Guppies Dropping Like Flies...

[pauldoncaster]

As the title says, my guppies are quickly dissappearing, on average every other morning i wake up look in the tank and im picking a dead guppy out, no clear signs off disease, (except one what had flakey skin on the top). They keep swimming at the top towards one of the rear corners. first it was the males who died then the females started. my water tests are as follows. Nitrate-0. Ammonia-0.15 ppm Nitrite-0.30ppm and a ph of 7.4. Any more details please ask ... is it just a case that guppies arent the fish for my tank ??

 

[LucyB]

Ammonia is very very bad, do a massive water change, I would do 75%

 

[KCB]

Your filter probably isn't cycled and so ammonia and nitrite are building up to lethal levels (any ammonia or nitrite reading is bad). Do what Lucy suggested until the levels are at zero.

This guide will help you carry out a fish-in cycle: http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/224306-fish-in-cycling/

 

[pauldoncaster]

Thankyou for that article KCB, very interesting, however, i forgot to mention a month a go i bought and external filter to replace my internal one as i dint think the internal one could handle the workload, i kept running the internal and external together for about 3 weeks, did i take the internal out too soon, im trying to boost the external filter with filter start by interpet ?? will that help do you think ??

 

[CezzaXV]

When you run two filters side by side, they will both hold roughly half the bacteria. When you removed the old one you removed half the bacteria, therefore the remaining ones can only handle half the bioload. You're in a fish-in cycle right now, but if you keep doing water changes it should be back to where it was quite quickly with a minimum of fish losses.

The filter start probably won't change anything, very few of that sort of products do.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

If I may interject, in the future when switching from one filter to another, try to fill the new filter with the OLD filter media from the old filter, rather than running them in tandem. Cut up the material as necessary to get as much of the old media in place as possible. Most externals are actually quite easy to add your old media to so that it can stay cycled when switching filters.


Only running them for 3 weeks together, probably means that the lion share of the bacteria was still in the old filter. You aren't starting from scratch, so it should catch up fairly quickly. Stop feeding until the ammonia and nitrite readings are zeros without a water change for a full 24 hours. The fish will be fine for a week with no food, and the lack of food will decrease the amount of ammonia produced by the fish. Adding an ammonia detoxifying product like Prime or Stress Coat would be more effective in helping your fish than the filter start, I believe. But, the best way to get through a fish-in cycle is WATER CHANGES. LARGE % water changes are the only way to truly make the water acceptable for the fish. Doing the 75% water change will be good, it should lower the levels to trace levels for ammonia, but the nitrite will still be higher than acceptable. Pushing the water change to 80-90% would actually be better. As long as the fish have enough water to swim and you TEMP MATCH the water incoming, this will be much better. Alternatively, doing back to back water changes can also be very effective, but more time consuming - less stressful for the fish though. I'd wait an hour or so after the first change to check the ammonia/nitrite levels and if you get any reading at all, do another 50%-75% change, depending on the readings you get.