Help What Did I Do Wrong?

[300hp+vr6]

im a noob i bought a 39 ish litre (9 gallon?) tank alongh with heater gravel ship (the pump is a hand me down no idea what it is)

1. i read up on fishless cycling and thought yep sounds far nicer on the fish so i bought amonia nitrite and nitrate kits plus a bottle of ammonia and set to it
day 1 amonia shot off the scale as expected and i bought 3 plants to help with bacteria (sp)
day 4 amonia had gone to 0 nitrite off the scale
day 5 nitrite was aprox half way down the scale and dropping
day 6 changed 50% of the water and decided to get some fish as i didnt want the ammonia bacteria to die off and the nitrite wasnt far off 0.
2. went and bought 6 guppys (i think 5 male 1 female with hindsight) got them in the tank after 30 mins floating in the tank in the bag. cpl of hours later we got 6 small neons from a diffrent shop same procedure all seemed fine (was this my first mistake? overstocking??)
day 7 all seemed fine fish seemed happy as larry BUT nitrite spiked back to about half way up the scale amonia still read 0. the guppys seem to stay around the top of the tank is this a clue? i set the therostat to 27 is this a bit high?? toward the end of the day 1 of the guppys seemed a bit odd away from the rest

3. day 8 1 guppy is dead at the bottom of the tank all other fish seem fine all tests are 0 apart from nitrate which is 1/3 to 1/2 way up the scale so changed about 20% of the water

4. day 9 another guppy starts swimming funny bad coordination and gennerally doesnt look happy
day 10 said guppy is dead similer to first

5. day 10 all seemns fine all tests r fine although theres some brown crap (algea??) starting to appear in front of the ship

6. day 11 the female guppys tailfin is shredded/wasted iv no idea why or how it happened over 24 hours max

7. day 11 (today) female guppy is dead in the weeds and to my horror an apparantly healthy 1 is dead seemingly stuck in the back/top of filter is it common for fish to get stuck down the side of filters and such???

iv just done all 3 tests and they all show 0 (slightly suprised about nitrate being 0 as theres a fair bit of crap on the gravel and some on the glass and filter

a suprising fact (to a noob like me anyway) is the supposedly less hardy neons have been absiolutely fine no sign of any probs whatsoever (although i noticed 1 is a bit fat tonight)

heres a few pics for clues

general tank layout

is it too crowded? is the filter too big? is it fitted correctly?

heres 1 of a dodgy looking plant that started to die the day after i put it in. shoukld i remove it asap?

heres a better pic of the filter

and finnally a pic of the filter and the little guppy that now hangs around above it is this normal??

all help/advice much appreciated as i feel like a murderer (incompetence is no excuse)

 

[WILDER]

Added to many fish to soon, guppys are not hardy fish and dosn't take much to wipe them out.
Water quality finished them off.
No female guppys the tank to small, you will be overun with fry.

 

[300hp+vr6]

Added to many fish to soon, guppys are not hardy fish and dosn't take much to wipe them out.
Water quality finished them off.
No female guppys the tank to small, you will be overun with fry.

would i be ok getting some tomorow?
would a cory or 2 help to get rid of the algea?
and how many fish is it safe to keep in this tank?

 

[WILDER]

If ammona and nitrite is 0 fine, but best to quarantine new fish.
Corys don't tend ot eat algae much only food at the bottom of the tank.
Not many fish really in a 9 gal.
How many neon tetra's do you have.


That brown algae common in new tank set up, just wipe it off.

http/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/algae.htm

 

[300hp+vr6]

we have 6 neons and 2 guppys atm
what suggestions do you have for other fish we could put in this tank?
we dont have a quarantine tank

 

[WILDER]

I agree with this article neons are small fish, but they are a shoaling fish and really need to be in a bigger tank.
http/www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_howmany.php
Neons are not big waste producers more the room they need.
A shoal of harlequins of six and that's it as that pushing it.

 

[cegha]

Fishless cycling takes more then a week, were talking 3-4 weeks mabye even a little more.

Neon's are not hardy fish, neither are cory's.

 

[300hp+vr6]

Fishless cycling takes more then a week, were talking 3-4 weeks mabye even a little more.

Neon's are not hardy fish, neither are cory's.

well the toxin levels are fine doesnt that mean it is cycled or have i missed something?
what fish could/should i get next?

 

[ming30galon]

in my short two month experience, it seems Zebra Danios is VERY hardy. all my 4 zebra survive my new tank cycle (I didn't know about fishless cycle at the very beginning so started with 4 zebra 2 guppy and three platies. out of those, two platies died within one week and one guppy died 2 months later)

 

[OohFeeshy]

The tank, however, is too small for many 'hardy' species of fish. The tank also appears to be hexagonal, meaning a small surface area and less room so that counts out a lot more. Final stocking could be something like

6 harlequin rasboras
or
1 male or female betta
or
6 neons (but these aren't very hardy)
or
3 male guppies (again, not very hardy)

 

[xoedusk]

What happened was you didn't have enough bacteria to cope with the fish you added. Your tank wasn't quite done cycling. That's good your ammonia was dropping down... but that's when you need to add more ammonia. When doing fishless cycling, try to keep the bacteria alive by having a constant source of food. Do this until ammonia drops from 4 ppm to 0 ppm in 12 hours, with no nitrites too.

 

[300hp+vr6]

What happened was you didn't have enough bacteria to cope with the fish you added. Your tank wasn't quite done cycling. That's good your ammonia was dropping down... but that's when you need to add more ammonia. When doing fishless cycling, try to keep the bacteria alive by having a constant source of food. Do this until ammonia drops from 4 ppm to 0 ppm in 12 hours, with no nitrites too.

i take what your saying but the ammonia was 0 (and stayed 0 ever since)
it was the nitrite that wasnt quite done. i think problem is solved now as the nitrite has stayed 0 since the 2nd day

 

[xoedusk]

That your ammonia was 0 for a while is good - it means you have some ammonia-munching bacteria present. But the tricky part is that any amount of bacteria will, eventually, be able to eat all of the ammonia you have in your tank. But this usually isn't enough bacteria. Put another way, the amount of bacteria you have present after just one round of ammonia-dosing isn't enough to keep your toxic levels down when you eventually add fish. Especially nitrite! This takes so long to build up.

The above is a picture of when my love and I did fishless cycling on our tank. Try and see what going on with the nitrite-eating bacteria. For a long while we had just enough of it to keep our nitrite level constant.

I would also suggest searching Google for better graphs of the cycling process in tanks. Check out the pinned topic here too, and other such guides online.


Hope your cycle goes well! Keep us updated, and we'll get your tank cycled together.

 

[300hp+vr6]

tahst a great graph mate really easy to see exactly whats going on
i now have a 96l (21g?) with 6 neons 2 guppies 3 platies & 2 mollies )what salt do i get for the mollies?) iv been doing daily tests for the past 5 days and all 3 have never budged from 0 (could the plants be getting rid of the nitrate?)
i also got a ph tester yesterday and it reads between approx 7.6-7.7
is that a touch high?