HELP!! Dying Julidiochromis

[FrontosaurusRex]

I have two types of Juli's in my tank. Orinatus and Marlieri. The marlieri have been in my tank for about 3 months with no problems, but i put some orinatus in about a month ago and i consistantly lose one every time i do a water change. I do a 50% water change every 2 days. All of my levels stay consistant, i dont change the temperature or anything. I tried to do smaller water changes (about 30%) but that didnt help. The bodies are not beaten up or nipped. I have no idea why they are dying but these guys are really cool looking and i dont wanna lose any more. Any advice?

[TaTeR ToT]

if you have good filtration, you should not need to do a wc but every week, or every other week.
i run 2x 2217 eheim canisters, 2x odyssea 350gph powerheads with sponge pre-filters, and a air driven sponge filter on my 125g and i do a 50-60% wc every week. and my parameters are always in check.
more info is needed to determine whats going on though.

[TaTeR ToT]

whats your PH?
how many julies?
how many have you lost over what period of time?
what are you feeding?
how often are you feeding?
what is the temp?
what is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate?
what is the behavhior of the fish that died before they died?
were they hanging out at the top of the tank, ie near the surface stressed in appearence?
or gasping at the top?
all of these things can help piece together whats going on.

[FrontosaurusRex]

i dont have the perameters on hand at the moment but i didnt notice anything weird about the Juli's before they died. I had 10 juli's total (half and half species) and all the Marlieri are still in good health. the temp stays at a constant 84 degrees. i feed them NLS Thera A 3mm pellets and bloodworms once or twice a week. I dont have a QT tank to treat them and i've always been leery about chemicals around my expensive fish. I'll check the levels of everything in the morning and hopefully wont have any more floaters to flush out to sea.

[Delock]

what else do you have in the tank?

[eklikewhoa]

84 is kinda hot and I would think a water change in these recent times would have dropped the temps quite a bit.

50% wc with bad water will kill small, weak fish.

[danielp]

Keep in mind that a lot of water systems around the area are heavily shocking and treating their systems right now.

I'm filling buckets treating the water and letting it sit a minimum of 24 hours before introducing it to my tank. I'm also measuring ammonia and ph before putting it in my tank.

I've had tanganyikan's for years and water changes every two weeks is sufficient as long as you have proper filtration and your not over feeding.

I also agree that 84 degrees is way to warm.

[FrontosaurusRex]

literally just woke up and i have another floater. Same kind of fish, everyone else is perfectly happy. I dont get it. Could it be possible that i just got a batch of sick fish? I lowered the temp to 82 and in a couple of hours i'll lower it to 80. I have Calvus, Fronts, Brichardi, and Juli's in the tank together but i NEVER have a problem with fighting or territory.

[danielp]

Could be a bad batch of fish. Not knowing where you got them I've seen F1 groups turn into F-3 + group because people keep breeding off spring and it eventually dilutes thestrain.

I had a group of daffodils several years back that had tumors that I'm guessing was cancer and they all died.

Everything else being healthy points to a genetic or potential issue on how they were handled prior to you getting them.

Marleri are cool I had a group of kissi bemba's at one time.

[CHK-Cichlids]

How soon after the WC do you find them dead? Its happened to me a few times. I have lost like 3 BN plecos in the hours after a WC. I suspect that the chlorine in the water was responsible. For me, I pipe the tapwater straight to my tank and add Prime. It seems that the pipe was too close to the driftwood where the plecos like to hang out and I believe there wasnt enough neutralisation by the Prime before the chlorine became toxic to the plecos. The plecos in the next couple of hours would start to bleed from the gills and die the next day... So now, I add extra Prime, slow the rate of the incoming flow and moved the wood away. Havent lost any more fish since. Took me a while to figure it out - I thought my plecos had some disease or something.

I am not sure if this applies to your case, but maybe you can study the factors and see if this might be it. Sorry for your loss man...

[wesleydnunder]

Could be several factos, many of which have already been suggested. I'm using Prime at 1 1/2 to twice normal strength right now due to heavy chlorination by my local water co. Hach makes a chlorine test kit that municipalities use to test free chlorine and total chlorine in the potable water supplies. It's not a cheap test but can tell you whether that's the problem.

I keep my Tangs at 76 to 78 and they've always done well at those temps. The fish may have been weak to start or may have been weakened by acclimation. What method do you use for acclimating your fish...how long, etc? 50% every other day may not be necessary but will not be excessive. Continuous water change wouldn't harm the fish as long as temp, ph, hardness, etc. were reasonably consistant.

What is your nitrate reading after 2 days? Have you ever tested for nitrate after 4 days with no water change?..one week? The reason I'm asking about nitrate is, as it increases so do substances called Dissolved Organic Compounds, or DOCs. DOCs are one reason we do water changes. We have no test kit for DOCs but they increase at about the same rate of nitrates in your tank. For this reason, many folks use a nitrate test for a marker of DOCs in the tank and change water to dilute nitrate AND DOCs. Generally, keeping nitrate below 20ppm with partial water changes will keep DOCs down with it. My point with this is, you may not NEED to do a 50% water change but once a week if your nitrates aren't climbing excessively. But, if you wanted to change water every day, it shouldn't hurt your fish.

Mark