Black Neons

[panboy]

i bought 8 black neons not to long ago.

i have had 9 rummynose, angel, SAE, zebra loaches and bristlenose for a vrey long time and they are doing great.

when i added these black neons they seemed good, however i went out of town for a day. i came back and one died. but i guess its not horrible. i start to do my weekly cleaning and all of a sudden 2 are starting to stay towards the top. within 15 min they die. now i was confused, they seemed just fine when i got home. By the time i finish cleaning my tank and planting my new plants, another died. AHH so now im getting mad.
Now i have 4 left, and one has his fins badly damaged and seems like he will die soon.

I havent bought fish in a while, so I'm kinda shocked. are these difficult fish? or did i just not introduce them properly? all i did was let them sit in the water in the bag for about 20 min before releasing them. I guess i should have added malifax(?)when i got them, which i did today already today though....

anything will help, thanks guys

 

[mikev]

you did not say what "not too long ago" means exactly, but

all i did was let them sit in the water in the bag for about 20 min before releasing them.

may well be the cause. 20 mins is just enough to equalize the temp, but you also need to slowly equalize the water: replace the water in the bag with the water from the tank in a few increments spaced by 10-15 mins; this makes the procedure at least 40min long (1hour to be safer). If you don't do this and the water parameters (like Ph) are different as they usually are, you send fish into shock and it is likely to die within a few days; and even if the fish survives, some permanent damage is likely, making it weaker. So if "not too long ago" means days, this is nearly certainly the cause; if "not too long ago" is more than a week, this is probably the contributing factor.

PS: *Usually* the shock does not show immediately and fish will behave normally for a day or even two, then it hits.

 

[panboy]

not long ago = 3 days.
yeah, i just equalized the temp before releasing them. i have always done this with all my other fish and it seemed fine... but yeah i should have done that to make the introduction even easier. thanks, ill definitely not make a stupid error like this again.

 

[mikev]

Most people make this stupid error once, don't take it too hard, just don't do it again.

3 days likely means that you will lose more, perhaps all. If the remaining neons are eating and swimming normally now, it is a good sign. Damaged fins likely mean that that particular neon, being in shock, could not swim away from your other fish: loaches, for example, might be responsible.

A couple more tips:

Don't get new fish if you don't expect to be around for a couple of days. Things can go wrong in more than one way with new fish: you can get infection or a social unrest too...

Also, it is much better to overdo on acclimating than underdo. I do several water changes in the bag *after* most of the water has been replaced with the tank water already and fish has been acclimated: these can be done very quickly, since you don't need to wait for the fish to acclimate any more. (The idea is that if the lfs' water has ich or some other parasite, these extra changes will cut down on how much infection your are introducing.)

Good luck.