Sick fish
On Wednesday December 14, I was coming home from Rožnov pod Radhoštěm and decided to go via Veselí nad Moravou to stop in the Dr. Šponar’s store. This time it was his wife who was serving. They had interesting smokey Angelfish so I decided to buy one. I also bought one Corydora panda because one of mine died. I bought one female of Electric blue ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi electric blue). I was at least hoping that the assistant would manage to choose a female. They had enough Serpae tetras (Hyphessobrycon eques) this time, therefore I bought seven of them. But I was shocked by the way the assistant was catching the fish. She took a shoal of fish and then pick the individual tetras by her fingers. I didn’t like it at all.
I put the fish into the aquarium at home. They looked nice – red color of the Serpae tetras, blue glitter of the Ram cichlids and the Angelfish among them. Besides that, at home I discovered that the CO2 generation had faded out completely. The PH value got back to the initial value and the leaves of some plants became partially yellow. The following day I had to prepare another bottle to recover the CO2 generation.
On Friday, I noticed that the Tetras had white spots on themselves. I identified it as the Freshwater white spot disease (Ichtyophthirius multifiliis). 4 of 7 bought Tetras were contaminated. I brought this disease home in the water from the Dr. Šponar’s store. As the first it appeared on the Tetras whose skin was weakened for having been touched by hand. It was necessary to isolate the fish.
I was not prepared for such situation. I didn’t have any medicaments, nor additional filter or heater for another aquarium. I used the old 25-liter aquarium where I let sit the water. I added salt. I used the heater from the main aquarium for heating. The Tetras are very wild so it was not easy to catch them among the plants. But I manage to move the four contaminated to the other aquarium.
I vacuumed the sand in the main aquarium and changed a part of the water. I was necessary to replace the carbon sponge in the filter. The NO2 test still indicated slightly pink color before the water change but it was not critical.
