Why are my tropical fish dying one by one from an ick-like disease?

Question

i have a tropical aquarium that consists of a plecostomus, algae eater, guppies, swordtails, glass catfish, flounders, gobies, and puffers. i keep the water at a constant 70 degrees. they recently started getting ick-like spots, starting with a swordtail. i started treating the ick with medicine but it only got worse. one by one, fish seem to catch it and they're dead within 24hrs. it's been about a week since i started treating it and in the last 48hrs i've lost 8 fish. help before i lose more :(

Answer 1

You have to seperate all of them or just let them go. You have a bad combination of fish and their stress levels are SKYROCKETING! With that combination of fish you should have at LEAST a 300 gallon tank with dividers.
Ick can be caused by stress, malnutrition and lighting. Your fish are just incredibly stressed and cannot be housed together. Puffers really don't get along with anything and guppies have to be in an insanely clean enviorment. Plecos put off a heavy dose of ammonia. Those 3 alone make for a deadly combo.
I'd reccommend seperating them and if you do I'd reccommend treating them with Coopersafe or Melafix, up the temp to 80 degrees F. Do NOT go above 80, cut their daylight to 6 hours and do 5% water changes every 3 days. And that's ONLY if you have them seperated. If you do this while they're together it's just going to make matters worse.
Please do your research before combining fish into a tank. It will save you a LOT of money and stress if you put compatable fish together and your fish will thank you for it too.
Hope that helps and best of luck :)

Answer 2

I had that problem once but I don't think it is ich......do your guppies get a pale band round there middle just before they die??or like a saddle back colour loss
Like I said this happened to my tank when all my other fish grew bigger I I had bala sharks, kissing gouramis, tiger barbs) and all the smaller fish (guppies, tetras) started dying one a day. I treated for ich with no luck and my water was fine so I put it down to stress. And when I removed the smaller guys to a new tank thy were fine.
Hope this helps.....good luck

Answer 3

I use to separate the sick fish from
the other fish, then treat it. Keeping
check on the tank for any other ick
out breaks. If there are, that's when
I treated the tank.

How big is the tank?
Maybe it's too big for the treatment.

Answer 4

Your fish get sick because of bad water quality. adding medicines to a dirty tank will NOT help them. Do 25% water changes per day for 4 days, then start medicating.