My Fish are dying!!!

[loafybones]

Someone please help!! I have had my tank for about 3 months. It is 24"x12"x15". I had 7 zebra Danios (One of which has croaked it but I think that is unrelated) 2 clown plecos (both ok) 4 blue rams (all ok) 2 clown loaches (both gone) 2 green swordtails (both gone) 2 flying foxes (both ok) 2 upside down cats (both ok) and 2 black angels (one died). When I got the angels home after buying them , I noticed that one had a bit of white spot so I got a 5 day treatment to get rid of it. that was 3 days ago and since then I have had 5 casualties! I have tested the water and PH is 7.5, amonia is between 0 and 0.6, nitrate is 10 and nitrite is 0.3 ( this is a hagen master test kit) the little book says that these are all safe levels. I asked the woman in the fish shop about if white spot could kill the fish and she said only if it is really bad, which it wasn't so I really don't understand what the problem is. can anyone help??

 

[Joviella]

You need to get your ammonia and nitrite levels down to 0ppm. This is the only "safe" level of both of these.Your nitrate is fine at 10ppm.
Did you cycle your tank before adding fish?

 

[loafybones]

yes. When we first set the tank up, we added 5 zebra danios. We used Nutrafin cycle and the cycle completed in about 4 weeks but we left it another week after that before adding the plecs. after that we have added 1 new species per week except last week when we got the angels, swordtails and flying foxes. Do you think we have added too many fish too fast? And how would you suggest I get my amonia etc to 0ppm? They are constant at these levels.

 

[Joviella]

Adding too many fish at once could well have caused a mini-cycle. I would advise water changes to try and keep your levels of ammonia and nitrite down......as I said before,you need to get them down to 0ppm.
Also, I would suggest not adding any replacement fish for a while. Hope this helps.

 

[7chanaa]

do a 25% water change every day. den test the water every week???
dat should help

 

[sinistral]

I'd suggest that your tank was overstocked. By my calculations it's an 18 US gallon tank. This is too small for the fish that you had in there at one time, and too small to house angels and clown loaches regardless of what other fish you may have (angels do better with a taller tank, and clown loaches will eventually outgrow the tank).

As chali noted it might have been helpful to chart your ammonia/nitrites while you were adding fish. However, overcrowding itself can be stressful, and if that, elevated nitrogen levels, and the introduction of a disease and its treatment were combined, these factors might explain your fish losses

You might consider returning some of the fish you have, and keep up with the water changes as chali and 7chanaa suggest. Good luck, HTH~