Re: Dying cories!

[Eric McGlohon <eric at dekard_com>]

Well, I had a similar problem with my cories, they would have
problems staying upright and fall over, eventually they would die
from the disease or starvation.

I tried a bunch of things, melafix, quickcure, etc.  Nothing worked.
I was afraid to use more powerful antibiotics because it could hurt
the plants and mess up the biofilter.  Finally after my 3rd cory
death I had enough and decided to go with Maraycin and Maracin II
(gram + and gram - antibiotics), I'll just nuke everything and hope
the plants survive.

To my surprise there was never any detectable ammonia, the plants
looked better than ever and were growing like nuts.  Within a week
the cories got better.  Many snails died, but no big deal, it didn't
take long after the treatment for the population to rise again.

My guess was it was a bacteria that lived in the gravel (so a
hospital tank wouldn't have helped), and attacked the swimbladder.
I never had any ammonia because the plants instantly sucked it up.

Good luck.
-Eric

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 03:59:45PM -0700, jgarden2000 at juno_com wrote:
> I have some albino cories in my plant tank (see? this is still on-topic!)
> that have are dying and I am totally stumped why. 
> 
> The fish will look perfectly fine, except that when it sits still on the
> bottom, it starts to float up, and it has to work to stay down. Sometimes
> they will tip over and lie on their sides. After a couple days, they're
> dead. 
> 
> I lost a batch several months ago to this, about one fish dying every
> week, and now one of the six I have now died yesterday. I'd love to
> figure out what's killing them before I lose the other five.
> 
> The tank is a 40-gallon "long", heavily planted. No other fish, but there
> are some ghost and Amano shrimp, Malaysian trumpet and pond snails, etc.
> The substrate is normal gravel with laterite mixed in; the laterite has
> worked its way to the top and floats up in clouds whenever the cories
> root for food (I try to siphon it off when this happens). I also noticed
> some bubbles come up from the gravel when the fish dug around, but I
> don't notice any H2S smell (just an icky "fishy" smell...). I was adding
> yeast CO2 and liquid Kent "Freshwater Plant K + Fe" solution, but I
> stopped both when the last fish died.
> 
> Anybody have any ideas? I'm stumped!
> 
> William