In need of some help/advice ASAP
Hello all, I am new here to this site. I was hoping I could get some expert advice. I have had a discus/angelfish setup for two years. I have them in a 75 gal. I started off with about 6 discus in the very beginning, and about 7 angel fish. The discus were all different species we want with the names they were given at the petcos we had bought them from, but weren't fully convinced that they were that particular species. The Angels varied from two platinums, and three blue Angels that we purchased from an aquarium in upstate NH, and two black Angels with a kind of marble pattern from our local petco. We, my husband and I, also decided to add various community fish such as two gold barbs, two Cory cats, about 12 Cardinal tetras, a redline shark, a gybaseps Pleco, a vampire Pleco, two baby plecos one is spotted the other is black with a white ridge on the back fin we never did figure out the species, but loved them because they were small and cute, a friendly marble catfish, and we had two spotted Raphaels before we began our setup for discus and Angels. We did a lot of research before getting these fish because the discus in particular were very expensive and we didn't want them to die on us, so we read up on proper discus care what they like for water temp, how frequently to do water changes, and what they like as far as diet.. Etc. we thought we were doing everything right, but over the course of a few months time we would watch our fish slowly die. Some would look like they gained parasites on their slim coats, others would not survive more then two weeks, and this was with water changes and gravel vacuums every 3 days as recommended. We did read also that plecos are known to suck the slim coat off of flat bodied fish such as discus and Angels, but with observation found that our plecos were not a threat, and neither were our cats and spotted Raphaels.. In fact the only fish to really seem to torment the discus were our wild caught clown loaches which we removed from the tank as soon as we saw aggressive activity, and moved them to my 40gal blue Honduran convict tank where they seem much happier, and are still thriving. Over the course of a year we are down to one blue cobalt discus and just removed another dead angel today 3/6.. So now down to one platinum angel and the two black Angels. We lost our redline shark, and are down to just two Cardinal tetras. We were feeding tropical fish flake, and frozen blood worm since we read that the discus like that diet as well as occasional frozen beef heart. We really thought we were doing everything right, but just the other day I was notified that we had lost three fish in one day! Our water temp is always between 78-80 degrees and have never had an issue with high nitrates/nitrites. When we get our water tested the professionals at the store say our water is fine and may as well be Poland springs.. So many questions arise in my mind.. Main one being why are our fish dropping like flies? They are such an expensive fish to loose, and our Angels were also of high price considering the ones we purchased were not local and a bit more rare. Is there something we can do to stop loosing more fish. My husband and I are ready to call it quits with this setup and go back to flowerhorns and cichlids which are a bit less fragile.. It's been a lot of work to keep the fish we have left alive, and well although we are trying everything we can unfortunately they all look lazy, lathargic, and just overall not happy.. Even the blue cobalt who used to swim with confidence and beam with beautiful color looks dull he hangs out mostly behind the fluval filter, and hardly comes out of hiding anymore.. Our Angels stay close to the bottem and don't move much every now and then we see them skimming the surface. When doing water changes we change our filtration systems biobags and clean them out thoroughly of fish waste because of the rapid decline in fish. One of our filters is large, and is heavy to move but we still take it apart and clean them all out. Can anyone tell us what we can do? Should we give up here entirely? It's been a very frustrating few weeks, and it's difficult to desipher what's happening to our beautiful community setup that we once had. Also the only thing we have in the tank with our fish are a couple pieces of driftwood... Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all!
