I messed up!

[TropicalNewbiie]

So I think I've messed up...

2 nights ago I got a tank off my dad and brother, a few fish, gravel, heater, pump and air stone off them.
I basically filled the tank and put the fish in. I bought some more guppies yesterday from a pet shop and woke up this morning and 1 guppy has died. Then I saw one of the rummis? Had died and the other I have isn't swimming great and I'm sure will die too.
Is this because I didn't let the tank cycle? All the other fish are alright I have a couple of pregnant guppies so I don't want those to die ?
The gravel was from the tank they came out of so should have a ton of bacteria.
Or can I wishful think that they died through stress of moving homes? ??
Thank you ?

 

[Galvin88]

Did you use a de-chlorinator to remove chlorine from your tap water when filling up the tank?

 

[Utar]

Fish can die for all kinds of reasons, stress, un-cycled tanks, diseases, bullying from other fish, the list goes on. All we as fish keepers can do is take care of our pet fish the best way we can. Three is a long list of does and don'ts in fish keeping. Cycling an aquarium, quarantining, matching fish in a community tank properly so there is no bullying are just a few of the basic steps taken to care for fish.

You could not help but have the fish that came with the tank, but you should have waited until the tank was properly cycled before adding new fish. The fish that came with the tank was already stressed, due to moving the tank and adding water that they were not used to. Stress like this lowers a fish's immune system, making them sick. On top of this new fish will introduce new problems for the already stressed fish living there.

One of the things that are hardly ever talked about is how best to transport fish from our lfs to their new homes. When someone lives within a short drive from the lfs, then this may not be a problem. But when someone lives an hour away or better, then this should be addressed on how best to transport the fish. I live an hour away from the closest place to buy fish, and because of this, I have lost fish even before I got home, finding some already dead in the bag. Neons were really bad about this, but I also lost corys and other types of fish, before I had a chance to get them out of the bags.

To help losing fish on the way home, I started doing this. I purchased a cheap styrofoam ice chest. While buying my fish at the lfs, I made sure the person working there used the largest bags they had, and that did matter whether it was one fish or six. But I never bought more than six at a time. I put these larger bags of fish inside the styrofoam ice chest, taping it shut with duct tape. This really helped keep the fish calm and control the water temp on the long ride home, keeping fish loss down to a minimum.