# Floating albino cory



## poisson (Jan 21, 2013)

Hi everyone, this is my first post on gtaaquaria, though I've been lurking for a while now. Unfortunately my first post is not a happy one - all of a sudden one of my cory cats started floating and swimming erratically tonight.

There have been no earlier signs of disease or any fish dying in the tank (other than one out of three oto cats that I bought some three weeks ago from BA Scarborough which died two days later - something that is not uncommon with otos).

The tank is 26 gallon, planted, and I've started it 3 months ago. The corydoras have been living in it happily for 2 months now.

I do regular water changes - usually 10l every other day. The nitrites are 0, nitrates somewhere around 15ppm, ph 7.5, temperature 27°C. I don't have an ammonia test kit but the tank is stable and only 3 corys, 2 otos and 5 guppies live in it so I doubt the ammonia would be high enough to cause sudden health problems.

I add Seachem Flourish Excel and Seachem Iron once a week to the tank and use AquaPlus to condition the water.

I uploaded a video of the cory "swimming" here, might help identify the problem better: 




Another thing that is not visible in the video is that when it's swimming and not floating, the sick cory tends to go grab air rather often compared to the other two.

Does anyone have a clue what it might be?

Thanks!


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## poisson (Jan 21, 2013)

A quick update - before I went to bed last night all three corys were displaying the same behaviour. I immediately took them out of the big tank and put them in a separate one with extra aeration and fresh water - this morning one of the three was dead, the two others seemed to be doing better. I dissected the dead one and there was no visible sign of internal parasites or worms.

I'm still clueless as to what this might be or what might have caused it.


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## nightowl1350 (Mar 19, 2006)

Sorry to hear that.  

If at all possible you should set up a QT tank for any new additions. It is the best way to ensure your existing fish do not get exposed to a new bug. I didn't do it for many years, but once I started going to auctions I made sure that I had tanks set up for any new fish and kept them in Qt for 4 weeks min. It has payed off as I did get some angels at an auction and both died within 2 weeks. If I had put them in with my other angels I could have lost them all.


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## poisson (Jan 21, 2013)

I actually do have a quarantine tank. The only new additions were the otos which went directly into the main tank due to the general consensus that otos have a better chance of survival if you put them in a planted tank with a bit of algae. What I find odd is that absolutely no fish showed any sign of illness, then all of a sudden (literally from one hour to the next) the corys started behaving weirdly. I'm starting to think there was something toxic for the corys in the tap water (though I use conditioner) or they don't react well to the Seachem Iron as all this started after a water change.


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