angels update 5

I did a 70% wc yesterday. This morning Nitrates are under 10 ppm. The gold angels are starting to look better- pale spots on fins almost gone, white on Shirley's lip is smaller.

It's hard to get a sharp photo she did not hold still much, eager when I'm standing in front of the tank to beg for food, now. 

The kuhlis look better too- only slightly flushed around the gills. Didn't get any photos of them, though. Here's a few more of Shirley.

Bad news is now there's a new problem- some of them have pale, stringy poop. From some of the fish it's paler brown with a stringy trail, other one it's white nearly clear, all stringy. Either the festivums still had something when I moved them over, or the angelfish brought parasites with them, or they got it from the frozen food I started feeding. I bet it's the second scenario. Now I have to figure out what's going to get rid of this, sigh. 

I spent a few hours on the tank, yesterday morning. Don't mind, I actually enjoy working among the plants. Cleaned out a lot dying plant leaves- mostly vals- by hand, wiped algae off the glass, cleaned the substrate in the planters with miniature gravel vac, planted the aponogeton bolivianus (and had to move a few things around to do that). I think things look better, but still feel like I'm doing something wrong. Got lax with keeping things clean enough, when it was down to the one angelfish. Got too hasty to accept when someone else's needed a new home- I am going to be more cautious about taking in adoptive fish again. And certainly not without proper quarantine period. Mistake is biting me now.

Edit add: Maybe I'm overthinking this. Can the frozen foods make their poop look different colors? Nobody is lacking appetite, or looking emaciated. Their plump bellies could just be well-fed, or in the case of the females, full of eggs again. Miss Beautiful does look swollen and red around the anus, which is why I got the frozen daphia. I thought if she's constipated, it would help. But she's the only one who won't eat it! The others all eagerly eat it up, she just ignores the daphia. Too small? and she'll never eat cooked peas anymore, so maybe I should try giving her an epsom salt bath.

But I think first I will change my feeding routine to see if I can rule this out. Give them only prepared foods for a few days, see if all the poops are normal dark brown. Then give them mysis shrimp again, see if they poop pale/white right after that, I'd guess it's the food changing the waste color. In QT, my paradise fish has been eating same variety as the angels, he looks fine but there's pale waste scattered among normal brown ones on the tank bottom. Hm.