Alll my fish are dying since i bought from a chain pet store!!

[NyFish]

Hi... ALL FOUR of the fish I bought from the chain pet store died (within the time frame of 15 days). And then the rest of my fish came down with ICH almost a week ago. (1 blue goruami, 1 flame gourami... 6 tiger barbs, 6 black neon tetra). I've had all these fish for 3 months, the tiger barbs were the newest which i introduced over a month ago... All were healthy and lived well with each other...

I treated the ich, but now 4 of my tiger barbs have died (within the past 3 days) and 5 of my black neon tertras have died (within the past 3 days)!!!!!!!!!!!!! I went from 14 fish (not including the FOUR i bought and died) and now i have 5 left. And one tiger barb is swimming upside down... One has pop-eye... and my flame dwarf has visible ich!!!! The only two that seem ok are the blue gourami and ONE black neon tetra!!

All my levels are ok (i test 1-2 times per week). I have changed the water (30-50%) several times within the last week.... And i am using the blue drops for ich...

What else can i do??

[RTR]

You are handling the situation as well as you can, so what you can dois learn from the situation.

If chains are your only choice, where stock is chosen solely by price (meaning SE Asian bred fish, with a variety of dangers to themselves and others), you have learned a hard lesson, If you buy from mass marketers, you absolutely, without exception, must quarantine new fish for 4 weeks or more, keeping all chances for cross-contamination at zero during that period. To do otherwise is to risk any survivors to another round of disease and death.

It is a sad comment of the state of the hobby, but it is unfortunately true. Nobody can operate with a single tank anymore - the odds are against you. you do not have to keep a QT tank operating, but a spare filter operating on you main tank to be moved to the QT when needed is a minimum requirement.

[Fractured]

Originally Posted by RTR

You are handling the situation as well as you can, so what you can dois learn from the situation.

If chains are your only choice, where stock is chosen solely by price (meaning SE Asian bred fish, with a variety of dangers to themselves and others), you have learned a hard lesson, If you buy from mass marketers, you absolutely, without exception, must quarantine new fish for 4 weeks or more, keeping all chances for cross-contamination at zero during that period. To do otherwise is to risk any survivors to another round of disease and death.

It is a sad comment of the state of the hobby, but it is unfortunately true. Nobody can operate with a single tank anymore - the odds are against you. you do not have to keep a QT tank operating, but a spare filter operating on you main tank to be moved to the QT when needed is a minimum requirement.

It sucks that you have to go this route with purchasing fish for tropical tanks.
Thats the one thing I hated about fresh water tanks...it was like playing roll the dice with new fish each time you put them in the tank.

That chain reaction above is more common story than one would think. Buy sick fish that hitchhike over things to your tank. Death..then medication ...and lots of stress equal more dead fish and more stress.

[joephys]

You still need to QT every bit with SW fish as well. You wouldn't want to kill $300 dollars worth of SW stock just because you didn't QT your last fish.

[johnpeezy]

One thing I do in when thinking of purchasing from a chain store is look over ALL the tanks very carefully. If I notice an illness or dead fish in one tank I don't buy fish that day. even if the fish isn't in the same holding tank That DOES NOT mean the fish is not exposed to that very same water.

[NyFish]

Hi... Thanks for all the feedback!! I will definitely invest in a quarantine tank... I had 14 fish before purchasing the 4 fish from the chain store, and now i have TWO left!! (The tow remaining barbs died last night and this morning and the remaining black neon terta was dead when i came home from work!!).

The big flame dwarf is sooo sick looking and his scales look so bad... the guy at the chain store suggested "stress coat" so i bought that... he felt bad after i told him what i went through and that all but 2 of my fish were now dead after buying from them... he said there was ICK in some of the tanks, but not the ones i bought from... But, are they all run on the same filter systeM???

Anyway, i hope my flame dwarf survives this bout with ick!!

thansk again!!!

[johnpeezy]

its a definite possability that the tank are being run off of the same system. That could have been the problem to begin with. If it is ICK, thats a parasitic infection and stress coat will do little good. You could look into some ICK treatments (salt dip, Chems, etc...) I would suggest rummaging around on the forums a little bit and try to find some tips on treating ICK