Fish Died

[Miller535]

Yeah, I read a lot of posts. I think I underestimated the bioload. I never got this many fish in at once before but I was watching them and they seemed fine until the 9th day and only the Coral Beauty was breathing hard. I think it might be an oxygen issue but the directions for Paraguard didn't mention anything about needing an airstone like some of the other chemicals. 4 fish died with 4 hours of dosing more Paraguard.

Not all meds mention oxygen depletion, because of this I always assume they will. Which is why many actually use a power head pointing at the water surface to really agitate the water while dosing meds.

 

[T-MIKE]

Not all meds mention oxygen depletion, because of this I always assume they will. Which is why many actually use a power head pointing at the water surface to really agitate the water while dosing meds.

Yeah, I'll do that next time. I was going to go home to add an air pump but they died while I was at work.

 

[T-MIKE]

Coral Beauty:



Yellowstriped Cardinal Fish:


It looks like they were struggling to go to the top. It's hard watching these guys go one by one.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Definitely use a larger qt, at least 10g with airstone, or some method of oxygenation. I find air stones the easiest. Less fish at once. Learn from this and do it right the next time.
Notes: for a 40g display, you should not have any fish that could not be qt'd in a 10g tank. Make sure to have good air exchange as many meds do deplete oxygen fast. Have proper meds on hand and use a seachem ammonia badge. Prime is my go to for qts and controlling ammonia.j

 

[T-MIKE]

Definitely use a larger qt, at least 10g with airstone, or some method of oxygenation. I find air stones the easiest. Less fish at once. Learn from this and do it right the next time.
Notes: for a 40g display, you should not have any fish that could not be qt'd in a 10g tank. Make sure to have good air exchange as many meds do deplete oxygen fast. Have proper meds on hand and use a seachem ammonia badge. Prime is my go to for qts and controlling ammonia.j

Do you add prime every 48 hours? I think the issue here is probably oxygen depletion because I added more Paraguard and they started dropping within 2 hours.

 

[DeniseAndy]

More than likely it was oxygen depletion. I make sure to run air stones and hob filters hitting the water on all qts.
Prime i dose as needed via the badge. If I can, I will do water changes. Sometimes with meds, Prime is the best option.

 

[h2so4hurts]

Get an ammonia Alert badge for your QT tanks. Works really well, very easy to read, lasts about a year. I think your problem was not changing enough water fast enough. You had too many fish in a very small volume of water that couldn't support the bioload. This is probably OK if you're doing very large water changes often, lots of people do tank transfer for QT.