Hey so.. um I have 3 striped schooling catfish in my 6 foot marine aquarium, the tank has been set up for around 8 weeks and the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate were all at 0 so thats why I bought the fish. I had one for one day and after he went alright I bought another two, I was feeding them when out of the blue one of the fish started having a seizure, he completely spazzed out swimming in all directions and flipping. I took him out of the tank and monitored him for a little while he calmed down but is breathing irregularly and every third breath he takes is more like a gulp. He seems to have no sense of direction and no normal function of his body. What should I do? I tested my water parameters and the ammonia and nitrite are still at 0. The other 2 fish seem fine, also he has a reddish bulge coming out of his backside but so do the other two. Someone please help...

I'm not familiar with this specific type of fish, but when I google images it I don't see reddish bulges. Why don't you do a google images, see if that's bringing up the same species as you have, and compare the images, 'cause I have a gut feeling the reddish bulge might be a parasite, but check google images first, see what the average specimen normally looks like. If these bulges aren't normal, see if you can get a picture of one and put it up, we'll see if we can get these things identitfied.

Ok I have google imaged the fish and I would not think that they are meant to have this red coming out of their ass, I went to my LFS this morning and they didn't really have any idea what could have caused this. The one that had the "episode" is now dead but as I feared is has spread to the other two. I got a picture and will attach it please help ASAP and I don't think they will have much time.

P.S. Sorry about the bad quality but it the best I could do because the fish keeps shying away. The picture is in my gallery.

How long has it been since you bought these fish? This is a brand new tank, is it not? I can only imagine they were infected when you bought them. I suspect some kind of antiparasitic is called for, but I'm drawing a real blank here...

Had the fish for about 3 days, the tank has been set up for a couple of months these are my fist fish. I just went the my LFS and bought some anti-parasite medication, ill know soon if it helped. I so hope it does. The odd thing is.....

I bought my fish tank and sump off a man named Cam, he had a Saratoga, Golden Pleco and a Bull Rout in his aquarium (which is now my current aquarium). I sold the fish to my LFS because I was going saltwater, now after my LFS had these fish for two days the owner called me up telling me that one of the fish I sold him (Saratoga) had died, the next day he called me again saying that the Golden Pleco had it's guts coming out of it's ass and was not in good shape, the Bull Rout as far as I know lived. Now I think it is strange that i'm having the same problems with my fish, so I thought maybe it was some of the filter media that I got from Cam, contained a parasite. But because I have gone saltwater and he was freshwater I thought that any freshwater parasites would have died off, besides the only thing I used of his was some noodles and filter sponge.

Oh man, I wish I had any good advice for you. For the freshwater, especially the pleco with his guts coming out, I would have said callamanus worms, but I don't think callamanus would survive the switch to saltwater, would they? I'm pretty good with fresh, but I'm an utter noob when it comes to salt. I hope like heck the antiparasitic does it for you. If these fish don't survive I'd be tempted to break everything down and go over the whole set up either with a bleach solution or boiling what you can in a pot, and just nuke it till you're sure its sterile, 'cause whatever these parasites are, they're vicious.

Good luck

Ok thanks for you help man, I suppose i'll just have to wait and yeah, maybe ill just have to take everything apart and start from scratch with sterile things, hopefully I don't though because man I hate waiting lol.

pics could help others id the problem.

The tank was up and running for 8 weeks but was it cycled PROPERLY? or was it just filled with water and let run for 8 weeks?

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40 BREEDER
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10g
Whisper 10/20

The tank as far as I could tell was cycled properly, ammonia and nitrite were at 0 and nitrate was between 0 - 5 (from what I understand not toxic levels). I'm sorry to say that all three of my stripped schooling catfish died the last one went this morning, despite me moving him to a different smaller tank that has had salt water in it for about twice as long as my main tank. I did however discover more symptoms, he had what looked like blood filling the spikes on his two side and one top fin and blood around his mouth. I got a call from my LFS who suggester that it was heavy metal poisoning. I'm not sure if this is correct or not but I did look in my sump and the metal clamp that was holding the pipe onto my return pump had a screw on it that was very rusty and leeching straight into the main tank, could this have been what killed them? There was a fairly large amount of rust build up. I'm now in the process of cleaning every thing and I am converting back to fresh water. So any tips/recommendations would be helpful and much appreciated, thank you everyone for you help.

Hello,
It is sad and frustrating to see your goldfish dying after taking care of it for months. Some will say that it is easier to just replace the goldfish with a new one but it is not as easy as it sounds once you start caring for it - looking at it everyday and treating it like part of your family.

When your goldfish is dying, you can take these steps and try to improve its health. Do these early so that you can save other healthy goldfish from dying as well.

1. Maintain high water quality

Water quality is important for the fish to get back healthy. Make sure that you replace the water in your fishbowl with the new water frequently. You'll have to make sure that the temperature level is right and chlorine amount in the water is taken care of.

2. Quarantine sick goldfish from healthy ones

Your sick goldfish should be isolated from the remaining healthy goldfish. What you can do is remove the sick gold fish from the crowd (if you have more than one goldfish in the fish tank) and put it in a separate fishbowl. You'll monitor the progress of the health of this goldfish from this fishbowl. You'll also want to make sure that the other fish in the tank stay healthy. So, make sure that the water in this tank is also in superb condition.

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