[SHUEZQ]

I have my 55 planted tank with a mix of Rainbows, various neons, clown loaches, various algae eaters, and barbs such as different danios and cherry barbs. The cherry barbs even successfully bred once!

Paramaters are consistent for the past year. The pH is just below 7. I try like heck to lug my Reverse Osmosis water home to keep the Nitrates under 20. The tank cycles so that Ammonia and Nitrites are 0. I have plenty of filtering a Pengin with 2 bio-wheels, and a Tetra-Tec with a heater (additional heater at other end submerged). One filter is enough, but I added the second one because one side of the tank always built up a film on the undisturbed water surface.

All my fish are fine--except the danios. I had pearl, veiltail leopard, golden zebras, etc. One by one they have come down with dropsy. This is at the rate of about 1 fish every 3-4 weeks. It's weird, and I'm almost out of danios. I know the others are lonely, but I'm afraid to purchase more stock with the mystery deaths. Is this species extra susceptible to something? I don't want to drop drugs in the water if I don't have to--especially with scaleless fish.

I don't add much to the water. I use AmQuel and NovAqua with the water changes. I have some plant and trace mineral liquids I rarely add due to algae blooms. I have used an algae inhibitor liquid suitable for live plants. That's about it. No new stock has been introduced to this tank for 6 months or more except some Chinese and Siamese algae eaters, but the deaths started before I got these fish.

I gave the info I think you need--did I miss anything? I remove the affected stock immediately and use net soak.

NO ONE CONFUSES ME--I DO IT MYSELF!

[Frank M. Greco]

Bloat can have more than one cause, and it's hard to say exactly what is going on. And that it is affecting only one type of fish (Danios) is also unusual. I would assume that it's a bacterial problem, and begin to feed them an antibacterial medicated food. Aquatronics Oxymanna flake is a good one to use. Feed for 7 days at 5% of the estimated body weight of the fish.