Rummy Nose Tetra acting funny.

So..I'm can't say I'm to knowledgeable on community fish. That being said, my rummy nose tetras are acting funny.

They were just put in the tank yesterday and seem to be doing well. Lots of other tetra varieties, no one aggressive. The tank is my high tech 45g heavily planted. Everyone else is doing just fine.

So, what they are doing is either dying/being diseased or some kind of mating dance best I can figure. They, 6 of them, school around the tank, stop in one spot, then about 4 of them slowly drift onto their sides and wiggle a bit. Then after a second or two of that they right themselves and all take off again.

Any ideas?

 - hmmm. I do know that Rummynose can be hard to acclimate and should be done so very slowly. I don't think these fish are bred in captivity. Since they are WC it makes acclimation to certain water types more finicky. May I ask what your water parameters are? I assume you are fully cycled but where is your Nitrate levels? Water hardness?

yes, fully cycled, 0 ammonia, nitrites nitrates, dgh and dkh both aruond 4, pH is 7.5. I know my pH is a little high but I figured they'd be ok?

If your tank is fully cycled it should show some nitrates.  I had a situation when I first used the API test kit where I kept showing 0 nitrates.  Someone shared with me that I was probably doing the test incorrectly.  Anyway...not knowing your kit type or what you are using...I would expect that you might want to retest the nitrates just to see if you can get some type of reading on them...even if low there should be something.  

If you are using the API kit...here's the instructions for it...I've highlighted where I was making my error...LOL

1. Fill a clean test tube with 5 ml of water
to be tested (to the line on the tube).
2. Add 10 drops from Nitrate Test Solution
Bottle #1, holding dropper bottle upside
down in a completely vertical position to
assure uniformity of drops.
3. Cap the test tube and invert tube several
times to mix solution.
4. Vigorously shake the Nitrate Test
Solution Bottle # 2 for at least 30
seconds. This step is extremely
important to insure accuracy of test
results.
5. Now add 10 drops from Nitrate Test
Solution Bottle #2, holding dropper
bottle upside down in a completely
vertical position to assure uniformity
of drops.
6. Cap the test tube and shake
vigorously for 1 minute. This step
is extremely important to insure
accuracy of test results.
7. Wait 5 minutes for the color to
develop.
8. Read the test results by comparing the
color of the solution to the appropriate
Nitrate Color Card (choose either Fresh
water or Salt water). The tube should
be viewed in a well-lit area against the
white area of the card. The closest
match indicates the ppm (mg/L) of
nitrate in the water sample. Rinse the
test tube with clean water after use.

Anyway...just another thing to check on and I hope the fish are doing better

This is my fourth heavily planted tank that I've done in this style and all 4 regularly show 0 nitrates. I'll be curious to see what they look like when I get home tonight. One did die last night. Quite possible I didn't acclimate properly and the store I bought them from was VERY well stocked so maybe they had just got them? Who knows. Everyone else in the tank is doing just fine.

Yup, 0 nitrates is entirely normal in high tech, heavily planted tanks, even in some low-tech tanks.

I don't have anything useful to add beyond that, but I do wish you the best of luck with the rest of them - they're beautiful fish.

Well...you learn something new every day. I've never had 0 nitrates in any of my tanks but I don't have high nitrates. Most of my tanks run 20 or less before changes so my apologies if that was misleading and/or incorrect as I was just going by what my tanks do.

In theory you always want some nitrates since a 0 reading can mean you're depriving your plants of nitrogen. This is easy to do when CO2 and high light are boosting plant growth rates to CRAZY levels.

Well, total fish loss is 3 neons, 1 rummy nose and 1 black neon. The neon's were just $1/ea at pet box store. First fish to go in as a "test." The black neon came from my wife's tank and was looking pretty rough when we brought it over.

The rummy nose is still the odd one, but more peculiar is that another rummy nose now appears to have fin rot pretty severely. I don't know if it has any hope of recovering, it looks like whatever has messed up it's tail has moved to it's body. Should I remove him and euthanize or leave him and see what happens? What are the chances of the disease spreading?

Everyone else seems to be doing fine, remaining rummy nose have stopped swimming oddly and all tank parameters are still excellent. The fishless cycle went well but now that I'm having problems with fish loss I'm hesitant to try this method again, thoughts?

If ammonia and nitrite are still zero, then the cycle is not the issue.

I had a platy that had fin rot recently; she was pretty too. I medicated her tank (Maracyn 2) and she almost entirely recovered. I moved her to a new tank, and the stuff apparently came back with a vengeance and she was looking awful the last time I saw her. I think she's probably gone now... shrimp food. None of my other fish were affected at all. She was born and raised in my tanks and I haven't had fin rot with any other fish born in my tanks. I'm thinking there was something fundamentally broken about her...

My advice would be to remove the fish to a hospital tank (10g is a good size) and medicate it - that may help, but it may only be a matter of time. Removal makes it so you don't have to waste a ton of medication on the large tank.

rummy nose tetras have been known to be notoriously sensitive..most are wild caught..it is possible you are seeing the Sx of the fish being exposed to whatever conditions they lived in prior to you getting them.

unfortunately, it is difficult to know how they were handled before you got them. since rummies come from relatively low pH ammonia is usually not an issue for them but if wild caught during transport they may have been exposed to high ammonia in a higher pH .compared to what they were used to.
as a result you could be seeing ammonia burns after the fact. the Sx usually take several days to appear..and with high turn over in many fish stores..they may not be symptomatic until you got them home.

hopefully they will recover. til then I'd QT the symptomatic fish and make sure they get daily water changes..

Excuse me for asking, but what does "Sx" mean?

Sx=symptoms

Ah, tnx.  I suppose I could have asked the wiki.   Sx refers to a chipset power state, in my universe.

Sorry for your loses anderson

pbmax wrote:Sx refers to a chipset power state, in my universe.

Glad I wasn't the only one that was like ... wha?   

Well, fish started dropping like flies, I think we've lost about 10 now. Neons, white clouds, and rummy nose tetras. The four catfish, dozen rasboras, and 100 or so RCS all seem to be doing fine though. I started suspecting a large rock may have had some contaminants on it that I wasn't able to remove so it has been pulled. I've also installed my UV sterilizer. Loosing about a fish a day, frustrating....

Ugh, that sucks. I would add some extra water conditioner just be sure, but test everything again before doing so. Were there any physical symptoms at all, apart from behavior changes before they died? How long had the other fish been in the tank?

what new was added to the tank?
did you follow any QT protocol?

(sorry Sx is terms we use in the medical industry tho I'm a techie in the industry...

No quarantine, brand new setup so I can't isolate the addition of one specific thing. The only fish with symptoms was the one with fin rot. All the others have been good and active, all eating well. I'll be doing a large water change tonight.

Is it possible the cycle was over-powered by a sudden addition of new fish? How many fish did you add and how quickly? If this happened there should be some evidence in the form of ammonia or nitrite spikes, in theory.

That's what I figured as well. We added fish by the dozen every couple days, never saw any ammonia, nitrites, nitrates. Consistently been zero. It did occur to me that we started experiencing fish loss, coincidentally, shortly after removing the carbon in favor of purigen. Needless to say I'll be putting the carbon back in just in case.

Hmmm, I would add fish at a much slower rate, personally - give at least a week, better yet two between new batches. But I'm not sure that's the problem here. Are you using a drop test kit for those readings?

Yup, api freshwater master test kit. I only added so quickly because most resources I found on fishless cycling stated once ammonia can be completely processed in under 24hrs you could "fully stock" the tank. Figured I'd try it. I'm not heart broken or anything, but I am a little frustrated.

anderson_p_r wrote:I'm not heart broken or anything, but I am a little frustrated.  

Yeah, I hear ya. I fed a ton of dwarf orange crayfish (before I was aware of the law) to my tanks over a period of a couple of years and none of them survived long term.   

Good luck figuring out! I hope your remaining stock stays okay.

Doing a 80% water change tonight. Reading my water conditioner bottle and noticed it says 1 drop/gallong for chlorine and heavy metals, 3 drops/gallon for chloramine. huh... Trying 3 drops/gallon and seeing what happens. I was told we didn't have chloramine on our water system but I'm running out of ideas. Lost the first catfish tonight......

What is still killing me is that the plants and shrimp are doing fine, and so are the rasboras. Basically fish from specific stores have been dying. I figured if the shrimp are doing well the water should be ok for most fish. I can understand maybe not acclimating correctly, but slowly dropping one by one a week later?

Ok, water change complete, carbon back in filter, suspect hard scape removed. No deaths! Water is also crystal clear, had a light haze before I hadn't figured out yet. Hopefully things settle down now and maybe after a month or so of zero loss I'll try re-cleaning and slowly re-adding hard scape.

Fingers crossed!