Help Cathfish dying or just on their backs and Perch is fine.

[Joe Bifano]

I am taking out about 15 catfish that are either dying or on the bottom dead in the past 5 to 6 hours. The Perch is doing fine.

The temp is 70

the DO is 6.0

the PH is 6.6 and has not changed for weeks.

The Nitrite and Ammonia was 0 about 5 hours ago.

I did not feed them the last 2 days because I was wondering why they were not eating the catfish food. I feed them Purina fish chow. I feed the Perch Aquamax and I am sure the catfish get some of that because it sinks.

I see that 2 catfish have red marks on them probably because they are swimming sideways and bumping into my air stones.

I took another ammonia reading with a new bottle and it reads 0

I took out all the fish I could so far so I do not spread anything. I can't see anything else on their bodys and look really good.

I have not added anything to the water in a long time. I added top up water for about 5 minutes and that is all so far. I have a 3000 gallon system so I would think that I have a large buffer. The system has been going for 6 months and I have allways used the same water for top up and never had this problem.

Stumped!!

[Joe Bifano]

I have 2 systems with 2 separate fish tanks and I have stopped using the fish food called fish chow. But no problems at all in the other tank so I am not sure if it is the feed. They both get the same thing and only one tank is affected. If an animal were to get into my greenhouse I would see visible signs and it is almost impossible on that plus the water was low and they would have been hard to reach.

The red spots on 2 fish were from them bouncing off the wall and getting into my air stones and stuck behind them because they had no energy they are bouncing around and swimming right into the walls.

I have lost 20 so far and see 1 or 2 more doing the same things.

[Joe Bifano]

I have only used Botnigard BS but that was over 2 weeks ago and I use it on both systems with no effect on the other one. I always do the same thing to both sides. The catfish look good with black speckles like they always have and have an iridescent green in there coat which they have always had.

[Joe Bifano]

I have also checked the recall websites and none of my fish feed that I have are in the lot numbers so that is not it unless they do another recall but I have been feeding the aquamax bag for a while but the fish chow I got a new bag of and both tanks just stopped eating it so I stopped feeding them right away. I would think that I would be losing fish in both tanks because I feed them the same things.

[George]

Are the systems completely separate? 

Can you think of anything that distinguishes one system from the other, different filtering media, fish, feed, etc?

[Joe Bifano]

They are both the same except one raft is 4 feet longer than the other. One does have an extra filtering media bed but my nitrites and ammonia was 0 on the infected side.  This has been weird because I am really good at keeping track of everything and I can't see anything that I could have done differently unless a disease got in one tank and not the other from something.

[Keith Rowan]

i'd salt the tank that is having problems to 1 or 2ppt

[Joe Bifano]

Hi Keith I did that yesterday and do not see any fish struggling. The guy I bought the fish from thought that I must have bad fish feed. He said from everything I described the fish were acting like they had no oxygen and agreed that from my reading there was enough for them. So then he said they have a coating on their gills that stops them from breathing and with the salt that should go away. I am doing it for 2 more days and then use a different fish feed.

I had to think about this more and realized that I ran out of fish feed and got the same fish feed but a different lot number. Randal mentioned about the fish feed recall which got me thinking about the feed. They had been eating like crazy on the last bag and when I got the new stuff they just stopped eating. My first time as a aquapon so it never dawned on me that they were saying that the fish food was bad.

I have 2 tanks and the reason the other tank did not show the same signs was I had a pump hose come out of the water a few days before this started and had to give that tank a fresh amount of water. That gave them a cold shock like you do when you ice them down and probably helped them out. I am salting that tank down as well becasue they were not eating either.

So the lesson learned is your fish do tell you what is going on but you need to really pay attention and not just shrug it off and say oh well they don't like that food anymore. The catfish were pigs eating it like crazy and for them to stop was weird and now I know why.