Poorly Looking German Blue Ram

Hi All,

I'm hoping someone might be able to give me some advice in relation to our poor blue ram. We thought it was getting ick however over the last 24hrs the white spot appears to have gotten furry and spread slightly leading me to think it's no longer ick.

We were away for a week last week but had a relative pop into the house occassional to feed our fish and add fertiliser. When we came back on the Monday night, our neon tetra's and blue ram's colour was faded. We turned on the light in the fish tank and eventually their colour began to come back. We notice the temperature of the tank was down to 24C (before we left it was around 26-27C).

I have carried out a water check, ph is 7.6, ammonia and nitrites are 0 but our nitrates are up around 10-20. Nitrates have gradually been getting worse over the last number of weeks.

The tank is a 54 litre, filter is an eheim containing peat pellets to reduce the ph and substrate pro. Tank up and running about 14 weeks. We graddually increased the tank temp to 30C to cure what we thought was ick and add in the stingray filter with just poly filter to break the water surface introducing oxigen as we increase the tank temp.

Any thoughts on what this white fluffy thing is on our blue ram and how we go about curing it?

One last thing is that since we are backf from holidays, our plants look very unhealthy with black on the leaves. Could this be a fungus that is efecting the ram too? The rest of are fish seem fine though we lost a danio and brittle nose pleco in the last few days. They showed not signs of disease however the danio was very humpbacked looking.

Thanks for any suggestion.

Stephen

Thanks for that John. My only worry with the salt is that we have Cory's and I've heard salt is not good for them. We don't have a QT or hospital tank either. Do QT/hospital tanks need to be set up for a few weeks like a regular tank or can i transfer water from my current tank to the other tank?

Ph of 7.6 is quite high for the fish you have to show off their full potential. Also rams like warmer water. I keep mine at 29 - 30 degrees. As John said a good water change and a good quality fungal treatment. It's an easy enough ailment to cure.
What is your full stock list in the tank?

I had what sounds like a similar problem with a gbr,can I ask where you got him? And how long you have him in the tank?