimes at the top. They do not appear to be rubbing against anything. At first, they keep eating and occasionally join the other danios. But eventually they stop eating. In one case we noticed a white bump on the top of the danio's head. The white bump fell off very quickly but the area was still red. A couple of days later we found its body under some decorations. The whole process from start of symptoms to death took about two weeks. 

The next danio to become sick has reddish lesions behind his fin. He has stopped eating and is basically floating listlessly in an isolation tank.

Another danio has two white patches on each side. It could be ich, but it's hard to tell for sure. He's still swimming and eating at this point. But there's another one with no obvious markings on his body that is acting listless and staying in one spot -- very unlike danios!

If it's ich, we're afraid to try salt treatments or harsh treatments because of the scaleless dojo. Also, it seems very strange that it would only be attacking the danios at this point.

Any ideas would be welcome!


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

Could be anything at this point- if it is only danios then perhaps they are carrying an infection specific to them.
I kind of think that you have the temperature too high. Danios can go into water about 68 degrees and be quite happy. I don't know if that would make a difference.
Are any of the other fish harrassing them?

Can you get a quarantine tank going?Move the bunch out and see if that makes a difference.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

pH 8.5?
Yikes.
That might not be the immediate problem, but it sure isn't helping. The temp is also a bit high.
If there is anything you can do about either of these things, consider doing it.

Next, while rare, there are are numerous diseases which mainly affect only limited groups of fishes. Your danios are the only cyprinids in the tank, the only sick fish in the tank, and the symptoms do indeed sound like any number of things which spread by virus among cyprinids like goldfish & danios.

My recommendation is to remove the danios from this tank and put them somewhere else. You could try giving them various treatments, but I have a hunch that none of them will work. I also suspect that no other minnows will last long in your tank.
These things happen sometimes.
On the plus side, if the remaining danios can survive and get past this, they should be from then on immune.


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## luckyd (May 11, 2010)

*Thanks for your help*

Thank you both for your replies.

We do struggle to keep the tank temperature down. We have three others that stick in the mid 70's range, but I think the lights are hot on this particular tank. We often turn them off just to try to cool things down, but even then it hovers in the high 70s to low 80s.

As far as the pH, we were a bit surprised by that too. Our LFS did give us something to lower that a couple of days ago. We'll go ahead and try that. It's supposed to bring the pH to 7.0.

Thanks for the information about diseases specific to danios. We lost another one yesterday. We did treat for ick just in case, which may or may not have been a good idea. We're just afraid that this will take over the whole tank! But we can shuffle our other tanks around and put the remaining danios in a 5-gallon tank. There's one that doesn't look sick yet. Do you think we should move that one as well? Will we have to sanitize the 5-gallon tank when we're done treating them? Hopefully, it will work but since some of them have stopped eating, I don't think the prognosis is very good. :-(


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Yes, sanitize the tank, nets, filter, gravel, anything that has been exposed. Also, never again move any of the fish from this main tank to any other tank.

By the way, it's always a good idea to have a separate net, thermometer, etc.. for each tank just for situations like this.


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## luckyd (May 11, 2010)

Wow, so we should never move the fish from the 34-gallon tank to any other tank? Even the fish that weren't affected?

We have bought some new nets so we can stick with one net per tank, and I guess we need to get a new siphon. What's the best way to sanitize stuff like decorations and siphons?


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

TOS I think he meant that he quarantined them.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

If you have sick fish, you need to treat every thing that comes near them as "In quarantine". If you move them to another tank with fish or move new fish into the tank, you need to be aware that they could get whatever illness the fish have. 

A dilute bleach solution will kill most nasties, so its good to dip nets, rinse hoses,clean filters (you will need to re-cycle) that were "exposed", they you can use them safely with other fish. When only some fish die, I tend to leave the survivors "in quarantine" indefinitely, and don't move any other fish in or out. But a now empty hospital tank (because the fish died or recovered and got put back) is a excellent candidate for a bleach bath before its next use.


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## luckyd (May 11, 2010)

Thanks everyone. It looks like I'm in for some work! 

On the possibly plus side, the three remaining danios are hanging in there, although not doing great. 

I'm wondering about messing with the pH. It's 8.5 in the big tank, but I've read that sudden pH changes may do more harm than good. What do you think? The LFS gve us Seachem Neutral Regulator, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to try it or not. It's also a dechlorinator and removes ammonia.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

from what others have said, trying to lower ph is almost impossible. it just bounces back up by the next day and it is harder on the fish than them learning to live with the higher ph.
My ph is 8.2 out of the tap, and I keep livebearers, tetras ,kuhlis, and bronze cories with no problems. you might want to consider african cichlids as they like high ph. just keep them as a species tank though as they are aggressive.

Currently I am having problems with livebearers in my one tank. The problem started rather suddenly with my bettas getting a fungus. They have been removed from the tank and are in their own containers but since that time it has been one thing after another with the guppies and platies.
the tetras are not involved nor are the loaches or cories.
Beats me what it is. looked a bit like flukes or and internal parasites but the fish still have the wobbles and fast breathingaftyer being treated with prazipro.These fish are doing better in salted water just now. I reduced the salt yesterday and they were having a hard time today so I did another water change and added more salt.

It is a mystery to me what happened-- I originally thought it was because for some reason my plants suddenly started to drop their leaves creating a media for fungus to grow in. Treated with anti fungals then moved into the current issue.
Frustrating to be sure and I had not added anyfish except home bred ones.
Just so you know you are not alone!:console:.


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## luckyd (May 11, 2010)

Thank you! You all are so helpful and so nice. 

I'll keep you posted on my progress with the danios. Good luck with your tank too, Mousey!


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## luckyd (May 11, 2010)

*Danios hanging in there*

Hi there. I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but I thought I'd post an update just in case. We did treat for ich and also did three large water changes. So far, the three remaining danios are hanging in there, although they don't seem to be back to the frenzied, ravenous fish they were before. They're still somewhat listless with little appetite, but so far are not getting any worse.

On the plus side, we found a couple of surprise baby platys in another tank. So cute!


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