help help please help

[CAP7AIN]

Everything was going fine, until today!
I will try to keep it brief.
Set up tank about 4 months ago.
Started putting fish in 3 months ago, a few at a time.
Two weeks ago put in real plants.
A week ago introduced 10 x Carndinal Tetras and 2 x Pearl Gouramis.

The tank looked really great... until today !!!!!!!

The fish that died are....
5 x Cardinal Tetras.
3 x Guppies.
1 x Septra Tetras.
1 x Clown Loach.
The other Clown Loach looks very dodge, i think he will be dead by morning. Keeps lieing down on the bottom of the tank on his side?

Water changes about 20% every 10 - 14 days

Nitrite (No2) - 0
Ammonia (NH3/NH4) - 1.2 (possible lower, find the colour hard to match up)
pH - 8.5 - 8.0 (as above)

Did a 20% water change today.

CAN ANYONE HELP ME ?? I AM NEW TO ALL OF THIS

If you read my signiture, thats what i did have 24 hrs ago..

 

[Da_Oz]

1 Make sure the clowns are dead befor taking out. They like to sleep on there sides.

2. By adding all these fish at once you more than likely threw off you biofilter. Kinda of like if you have one person smoking in a room then add 15 more the air gets worse fast and no time to get use to it. If you add fish slower this sould not happen unless you over stocked the tank. You should only put two to three fish per week.


Sorry about you dieing fish.

 

[gaya]

that's a pretty high ammonia reading. when i use melafix and get an ammonia spike I add ammonia remover, do 20% water changes per day, and throw on another filter until my reading is zero. Check on your ph as well.
sorry about your losses

 

[wuvmybetta]

Sounds like your tank it still cycling. The first month of an empty tank sitting there did nothing. Then when you added some fish you got an ammonia spkie...then more fish (2 weeks would be the peak of ammonia from the previous fish additions) so basically you've overloaded your tank. Common mistake. The way you set it up sounds as though you were careful for the well being of the fish,it sucks that this had to happen.
Here's a helpful article to explain your cycle.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=10099

 

[Loopyness]

i bet your clown loach is lonely, one of mine died and i thought that he would, but i got him a buddy and now hes fine.

 

[swozzie]

Did those 10 fish all die in one day? If so then it's unlikely they died because of water quality even though your ammonia reading is high. To have a huge number of deaths in one go points to something more severe like some chemical getting into the tank or one of the fish killing all the others. It could possibly happen if you forgot to neutralise the chlorine when doing a water change?

You pH is quite high but shouldn't cause the deaths.