All of my blue/red guaramis died...please help single out the problem

[DerGoetz]

Hey!

I have a 100 Gallon Freshwater and it has been up for 10 months now. I had great success with my fish so far.
I have:
4 Silver Dollars
3 Angels
2 Plecos
2 Golden Guaramis ( or how you spell 'em..)
6 Clown Loaches
4 Singapore Shrimp
a whole Army of Coris..Panda, Skunk etc....
6 red/blue Guaramis

The Angels and shrimp keep on laying eggs...those get eaten right away by the rest of the gang, and the panda coris reproduce like mad....so I guess my tank is in perfect health...if it wouldn't be for all of my 6 Guramis having died.
I'm talking about the red/blue ones.....
All 6 of them had the same symptons:
Getting bloated....hardly moving and hiding for 4 - 6 weeks before simply dying..slowly I never really saw them eat once they started bloating, either...
Their colors would hardly fade, though..they would just get horribly bloated at the belly....to the point where the scales would point away from the body because of the curvature...these scales were the ones turning whitish in color, too...not on the surface as in a parasite infection or tuff, the scales at the belly would just fade in color.

I run 1 Emperor 400 and 2 Fluval 404's.
Water at 7.2 ph and 78 degrees.
20% water change every 10 days (3 times a month).
Fake plants
Plus a Powerhead in the middle of the tank to keep food afloat and give my punks a little workout...they all love it, especially the coris...

Tons of aeration with two bubble pipes on either end of the tank running 24/7 and a bubble pipe running through the whole tank ( 5 feet long) which runs every two hours in between 8AM and 6PM for 5 minutes (again to lift debris/leftover n poop off the ground...the filters pick it up right away...)

I really enjoyed my guaramis while they lasted and I plan on getting a 250+ Tank later this year and moving my fish into the new one.....
WHAT can make the red/blue guramis die while the 2 golden ones and EVRYTHING else thrives?

Please enlighten me

Best regards,
Goetz

 

[wayne]

It sounds like either a bacterial infection, or just possibly genetic impairment. Unfortuneately dwarf gouramis are horribly inbred, with pretty weak immune systems. They are thus very prone to illnesses that don't seem to affect stronger fish. It's possible the larger gouramis were adding to their stress, but in a tank of that size it's unlikely.
It may also be that being very inbred they're all developing a cancer type internal problem, but without an autopsy that'll be impossible to diagnose.
Try a differnet batch, possibly from a different source. Try to avoid the really brightly coloured. F.y.i. go to the Practical Fishkeeping website, and look for an article called 'The fish that fell from grace', where various fish get a slagging from the trade for being overbred cannon fodder.

 

[Colisa lalia]

That is the disease dropsy. Very difficult to stop and basically is a sure killer. It is bacterial, but by the time you see the symptoms it's usaully too late. Keep in mind dwarf gourami don't live for more than a year in the wild. The ones you probably got were 6 to 12 months old. So they lived out there life and died. They were probably all pretty weak at the end and the one got dropsy and gave it to the others. Don't worry, it's natural, everything else sounds great!