Newbie Needs Help

nyrmel · 05-18-2008, 03:14 AM

ok I am very worried I just got my first fish today and and they all swam around pretty well all afternoon except one of my tetras that dint realy seem to want to school. then just as i was getting ready to turn out the light and go to bed I noticed he was well PALE I dont know how else to describe it I did a water check and everything seemed ok the other two tettra's are very bright with clear lines but and the guppy looks ok. I cant find both of the ghost shrimp but the one I did find was happily eating. I checked ammonia and that came back under .25 which the bottle says is safe the two N's also came back in the safe range the water is soft and the alk is about 100 ph is 7 so I dont think that is the issue but my tetra almost looks albino I did net him and put him in a net breeder I bought. So I could make sure it was just the one tetra (he did NOT want to be caught) he wasnt darting like the other two until i tried to catch him. What should i do about him did i bring home a sick fish and what can i do to make him better?

nyrmel · 05-18-2008, 10:37 AM

ok morning now water testing shows no change from last night (see above) all say pretty close to middle of normal. I have my one rogue tetra in the breeder and his colors are still like I said washed out and pale. (no spots sore's eyes look like the other two and seem very normal) the other two are still the same vivid colors I broughtthem home yesterday with. i have been searching posts and havent seen anything about pale tetras except one comment that said all are showing bright colors (sorry cant rmember who or where) since only one out of three similar sized tetra's are looking odd and the Guppy is just wiggling all over the tank nibble here sniff there. and I have only seen one of the ghost shrimp but he is nibbling on his breakfast
I am still looking for some advise on how to handle me pale finned friend!!!!!

orb4me · 05-18-2008, 01:33 PM

He might just be stressed, but IMO, I would take him back to the store and ask for another one. The fish stores I go to have a 14 day guarantee. You might want to take a water sample, the pet store i used to go to wanted one, I now go to a different one, and no questions asked. Much nicer to deal with. Oh yea, and your receipt. Im sure it seem like more gas money than the price of the fish, but the little guy might have been hurt when they bagged him. I dont think hes sick, or you would have noticed a change in the other two. Just my opinion.

nyrmel · 05-18-2008, 02:05 PM

Thank you for answering lol I was looking and writing to you while you did.

we are located some distance from a LFS and he did have to make some major altitude changes as the LFS is at or below 4000ft and we are at 6000ft with the top of the pass at 9200 it is also over an hour away I will be close to there on tuesday though so maybe ill just see how he does I added a little bit of stress coat while they were adjusting to temp yesterday. The store does offer a 14 day thing but I would need to bring a sample. Do I just put some water in a tupperware? So many things are so new to me Had family fish as a kid but never really dealt with the start up (mommy always made it better) now I am the mommy and dont know how to "make it all better" though I guess if the only really big issue I have is the off color of 1 antisocail tetra I am pretty lucky he is swimming around and nibbled a little at a flake I put in the separate area for him. ;S

AAAHHHHHH
I just called the store where I got my fish yesterday and she said that my poor little tetra may have Neon tetra Disease because of the faded colors. the other fish are looking ok and I talked to two people there and and the first said let him run free he is just stressed the other said he is a gonner and so are the other fish I bought at the same time from them and that I am SOL. and should take down the whole tank and start over since all the fish will die. I am very excited about these fish but have never heard of this before and I dont know what to do I have seen you all give good sound answers so please I hope there are some out there for me now. Please I am really worried that I am going to lose all my fish and have to start over. She also said that with the disease it is already to late and they will all have it just from the drive home so QT wont do any good. Please answer soon and thank you in advance.

Judge · 05-18-2008, 03:41 PM

Don't know Nyrmel but this is the only thing I found relating to being pale or fading out. This is a pretty good info gathering site.Good luck.

http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/di...eondisease.htm

Splash Spooky · 05-18-2008, 05:33 PM

One thing I found quite interesting reading that link was it said that cardinal tetra's are immune from getting this disease. IMO Not knowing for sure what is wrong with the fish I would euthanize it to put it out of it's miseary. Then not add any other fish to your tank for a period of time that you feel comfortable with. (at least two weeks). Taking care of tank maintenance regularly. Once you know that rest of fish are disease free you can start introducing new fish again. Sounds like the time it takes and cost of gas for you to go back to your LFS is not worth it. Sorry that your tetra is sick but with any pet you want to make sure you safeguard the rest of your stock.

nyrmel · 05-18-2008, 05:55 PM

Ok thanks I have since moved him to a goldfish type bowl that is 2.5 gallons I added some substate to got to temp and a little air stone and heater(would have started that way but I hadnt gotten it to temp yet (water takes a long time to go from 40-77 with a little heater) I think for water changes I will have to boil water and add it to straight tap because other wise it will be an all day job to take care of business. He started exploring the bowl pretty quickly and after an hour his blue is coming back the red is still faint. But I will keep him a bit longer and see if he improves more I have been doing water testing every 90 min since midnight (yes I got out of bed to do it) and havent seen any changes and the bowl has just a slightly higher hardness than the tank. Not sure why but hmmmm..... I will keep yall posted and thank you for the advise Please if anyone else had had this issue or heard of it let me know. Meanwhile I will continue to hope for the best.

RJRofFL · 05-18-2008, 05:59 PM

Quote:

the first said let him run free he is just stressed the other said he is a gonner and so are the other fish I bought at the same time from them and that I am SOL. and should take down the whole tank and start over since all the fish will die.

Forgive me for jumping back in here again, as stated earlier I am no expert, but the above quote just shows the level of intelligence among some LFS employees. If this happened to me, I would call back the store, ask to speak to the manager, and advise him that his employee just openly admitted that you are selling sick and diseased fish. And ask him if he is going to take down his tanks with 100 or so fish. Also, most LFS run with a community filtration system, so perhaps his entire inventory of fish need to be destroyed!

Forgive me, but that just ticks me off.

When I first "got back into" this hobby I encountered a number of problems and fortunately received a great deal of help from this forum to get me through them, especially from the MODs. Admittedly, prognosis does not look good for the tetra, however, I remember TG advising me early on that diagnosing fish disease is often a "crap shoot" at best. The article that JUDGE sent you to, advises that this particular disease if often mis-diagnosed and sometimes used as a catch all cop out for unknown diseaases. Also, even though Cardinal and neon are cousins, they are different.

Not meaning to digress, but, the simple fact that the fish ate is a positive sign. The fact that he swims is a positive sign. One thing that I have learned about this forum is that you can pick expert's brains and learn to make intelligent decisions on your own.

I wish I could offer you more concrete and optomistic advice, but I would strongly suggest, at this point anyway, to hold off doing anything drastic, and I would also stronglky suggest you click the "search" button on the top of the screen in the forum and type in "neon tetra disease" and that will pull up all of the threads containing those words. There are at least 15 threads on this subject, and surprisingly you will find some of them ended with good rersults.

Forgive my "ramblin". Again, best of luck.

Bob

nyrmel · 05-18-2008, 09:42 PM

Thank you for "jumping in" I will take a look at what else is posted about the diease I hadn't realized there was that kind of search here (I have been doing a hit or miss kinda thing) I decided I should step away for a little bit and took my son to see Narnia (almost as good as the book and worth seeing, those have always been my all time fav books) and I came back and came to check on everyone. Guppy and 2 other tetra's are doing just fine, the shrimp are hiding no surprise there, but my little problem child seems to be sorta ok he is still upright and swimming in the center of the bowl well ok darting (do tetra's ever just swim?) and his blue stripe is almost fully back to normal the red is still kinda faded more of an orange color too rather than the red of the others. But definatly daker than it was last night or this morning. I will continue to keep him on his own for awhile and then I don't know?? That water tested harder than the tank after I got him in there but since I got the water from the same source I dont know why. I did open a separate bag of gravel to put in there and it is a bit deeper. I know Koi can lose color if the water is too hard but he seems to have gotten some back from harder water??? I really am confused. But I promise not to do anything drastic (except I may call the store tomorrow and ask why they are selling sick fish

Although I didn't write it earlier Both the people told me that if you want tetra's to buy twice the number you want since half will always die...? Then tried to tell me that although the store will replace many types of FW fish tetra's are generally not eligible because they always die????? I really wish that the person I talked to 4 times last 2 weeks hadn't been off today she seemed to know what she was talking about and even took the time to make recomindations for things that where NOT the most expensive or fancy looking but would work better and the second time she saw me remembered what size tank I had (not bought at the store) and the fish I had shown an interest in owning. I will post more updates on my problem child as things change, or don't I do hope he gets his red back to. thanks for all the advice and keep it coming.

Karackle · 05-19-2008, 08:05 PM

Sorry to hear about your sick fish, like RJRofFL said, the fact that he is eating and swimming around is a good sign. I'd also say it's a good sign that he is starting to get his color back. When fish are stressed, they do get pale, this is definitely not always caused by disease. Whenever I bring fish home from the store they are much paler when they first go into the tank than they were at the store, and then as they get used to the tank, they brighten back up. This takes longer for some fish than others (again, doesn't necessarily mean they are sick). When I brought home my cories last night they'd all "lost" their black stripes, by this morning 2 of the 3 survivors had their nice black stripe back, one still had a palish stripe, but by the time I got home from work all 3 had nice black stripes. So i'd keep him isolated for a bit to make sure he doesn't show any symptoms of a possible disease, and if he doesn't, i'd say it's probably safe to reintroduce him to the tank. I would probably take the time to drip-acclimate him though so, since neons do stress easily and it's hard to keep a small tank as stable with water conditions as a larger tank. I brought home 3 neon and 2 glolight tetras a few weeks ago for my 20g, drip-acclimated them, and all are still happy and healthy (you don't ALWAYS lose half!

)

Good luck and I hope he continues to get better!