Massive tank death...

Question: Is there any sort of drop I can add to my paddle-tail newt's tank to fight a "possible" bacterial infection?

Problem: My brown dictoms magically went away... And then half my tank died. Two tetras, a few guppies, and a loach were involved. I have a few guppies and a scissor tail left in there along with a pleco but I don't know if there is much I can do for them. My betta developed pop-eye and had been doing OK (I removed him from the tank when he started exhibiting distress) until today (he's obviously dying but he's also -very- old) The PH level is and has always been 7 and other than the current the temperature has had no "reason" to fluctuate.

Possible causes?
-I replaced the filter with an underwater one. I could tell the betta was not pleased so I removed him when he showed stress.. The rest of the fish seemed fine though.
-The pleco I recently added had a disease
-The guppies I recently added had a disease

I moved my newt into his own pad when I added the pleco but I put some of the guppies I'd bought in the tank with them, and they definetly died (but I installed a smaller version of the same filter in his new tank and the current is even worse there, but the newt likes it). I am not sure if I should do a 100% water / gravel / ect. change but I've had water out in a bucket for a day now just incase.


Any thoughts?

firstly, i would get rid of the fish, esp the scissortail, loach, and pleco. this is because the scissortail is far to active and can distress the newts, the loach have nasty spines behind their eye that can inflict serious damage, and the pleco produces vast amounts of nitrates, both from uneaten food and its faeces.

if you do insist on having fish, then quarantine them after purchase before allowing them into your set up. this allows any unseen illness to be treated, away from the rest, without the risk of passing that illness on. these are the most likely causas.

what i would do, is use tetra aqua aquasafe in the standing water, then change 50% of the aquarium water with this water that has been treated with the aquasafe and has been standing. the aquasafe speeds up the development of healthy filter bacteria, and neutralises harmful substances in to tap water. this should greatly reduce risk of illness/ungus/infection problems, if all the above steps are taken.

We need to know a little bit more about your tank maintenance routine before we can give you help on what is going wrong in your tank.

Do you do water changes on a regular basis? How big are these changes and how often do you do them? Did you do a water test when the problems started happening? What were your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate? What are they now?

Is your tank heated? Most of the fish you are keeping are tropicals and do best at 76F or more. If your tank temperature is lower than that they will stress the fish and cause them to be more susceptible to disease. If your tank is heated then the newt will suffer as it will be stressed and more susceptible to disease.

The heat problem is one good reason not to keep fish and newts together and here are some more.

As Alex said quarantine is necessary for both newts and fish when you are introducing new specimens to prevent the spread of disease.

As for treating your newt's tank I wouldn't do anything yet. Has the animal shown any signs of illness? If so I would get a water test done and check to make sure it is not the water conditions, then I would worry about temperature.

It sounds like your tank may be new. You should investigate "new tank symdrome" as I think your tank may not be totally cycled yet. Brown algae tends to break out in new tanks and then spontaneously disappear.

Also it would be best for all the animals involoved if you keep the fish in one tank and the newt in a separate one.

Aquasafe is only a water conditioner. It removes heavy metals, chlorine and chloramine. It does not promote beneficial bacteria growth or stimulate health in any way except by removing toxic chlorine and chloramine.

sorry about the mis info on aquasafe, according to the label on the back it's "new Bioextract formula contains natural biopolymers which support the development of important filter bacteria"

aquasafe is a useful thing to use, as chlorine can have harmful effects on both newts and fish, so it is essential to get rid of these, as in my experience without doing so could have serious consequences.

also, how large is the tank?

Hmm.. Thanks for the help so far. The newt seems fine, I think I will just buy him a 10 gallon (he's in a five gallon temp setup now) and let him do his thing by himself since all signs pointed to that in the first place. Any product you recommend I'll check out though.

To answer some questions, it is a 10 gallon tank. This isn't a new tank (it has been running for several years now with nothing like this ever happening) but I'll admit I don't check things like nitrate/nitrite. PH is 7. I had a filter that brought the water up and out to cycle bacteria, kept it on a low speed to not bother the betta and he didn't exhibit signs of being bothered. I never did a 100% water change or completely removed and changed all the gravel and toys. Everyone in the tank has been there for a long time (at least a year but most of them 2 years). The newt is a couple years old as well. The betta I only had because someone gave him too me when they stopped wanting him, but even him I've had for a while. He was ancient.

The dictoms occurred the last time I did a tank cleaning. I moved the tank to a new location and I think the exposure to more sunlight might have caused it? Or maybe I changed out too much of the water that time. I don't like adding chemicals to the tank if its not necessary so I was trying to "give it time" to subside as a lot of websites say to do. But it didn't.

I moved the newt out when I bought the pleco. I wanted to make a new tank for the newt on my desk anyway, I like watching him.

Again thanks for the help... I'll sit on my tail for now unless I see something more serious happen for him.

The brown algae blooms after each water change could be a result of the sunlight they are getting in combination with something from the tap water like silicates, which brown algae use to build their shells.

As for the fish die off I have two guesses both closely related. The first being that the new fish were ill and they had a disease that was easily spread. The second being the new fish were ill and the old fish were susceptible to disease because of a high nitrate build up.

One final note to you also. Letting your water sit out for 24hours works great to remove chlorine from your water. About 25% of water treatment plants now use chloramine. This chemical is far less volatile and will stay in water for a long time, over a week. If you contact your local water municipality they will tell you what chemical treatment they use on the water.

Yeah... I am thinking the dictoms were from the increased sunlight when I moved my tank. I do leave water out before I change it, I learned my lesson in that game several years ago when I killed two frogs with water right from the tap (it was conditioned but apparently no less deadly). So it was probably the new fish... I am assuming there is some kind of nitrite/nitrate testing kit I can buy? I'll check it out. Thanks!