Losing Fish After Fish =[

[xamy_valox]

Hi there,
I am hoping someone here can help me as I am at my wits end. Since upgrading my tank from a 70 litre to a 125 I have had nothing but deaths. At first I was putting it down to old age, as the majority of the fish that were dying were from my very first Fluval Edge tank and so were 3-4 years old. However it has continued and I am so fed up of losing poor fish.
Just in the last few weeks I have lost a honey gourami, cherry barb, a baby Angel, a loach, a panda cory and a swordtail. Over the time I have had this tank all I have had is bad luck.
I do weekly water changes of at least 20%. Because of all the deaths I did a larger one yesterday, probably 40%, yet when I have checked my stats today I have slight ammonia (0.25) and no nitrates?
I have never really had any troubles with my water stats, so I dont think it can all boil down to that, this seems to be a recent thing.
This has been the only tank in which I have used sand, both of my other ones were gravel based. Would this have any implications? Such as harbouring bad bacteria or toxins? Some of the sand that is up against the glass has turned a greenish colour, but I try to move it about so that too much algae doesnt grow on it.
I use API Stress Coat as a dechlorinator and yesterday added a dose of white spot treatment, as I just cant nail what is wrong.

Does anyone have any idea what I could be doing wrong?
If you need any extra info just ask, I just didnt really know what to put other than HELP!
Amy xx

 

[-FighterFishh]

How long has the filter been running? Did you seed it with old media from your previous filter?

And your water stats seem like mine! It's really strange we don't get any nitrates, but I'm just putting it down to the fact my tanks are heavily planted

Oh, and how long ago did you move the fish? Could the stress of moving only just have set in?

 

[TrainRek77]

There's a template in the emergency section that, if you fill out and re-post, will help us help you. Did you check your ammonia before the water change?

 

[xamy_valox]

I had the tank off my brother, and he had previously had it running for about 3 years ish? I had his mature media and have used that ever since, I swapped with him you see, I wanted to upgrade and he wanted to downgrade.
My tank is also fairly heavily planted, though I have normally had around 5.0 of nitrates.
The fish have been in this tank for probably 5 months (my original ones anyway) so i don't think it could be down to stress any longer.
I didn't check my ammonia levels right before changing the water but 2 days before hand it was at 0! I'll try and find that template and re-post

 

[xamy_valox]

Ok, so going on the template:

Ammonia: 0.25
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0
Don't ever test PH or hardiness, but when I did test PH a few months ago it was around 6.8

Fish include:

1 Baby Angel
1 Honey Gourami
3 Neon Tetras
7 Harlequin Rasboras
8 Platinum Tetras
4 Cherry Barbs
3 Platy's
6 Corydora

Looks like strange numbers due to recent deaths =\

I change my water by roughly 20-25% every sunday and use API Stress Coat as a dechlorinator and a liquid plat fertiliser that I can't remember the name of as I finished it off a few weeks ago.
Its a 125 litre tank and the last fish I added were 2 swordtails and 2 Honey Gouramis, both swordtails have died and 1 honey gourami.

 

[zuulan]

Hi, you shouldn't have any ammonia in your tank so you do need to sort that. It's unlikely you'll have absolutely Zero readings on your nitrates & natrates, so are you sure your following the test kit instructions 100% correctly?

If so, it sounds like your filter isn't working at all in terms of bacteria breaking down your ammonia. How long was the filter out of action while you swapped tanks with your bro? I'm not sure how fast bacteria starts to die if it doesn't have a steam of water flowing thru the filter. I think after a few hours they will start to die quickly. Can anyone verify this?

How are your fish before they die? How do they swim, look and act? Any signs of any growths, spots, fungus etc?

 

[xamy_valox]

Yep, have never had a problem reading the colours of the tests. I use the API Masterkit, and have done another reading in the last half an hour. Ammonia is down to 0 and nitrates are back up to almost 5, just a little under.

I'd say the filter was out of action for a good few hours, whilst I travelled back from my brothers and cleaned/scaped the tank. However it was kept in my previous tank water to ensure it didn't dry out. But my readings were fine and have been all the while until the other day, so I can't imagine my bacteria is wrong? Surely this would have been picked up on on previous water stay readings?

Some of the fish I have just found dead, with absolutely no irregular behaviour or signs they are on their way out. Others have gone a bit quiet and stayed in a corner, to be found a few hours later or the next day dead. There are no physical signs (I.e sores, scabs, mucus, lesions etc) and none have swam irratically or strangely.

 

[TrainRek77]

That's really odd. None of the information here seems to give any idea what could be causing it. To me, that seems like a lot of fish in a little tank. Maybe your filter couldn't keep up.

 

[FishFanatic04]

DId you rinse the new tank? Or any new equipment? Maybe something was introduced to the water during the change?

 

[Man of fish]

The bacteria in the filter die at a rate of 10-12% every hour?? Or was it every 24 hours So you may only have about have of your media or you may have 97% of it. I think it was per hour but I can't remember.

 

[IcQb]

Maybe something from the new tank is leeching toxins into the water?

Is your electrical equipment functioning ok? is your heater still waterproof (i electrocuted my fish once )?
Is it working regularly? no temp spikes? few degrees up and down in hours could do the trick

EDIT: did you by accident transfer your fish from the 70l tank to a bucket before the 125l tank?
maybe you used a bucket previously used for cleaning the floor/house (maybe it still contained bleach)?
(not saying you're an idiot, just saying i make honest mistakes as well )

Was it a new tank? any previous owners using it as a salt water tank?


i haven't got a clue what else it could be.

 

[xamy_valox]

As far as I can see all my electrical equipment is working fine. The heater pings on as soon as the temperature apparently drops and I haven't noticed any temperature spikes.

I did put my fish in a bucket whilst I was driving my tank to my brothers and doing the switchover, however this bucket was bought specifically for this to happen and was swilled out with water before hand.

The tank was from my brother as previously stated, though he bought it brand new so it has only had him as a previous owner and her kept tropical fish in it.

=[ I just don't understand what I am doing wrong!

 

[IcQb]

I just now read you have cory's

Did you put your fish together with the corydora's during the trip?
(Some) Cory's are known to secrete toxins during stress. It could be all your fish are dropping like flies because of the toxins.

I never ever transport cory's with other fish. even in the LFS I ask to put them in separate bags...

Keep doing regular water changes untill your fish are ok again, if it's toxins it will reduce any left-over secreted toxins from the cory's!

It's like the only thing i can imagine

 

[Bignose]

The bacteria in the filter die at a rate of 10-12% every hour?? Or was it every 24 hours So you may only have about have of your media or you may have 97% of it. I think it was per hour but I can't remember.

The bacteria in our filters are very slow compared to most bacteria. They grow very slowly, and die very slowly. While the average bacteria colony, given plenty of resources, will grow and die in a matter of hours, the ammonia and nitrite oxidizing bacteria fishtanks use need days. In short, assuming you keep the media wet, but don't give it any ammonia, figure around 10% die off per day. And, also figure around doubling per day once it is given food again.

 

[xamy_valox]

I didn't 'transport' as such? Or do you mean, moving from the 70 litre to the bucket, the from the bucket to the 125 litre? If so then yes they were all kept together, I didn't realise that they did that!
But surely after 5 months they couldn't still be secreting? Or surely I would have cleaned it all out since then??

The only other thing that has just come to mind as I have fed the little critters again is the actual food. I feed a mixture of frozen food (Brine Shrimp, Blood Worm, Daphnia) but I also feed flake and algae wafers for the once loach and my cory's. I had been feeding the fish a lot more flake that usual of late as sadly my sister passed away 3 weeks ago and to be quite honest the fish were the last thing on my mind so I took the easy option of dropping some flake in the tank rather than remembering to defrost the frozen stuff.

I didn't know if maybe this could have had something to do with it? I have only been feeding them frozen things for the last few days and so far (touch wood) I've had no more deaths. Looking at the packet of Hikari algae wafers swell, the best before says 2010.12, is this December 2010? And would this be an indication? I know it obviously has a sell by date for a reason but I thought with it being dried it may not mean so much? I have only just noticed the date as I was looking through the flake etc to see if it had some correlation and have now thrown the packet away =/