Albino Cory deaths

[JoJo3131]

My daughter had three albino cory's since September of this year. They seemed to be healthy and happy, until this past month. Her water is slightly acidic, but pretty close to neutral and seems to be soft water (have not tested to find out exactly what it is). The ammonia levels are zero, she used Amquel when she does water changes (her appartment has well water), her nitrite's are at zero, and her nitrates are about 10. Her tank has been cycling for more than a month now. She only just started using the Amquel about a month ago. She does weekly water changes, sometimes more with the ick and infections. The cory's barbels were intact, the gills did not show any unusual colors, and the fish looked absolutely normal.

She's treated for Ick about a month ago with methylene blue combination product when she noticed white spots on some of her platy's (it's gone now). She has also treated with antibiotics at about the same time for a popeye infection in one fish. She noticed nothing except for two basic symptoms before the cory's died. They were all lethargic for several days, going from moving around a lot, to not even moving when she was messing around in the tank. Second thing she noticed was right before the last cory died (first one died several weeks ago, and the last one today) the cory sorta scurried around the tank, kinda wiggin out and then rolled onto it's side and died.

My thoughts were:
Something physically wrong with the fish that took a while to show up. She's had problems with her other fish, like Ick and stuff, which seems to come from the LFS she purchases them from. Petco seems to be the only source of fish in the Springfield/Amherst/Hadley area of Massachusetts so she really has no choice.

Something in pipes/water supply that could be causing this?

Is Amquel ok to use with cory's?

I'm at a loss for what caused these fish to die, my own cory's are living in hard water (about 120) with a pH of 8.0 sometimes slightly less, more often slightly more, and they seem to be doing GREAT. She is also used to taking care of her animals and has always been very good about keeping them clean and well fed, so my thoughts are that she takes excellent care of these new fish too.

Any ideas would be wonderfully appreciated, we are just wondering if there is anything else she should be doing to protect her fish. She really liked those cory's and it would be a shame for her to not be able to have them in the future.

Thanks,
JoJo

[JoeO]

Start at the basics:

Get a PH kit and measure it, don't guess.
What size tank?
How many fish and what kind and how large are they?
Did she ever medicate with salt?

She may not be feeding the Corys. If there are a lot of fast fish in the tank, food may not be getting to the corys. She may need to feed more or use sinking pellets.

Also, she may need to put new fish into an isolation tank for a week or two before putting them into the community tank.

[Richard B]

Sound suggestions above.

Also worth considering is that albino corys are mass produced commercially & they may have been poor quality stock, therfore susceptible to the slightest adversity

[JoJo3131]

Thanks,

She tests regularly and only has a slight amount of variance in the reading. The pH is always close to 6.8 - 7.0, and the Seachem Ammonia tag stays at yellow (no ammonia present), Nitrites are at 0, Nitrates are at about 10, she uses about 1/2 the recommended amount of salt in her tank and does not put salt in every time, due to the problems with Ick and Fin & Tail rot, otherwise she would have stopped putting salt into the tank at all. It's a 10 gallon tank. She feeds sinking Cory shrimp pellets, as well as: frozen brine shrimp, Tubiflex worms, flake food, and blood worms (freeze dried). These fish are definitely not starving...

Is there anything that you can think of that would cause the cory to wig out before it dies? Usually when I have fish die, they get lethargic and slowly pass on, but this one actually went from being lethargic to running around the tank wiggin out and then keeled over.

[MatsP]

If you have fairly soft water, Platies, Mollies and Guppies [Guppy is probably the BEST choice, but they are far from ideal in soft water] are not the best fish for the tank, as they like harder water/more alkaline water. The salt added will help these fish, but the fact that they get Ich is an indication that they are stressed (Ich is like our colds, but much more harmful, in that they break out when the body is being stressed - the pathogen that causes it can be present in the fish for a long time, just like we can carry around 5-6 different cold virus at any given time, but we do not get a cold all the time from them).

I'm unsure as to what is ailing the cories, but two of the likely candidates would be internal Ich (that is, it is attacking the gills but not the body) or an internal infection.

Without knowing what is wrong with the fish, it's hard to treat it. And if there is no externally obvious reason why the fish is ailing, it's unfortunately hard to identify what is wrong.

Richard B makes a good point in that not all the fish sold are of good stock (particularly if we consider that albinism is a genetic defect, often introduced by crossing related fish, thus causing the fish to be less strong genetically in the first place).

There is also the possibility that your well-water contains something that is unsuitable for the fish - this has been known to happen, although if it's suitable for human consumption, it's most likely not harmful to the fish.

--
Mats

[JoJo3131]

Thanks,

That's about the same thing I've been saying to her, although the infections came along shortly after stocking the tank which to me implies that it was the original fish that brought it into her tank. She really has had a horrible time getting good fish to start with and has lost quite a few shortly after bringing them home. I have recommended that she not replace any fish at this time, wait at least a couple months to make sure the rest of her fish are ok and then restock by adding one fish at a time and quarantining them for several weeks before adding them to her tank.

Thank you for the info on albinism, there are always people out there who push the envelope and do things the quick and easy way. My son has a pair of albino cory's that are extremely healthy and seem happy, but it's definitely something to think about.

My water runs around pH 8.0 with a hardness of about 120, so I tend to keep fish that are suited to that. Her's tends to be pretty close to neutral, maybe slightly acidic and I thought Cory's & Platy's would do fine in that. My books tend to support that they are fine in there, but would she do better with something different? I have no experience with soft water low pH fish.

I have mbuna C ichlids in a 38 gallon tank, and a 10 gallon with a male crowntail betta, pepper cory's, and platy's in it, and a 3 gallon hospital quarantine tank with 1 pepper cory, 3 green cory's, 2 tiger barbs, and a zebra danio (he lost his original buddies and his new buddies didn't look right so they got moved to another small tank for close observation). We also have another 10 gallon tank with 4 glowlights, 1 male crowntail betta, 2 albino cory's, 1 bronze cory, 1 oto, and 3 platies which is my sons tank. The two 10 gallon tanks will be combined into a 25 high tank in a few weeks, leaving only the betta's and cory's for a future 15 gallon tank probably within a month or so (one betta is going to college with my son). Anyway, just a little bit about my own fish addiction. I am really growing attached to these little cory's, such fun to watch, so they will have a bigger tank before to long more suited to their needs.

[MatsP]

I'm by no means an expert on platies, but I had far more of them (and healthier looking) before I decided to convert their tank to using RO water [which is essentially extremely soft water, as it has been stripped of minerals] - other fish in the same tank were unaffected by the change in hardness/alkalinity, but both platies and mollies in the tank suffered losses. This article seems to indicate similarly that a pH above 7 is preferrable (and I think Practical Fishkeeping magazine is one of the "good" sources of information, but certainly not infallible):
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/p ... cle_id=419

Also, I didn't mean to say that ALL albino fish are bad quality - but the fact that they are albino, generally indicates that they have been subjected to at least SOME inbreeding. There is no guarantee that the parents of other factory bred fish is any less inbred as such, but it's much harder to prove. By the way, most domestic cats are fairly well inbred, and some forms clearly indicate genetic defects by their colouring (all "single colour or mostly one colour" such as ginger, white, black) - exactly the same types of defects we can see in goldfish, albino cories, etc, etc.

It is also worth noting that hard water which is alkaline is, from a water chemistry standpoint, more stabile. It doesn't take much to cause a pH crash in very soft water - but in hard water you probably can't make it happen even if you try [other than by removing the minerals from the water, thus making it soft].

--
Mats

[JoJo3131]

That is really interesting, about the pH and soft water. I just talked to her and she says that her pH has been running closer to 7.2 this past month, with a hardness/softness number of 75. I'm really interested in the pH crash that you tank about and if these numbers from her tank could have led to this.

As for breeding, I've done some breeding with my goats, and have learned a lot from my in-laws who raised championship show dogs, so I totally understand to much in breeding and what can happen if breeders don't use some common sense in breeding.

My mom-in-law has a lot more experience with cory's than I do and she is suggesting that antibiotics seem to effect them badly, even killing them. Have any of you experienced this?

[MatsP]

Is your "hardness number" a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) or more restricted (e.g. measuring General Hardness as CaCO3)? Either way, pH of 7.2 makes it slightly alkaline, so less likely to make it pH crash - a pH crash is when the pH suddenly takes a nose-dive to below 5, and most fish do not appreciate that sort of thing (they may well live in habitat that has very low pH, but it is constantly below pH 5, and in nature pH usually doesn't go from 6.5 to below 5 in a matter of hours - if it does, there is usually casualties in nature as well as in captivity).

It is unlikely that the Corys are MORE affected than the platies by a pH crash.

Oh, and I didn't respond to the "Ich got brought in by the new fish". Yes, Ich is not permanently present in a tank - although it can be in a "non-outbreak stage" for quite some time without actually breaking out - but yes, it's quite possible that the outbreak starts with newly introduced fish and then spreads - hence the recommendation to have a second tank.

I have not heard anything about antibiotics being particularly bad for cories. Obviously all medications have side-effects, and some are specificlaly bad for catfish (aka scaleless fish) [Yes, cories are scaleless, despite their looks - but the "scales" on a cory is actually bits of bone under the skin, rather than proper scales on top of the skin]. It is worth checking the label on any medication if it says anything about using it in reduced measures or not at all when "scaleless" fish are in the tank.

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Mats

[JoJo3131]

She uses 6 in 1 test strips to test with, so whatever they measure is what she has. I guess at this point my original guess is as good as any, which is that they were inbred to much and it caused a defect. The only other thing that makes sense is if the meds effected them.

Thanks for all your help, I have enjoyed the discussion.

[Coryman]

I realise I have come into this discussion a little late, but one question I have is. When did you check the water parameters, before or after you treated with methylene blue and the antibiotic. I ask this because the use of MB in particular will destroy your filters de-nitrifying bacteria, as I suspect will your anti bacterial treatment. This in turn would in all probability have caused a ammonia/nitrite surge, which can trigger all sorts of internal problems in fish. Nitrite inhibits the uptake of oxygen into the red blood cells causing what is known as "Brown Blood Disease" or methemoglobinemia. Typical signs of this are rapid breathing and inflamed/flared gills. The best solution is daily water changes until the levels of ammonia and nitrites are "0"

Ian

[MatsP]

Ian,

Good point, and may also explain the "Antibiotics is bad for cories" (although ammonia and nitrite is highly toxic to ALL fish, not just cories, in beginner tanks, the Corys may of course be the most sensitive ones?)

--
Mats

[JoJo3131]

The trouble is that the medications were used almost a month before this last fish died, and she has a Seachem ammonia alert meter that is inside her tank, so I am assuming she would notice any big spikes for ammonia at least. The 6 in 1 strips don't test for ammonia, just the other levels. The other thing is that she uses Amquel in her water, so that should take care of any spikes in ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. She was probably more concerned about the test results after she lost the fish then before, but from what I remember she always said that she had tested the water within a few days of losing the fish and had done a water change at least weekly if not more often. I think we have decided that she just needs to let her tank adjust for now and not get anymore fish till she had gone at least a month without having to use any sort of medication in her tank. In other words, take a step back and make sure her other fish are healthy and happy and then consider more fishy friends if she can find a better source for them.

Sigh, just pulled a tiger barb from a tank, it's tiger barb friend decided to eat all it's fins and tail off. I'm thinking that tiger barbs are not doing well in my water anyway, so I guess it isn't to much a problem except that it is still alive so of course I have to treat it and care for it in a small tank till it gets better. Started with 4 and am down to 2... Life goes on!

Thanks for all your replies, have some questions but am going to post a new message specific to them.
Joanne

[squid]

Also experienced cory death like this a few. Months ago , was not able to find the cause though, but I think it was a day or 2 after wc now I use a dechlorinator which binds harmful metals

[Atlantis Child]

From just personal knowledge gained from my time working at the local petshop fish room, and at at home I've come to suspect that both the bronze cory and their albino variant are not bred very well anymore. Prone to sickness, mostly no longer good looking, things like missing an eye (born like that), and just more frequent dieing.

Have also seen real happy and healthy albinos though, so yes, there obviously is hope as well. One of the roundest, cutest corys I've seen at another's home tank was an albino


By the way, what medication did you use or are using? Some's more concentrated and harsher on the fish than others.