Total Devastation

[troy tucker]

Vicki I'm so sorry to hear about this. I know its like lossing a friend. I found this site after this same kind of thing happend to me. 8 Angels all dead in ten days. only the shrimp lived. Wished i had known about clout then.

[Complexity]

I just ran across something that may identify the parasite that infected my fish. I'll never know for sure, but this one is the closest one I've found so far that matches everything I saw and experienced with my fish.

It's a flagellated protozoan called Cryptobia. Here's the article about it. Very informative.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/vm077

What may have set things off so badly in my tank is that it was so over-crowded and at the limits of what the filtration could handle. Add to that all the stress with new fish being introduced multiple times and 3 complete rescapings. So the fish themselves were at their limits, as well. As long as everything was healthy, the tank was fine. But as soon as I put an infected fish in the tank, the conditions were ripe for a catastrophic event.

I still need to figure out how to treat the remaining catfish and plecos. They're still alive, but they're also still infected. If I can't figure out how to successfully treat them in the next month or so, I may have to put them down. I can't give them to anyone else (no way would I want this to infect anyone else's tanks), but I'm also worried that I'm going to end up spreading this to all my other tanks. If it turns out to be Cryptobia, it would be very bad news as there's no treatment.

[aquabee]

It's sad to hear about your fish, of course. Thank you for posting the article for our info. How's the new/redone tank coming along?

[Complexity]

The new/redo tank is coming along, slowly but surely. I finally got the substrate in, and I'll be ready to put plants in tomorrow. I still need to hook up the second filter, but that'll happen soon.

The main thing was doing a zillion clean outs. I'm a bit paranoid about sterilizing the tank after what happened. I've also ordered new bulbs for my uv sterilizers, hoping that will help kill any parasites that might have survived or that might transfer to my other tanks.

It's nice to see the tank beginning to show signs of life again. Just having the wood and substrate in the tank is a nice improvement. It no longer reminds me of all the fish that died and now makes me look forward to a tank I can enjoy again.