Help please....

becky!

New Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2004
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
I have been reading this forum now for a few months, and have learned a lot!! We seem to be having a few problems with our fairly new 30 gallon tank. It is fully cycled (did the fishless cycle with amonia), amonia is 0, nitrites are 0, temp is 76 (I'm not even sure exactly what the temp should be...)

Anyway, last week I had 3 danios and 2 otos in the tank. I added 1 dwarf gourami, 3 platys, 4 guppies, and 3 more danios. I think that was on Tuesday... A few days later I found one of the guppies dead, but didn't think much of it because he didn't really seem right from the beginning (hid most of the time). Saturday I lost the gourami, and am completely puzzled about that because he seemed fine even that morning. Now today one of the surviving guppies seems to have yellow on most of his body and his mouth, and looks like there is a cut on the top of his body. I'm almost positive he wasn't like that before, as he is blue and it just doesn't look right. The only thing I could find that it might be is velvet, but it doesn't look fuzzy to me so I don't know. He's also chasing the platys and almost seems to be biting them, which he hasn't done at all until today. Please help! I don't know what we're doing wrong! This is getting so frustrating...We've tried to do everything right (to the best of our knowledge), but it seems like we're missing something.

Also, about the gourami, we also had a dwarf in a 10 gallon and lost him as well after about a week. Is there something special that they need? I thought they were not supposed to be really any more difficult than the other tropicals, and haven't seen any special treatment that we should have been doing. To be honest, I never saw either of them eat, but ya can't force feed a fish...
 
did u do a large waterchange 90% before u added the fish because otherwise u could still have traces of the chemicals that u used for cycling in the water, i know some of then just say just ammonia as the contents but i still wouldnt trust them, uve added quite alot of fish are the ammonia nd nitrite still 0?
 
We did do a water change, although it wasn't large, more like 20%. And yes, the amonia and nitrites are still 0 as of yesterday. I forgot to mention that the ph is 7.4.
 
Thanks LoveMyOscar. You know, we don't have a nitrate tester -- one didn't come in the kit we got. So...I'll head to the LSS today to get one, turn the temp up a tad, and see what happens. Is 7.4 ok for the ph?

You know what the frustrating part is? We have been vigil about testing, water changes, etc., and have some friends who don't even have a thermometer in their tank and haven't had nearly the problems we have. Life just isn't fair!! They just filled the tank, threw all the fish in an hour later, and away they went!
 
i wasnt talkign about just the ammonia but all other chemicals in the solution, even when is says just ammonia ive herad of problems before, thats all
 
Ok, I'm back from the LSS. I tested the water, and here's what I have:

Amonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
PH, somewhere around 7.4 or slightly higher (those two browns are really hard to tell apart on the color card)

I also bought a new heater, because the old one did seem to fluxuate a little (el cheapo, and just a higher and lower dial, no temp to be able to set it to), and set it at 80 degrees. Is there anything else I might want to try, or maybe just see if the the fluxuating temp was throwing them off? I wonder about the use of salt...I see a lot of people mentioning it to fix things. If it would help, and the otos can't handle it, they could be moved to our 10 gallon tank.

Please bear with me. I'm totally a beginner!! We've fallen in love with our fishies and want to do this right! :wub:
 

Most reactions

Back
Top