briggsey09

I recently started a 10 gallon aquarium with 3 guppies, a peacock eel and later on a cory cat. Everything worked out for a while but the fish became more and more lethargic one at a time. First one of the guppies died, when i came upon him he was barely alive and twitched a little bit when i tried to fetch him with the net. he had no signs of disease on the exterior of his body. Next the eel began to behave oddly, wrapping himself aroun the heater, then i noticed he was getting large pimple like formations all over his body, red, fading into whitish or light pink at the center. he soon died too. next another guppy died in the same fashion as the last one with no visible signs of disease. the same day the last guppy died in the same fashion, i decided on a whim to actually smell the dead fish to see if it had that typical rotten fish smell accompanied with diseased ones and suprisingly he smelled extremely like iron. in fact there was no noticable fishy smell at all, just iron. when i started the aquarium i used rocks from near my gf's pond as gravel and later removed some with gravel as replacement so the eel could burrow. i now hear that these rocks are supposedly high in iron to a dangerous level. ofcourse i still have to order an iron test kit and test the water. but i find it odd that the eel had signs of disease but no other fish did. also the cory cat seems to be in perfect health and it constantly eating off the gravel including some of the rocks which are supposedly producing the deadly iron. the whole thing stumps me, any help would be appreciated. Thanks for reading this long post if u got this far without getting bored and giving up.

Tommy Gun

Hey briggsey09! If I haven't already said so, welcome to the forum!!!!

Sorry to hear about your problem, and also for the delay between your posting this concern/question and receiving any replies. To be honest, I am willing to bet the lack of replies has come from a lack of information - however, not so much in the form of your description, which is good, but more along the lines of the answers to questions which you can find by clicking HERE. I truly believe that if you could provide the answers to as many of those questions as possible, you would almost certainly receive faster, more accurate replies.

I will also see if I can garner the attention of some planted tank enthusiasts who may know much more about the effects of iron on fish since they are likely using iron supplements for his/her plants.

I have heard of a few causes for pimple-like formations being found on fish in the past - for example, a bacterial infection, a fungal infection, scar tissue, etc... - so without knowing more, it would be hard to narrow things down to one item. However, my gut feeling is that these pimple-like formations, and many of your other problems, stem from a water quality issue...hence, it would be good to know more about your water parameters and such. It is also rather common for any burrowing type fish...including the peacock eel...to be injured when the substrate is not ideal for the burrowing 'habit'. Based on my own experience with peacock eels, I would have to say that a fine grain sand is the best substrate for them - and even then, I suggest choosing which sand to use very carefully. Of course, this is all not to mention the fact that a 10 gallon tank is much too small to keep one of these eels on any sort of long term basis...but I am sure you already realized that.

Jay

I wish I could chime in and shed some more light on this. I agree with Tommy, a complete set of tank and source water parameters would be very helpful.

I would check with my local water company and find out what the acceptable level of iron is in drinking water and have your tank water tested for iron levels or buy a kit and do it yourself.

IME and IMO trace elements of metals; copper, iron, etc are necessary for the health and well being of biological critters and plants, but that excess levels can be extremely dangerous...take copper for example. I'm not sure what iron smells like, and I would much rather rely on a test kit, to get me in the ballpark, than my nose .

As far as plants are concerned, IME trace levels of iron are necessary, but it should be dosed carefully in order to avoid problems...neussance algae in particular.

Regards,
Jay

briggsey09

iv been messing with everythingin the tank lately and the cory cat has made it till now fine. i got better tests and found that the problem may have been one MASSIVE delayed ammonia spike. i checked the ammonia after they had all died with a better kit and caught what seemed like the tail end of it. then just recently i had a n02 spike. so i diagnosed that the filter was inadequete for the biological filtration needed and bought another one with a combined maximum filtration of 30 gallons. i just added a couple of dwarf gouramis which so far seem fine, except for they seem to twitch randomly which may just be natural behavior since they are opposite sex. i took out all the rocks (in the process got stung by the cory) because i noticed that they had bright green splotches growing on them. thanks for the help