High Ammonia, Fish Dying, Fairly New Tank And Novice - Help! :(

[TwoTankAmin]

Taurus can you find any of the three starters I listed?  Can we find somebody with media to send you? Can we fish somebody who might take some of the fish for you?
 
You have only one other option, and it will also slow the cycle. Larger doses of dechlors like prime or amquel+ which will detox ammonia and nitrite. They will also make testing very hard as they can mess up readings.
 
Adding one of the bacterial products I suggested would help more and faster. Adding media from another cycled tanks would too,
 
Yes repeated big water changes will stress fish. But you have little choice until you can take a different course of action.

 

[Taurus]

But then why not just sell me 10 fish week 1? Why make me wait 4 weeks and test my water etc. It really appeared that they cared for the welfare of the fish.

I was just reading through the beginner info and tips pages I was linked to and it says never do a big change rather do 15% daily. I'm guessing this advice is different because my tank is in a really bad way.

The major water change will have to wait until morning now. Hope all my fish survive the night. Will ask my neighbour if he can take any of them into his tank temporarily or maybe I should ask about doing that hanging sock of his gravel thingy?

 

[Taurus]

twotankamin...I have contacted someone off the list to ask for filter media. Will ask my neighbour and friend about rehoming fish.

From what I've read around now I understand I'm looking at an eventual MAXIMUM of 10 small fish. Where they got the number 20 from at the LFS I will never know.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Taurus- it is not your fault. We tend to assume the people selling an item should know about it. With fish stores this is too often not the case.
 
But also bear in mind that those places are there to make money for the owners. So they are motivated to hold down costs and maximize sales. So they are happy to sell you folks more than they need and things they really don't. Fish stores are not the only ones guilty of this.
 
If you think about it for a minute, what I suggested/explained was not rocket science just a few simple basic facts. Stores could tell you the same thing. Unfortunately, very few do. On the other hand, you found here, so hopefully you will get things sorted out.

 

[Taurus]

So I woke up at 2:30am after having bad fishy dreams and decided to check on them. Neon lost almost all colour, 1 ram looking dull, many fish listless and not caring to move, two gasping at the surface.
So I stuck two fingers up at the LFS and did a 90% change. It went well but phew how do you guys do that with larger tanks?

Tested and ammonia is currently zero other test kit looked fine, temp fine so fish went back in. I watched them for a while and they seemed ok hope they are still ok when I check again in a couple hours.

Its perfectly normal to do 90% changes at 2:30am right? /

Going to ask my neighbour and friend about rehoming a few. Which of my precious fish that I've grown attached to can I keep for now? And which can I have back ultimately. My other half is particularly attached to the Killi. I'm most attached to the Siamese fighter....and the rams...and maybe the Gouramis.

Hope I've done right by them now. I'm guessing I do both test kits daily for a while and add stability daily until I can get some donor bacteria?

 

[Taurus]

You'll be pleased to know the tank is a lot happier place to be this morning. All the fish have perked up completely
Thank you all so much for your help. I understand I'm not out the reeds just yet but hopefully I can learn some lessons and maintain a healthy situation.

 

[Taurus]

So after the 90% change, one of the platys got dropsy I think and died. So no deaths for 5 days now and I've been adding prime and stability every day. The man at the LFS got cross with me saying the 90% change was the wrong thing to do and now the bacteria won't grow.
Been testing ammonia and 6 in 1 every day and ammonia is steadily rising. No sign of nitrites and nitrates steady at 25. Does that mean the bacteria are working? Ammonia is now up to 6 but, on theory, the prime should have been binding new ammonia every day.
...but the other platy is doing white stringy stress poos again and the killi is behaving strangely and hiding.
Should I be changing the water again? If so, how much?

Also I tried to get some donor substrate or rehome some fish, but its not happening. Hopefully the tank can just about hold the 9 I have left.

I'm thinking I should've left fish keeping to the experts

 

[TwoTankAmin]

To some extent he is correct. Stability contains no live bacteria, it contains spores which take about a day to "hatch" out into live bacteria. I think, to some extent, adding Stability and doing a water change is removing it.
 
For my money Stability is one of the weaker choices in bacteria products, but it seems to help some folks enough for me to think it is better than other worse options. But I will always state it is best to get live nitrifiers rather than heterotrophic baterial spores that produce bacteria I doubt will be in your tank down the road handling the nitrification work.
 
Finally, adding a lot of Prime will slow the cycle and also make test results hard to trust.
 
You have a world or hurt in nitrites coming down the pike. Please try to find either Dr. Tim's One and Only or Tetra Safe Start. Get more than what your tank size needs, do a huge water change, as big as you can, do two in a row if needed to get the water "clean". Add the bacteria and wait a day minimum. Change no water til then. Turn the lights off too.

 

[Taurus]

I was using stress Zune but they said stability was better. Can't get live stuff.

So what do I do for the best?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Stability is better than nothing, but not quite as fast initially. It wont hurt anything.

 

[Taurus]

My question wasn't about whether stress Zyme vs stability was better...it was about how much water to change and how often.

Anyway, rightly or wrongly I've decided to do a 20% change every day or every other day. Last water change I did I could swear the fish were following the jug of fresh water round trying to get under the stream no matter how hard I tried to avoid them!

 

[coolie]

With regard to your earlier question as to why the shops get it wrong, well my LFS has a sign above some tanks that says "you need to set your tank up for 3 days before you buy your fish". So I think they have a poor knowledge compared to experts on sites like this, or at best they have a vague and out dated if not extremely poor knowledge.
 
At the same time, it is obvious that any shop when asked about the solution to a problem, is going to point you to their stock for the answer.