New to freshwater

[Sdeluca10]

little background on myself. I’ve had fishing tanks since I was 10 years old. Started with simple freshwater fish, had Oscar’s, had piranhas, and eventually transitioned to saltwater.
I had fish only with live rock, I’ve had very successful reef keeping, breed clownfish and dwarf seahorses, even kept small sharks.
A couple years ago I had the disease “velvet” completely ruin my tank killing nearly everything. Well, after that I was so devastated and frankly didn’t have the finances to start fresh with the prices of saltwater.
After some time to reflect I decided to go back to where I started in the beginning and try out freshwater. I completely forgot how to care for freshwater as it had been so long. I got a lot of advice from LFS and I set up an African cichlid tank. It’s a 125 gallon tank running with a 60 gallon sump. Everything was going well, I gradually added fish for about a year. Then one day I came home to 2 dead fish.
I attributed it to territoriality. Until the next day there was 2 more dead. I did a water change. Nitrates we’re a little elevated but nothing outrageous. And within 2 weeks I lost 15-20 fish.
This was about 2-3 months ago. I did a 50% water change. Currently the tank has 2 parrot fish, 3 tin foil barbs 2 plecos, and 2 cichlids remain.
Due to the price of even cichlids I’m skeptical of going that route again, even tho I do love the colors of them.
I was contemplating getting rid of the 2 remaining cichlids, keeping the rest of the fish and making go a different route. Maybe some red tail sharks, bala sharks, gouramis, neon fish ect ect. Just load with a bunch of smaller much more inexpensive fish.
Or maybe go the route of a couple Oscar’s, jack dempsys, other more aggressive fish.
Any in-site or opinions are ect are encouraged.
Thank you.

 

[Morganna]

I think a great place to start would be to review your water parameters, particularly the GH, KH, and PH. See if they match what your fish require. When you say that the nitrates were a "little high", how high exactly? Some exact numbers will be appreciated.
The dead fish. Did you notice anything to have caused concern before they died? Were they fighting each other to the point that the losing fish died?
I hope this is resolved soon for you and your fishes sake.
-Morganna

 

[Sdeluca10]

I think a great place to start would be to review your water parameters, particularly the GH, KH, and PH. See if they match what your fish require. When you say that the nitrates were a "little high", how high exactly? Some exact numbers will be appreciated.
The dead fish. Did you notice anything to have caused concern before they died? Were they fighting each other to the point that the losing fish died?
I hope this is resolved soon for you and your fishes sake.
-Morganna

The nitrates were at like 30-40. Don’t get me wrong, that’s high, and that was after I tested after a couple fish had already died in there. I never saw any signs of excessive aggression. I did in a couple cases see a fish starting to swim Funny, and then only hours later it turned up dead. The fish became flush in color, never noticed any ick spots or anything… idk, it was very strange to me what was happening.
However, as I said, this was months ago. The parameters of the water are perfect now. The fish in there are happy and healthy. I was kinda just looking for opinions on which path to take going forward. What fish do you all like to keep.

 

[lnsaneM]

welccome

 

[emeraldking]

Welcome to our forum...
Hope the water parameters will remain stable from now on...