Newly Cycled Tank And Fish Didn't Survive :(

[tna2327]

So long story short...I spent a good 2 months testing the water every day until the cycle was finally complete...waited a week while the 12 hour testing was going on and it finished with great results. However our first trip to the LPS was fun and we bought 3 glofish and a small pleco. It is a 10 gallon tank and yes I know the pleco will out grow it but that was the reason I was going to use to purchase a nice big tank!! Anyways...the pleco and the 3 glofish looked very happy in their new home after i PROPERLY transferred them to the new tank. However I woke up the next day to the pleco passed and one of the glofish showing signs of weakness. 1 by 1 the other 2 went. Sorry for the bad grammar but im in a hurry but wanted to post this before i left to maybe start getting some feedback. I then tested the tank to see if anything was wrong...0.0 Am / 0.0 Ni/ 25 Na and the pH was 7.2 with a water temp of 76/78 F. After letting the tank sit for a day we went ahead and purchased just 3 cardinal tetras and 3 glofish since they were on sale at the LPS and they have lasted much longer this time around however all of the tetras passed fairly quickly within 2 days and 1 of the glofish already passed Again checked the water and everything seems in order...did a water change and vacuumed the gravel before adding these fish as well...I am clueless and can see why people get frustrated and end up giving the hobby up but I refuse because this is something I want to do for the rest of my life. Its so relaxing to come home and just watch the fish in a nice calm atmosphere. Anyways...please help any help is appreciated and I would love to keep these last 2 glofish alive!

-Tim

 

[Sami9999]

Sorry to hear about your fish loss. First off even a single goldfish will very quickly outgrow a 10 gallon tank. Goldfish are very messy and have a large bioload. They are also cold water fish and 76/78 is too warm for them. Depending on what kind of goldfish you bought they could have been sick or weak. Goldfish are very popular and are not always kept in the best conditions. Especially feeder/comets. Also tetras do best in a tank that has been running for at least six months. I do not know if any of this is why your fish died but thought it may be helpful.

 

[Assaye]

Sami, there are no goldfish. The OP said glofish, which are a specialist variant of the zebra danio that are avaliable in the USA.

Tna2327, sorry for your losses. Unfortunately many retailers don't carry healthy stock and may not treat them right while in the shop (not fed properly, too many fish per tank, not testing water, etc). All sorts of things can happen to fish before you buy them and sometimes being bought and moved to a new home is all that it takes to kill them off.

It could also be that the water they came from was very different to yours, so the change may have harmed them. Perhaps check the pH and hardness of the suppliers water so you know what acclimation approach to take?

What method did you use to acclimate them to your tank?

The pleco will get very, very big. Not "lets get a lovely 30 gallon tank" big but "oh hell, we need to find room for a 5-6 foot tank" big (perhaps bigger). A 10 gallon is very, very likely to cause permanent growth damage. Please do not replace this fish with another pleco. There are no species of pleco suitable for a 10 gallon tank. If you would like a sucker-mouth catfish, consider a group of otocinclus. These prefer mature tanks as they are fairly delicate and often malnourished when purchased.

If you lose the glofish, remember to keep the bacteria fed in the tank with some fish-food or ammonia until you get more fish.

 

[Sami9999]

Sami, there are no goldfish. The OP said glofish, which are a specialist variant of the zebra danio that are avaliable in the USA.

oops my bad...guess I shouldn't read while my 10 year old is whining about homework...

 

[hillmar77]

Yeah LFS stock is always iffy at best on quality. I'm currently actually getting my fishes for my new tank from local breeders. And when I do buy LFS stock, I usually wait a week after the new shipment before picking the fish up. Or you can buy right before they get there new shipment as the fishes been in the tanks a little longer.

 

[waterdrop]

This is an important query and possibly somewhat difficult for us to approach. Most of the time when our members are patient enough to take the collective advice here and willing to put the energy in to their tank, the result is indeed the simple reward that tna is seeking. I'm sympathetic that this result would be very frustrating!

I'm not the best diagnostician out here but the one direction I see would be what Assaye mentioned, to seek a simple jar of water from your LFS and to run liquid based hardness and pH tests on it (and usually smart to run ones on your tank water side by side with this just so you know you are using the test reagents at the same time.) See if you detect any large difference in any of these 3 measures.

Now that partly assumes this LFS is your only source or the one you've chosen and of course there may be others or shipped fish to think about. We're all looking at the source of fish for the most part but I wonder if there are any other possibilities we are overlooking.. the only other thing I can think of is that virtually all the fish mentioned are in some ways not ones I think of as extremely familiar to beginners or in some cases maybe not ones I personally would introduce early but smaller tanks like 10Gs present a problem as you don't get freebie slots for test fish.. each of the few fish you can have is pretty important to you in other words.

Gosh, I wish I were of more help...
~~waterdrop~~
edit: spelling

 

[tna2327]

Sami, there are no goldfish. The OP said glofish, which are a specialist variant of the zebra danio that are avaliable in the USA.

Tna2327, sorry for your losses. Unfortunately many retailers don't carry healthy stock and may not treat them right while in the shop (not fed properly, too many fish per tank, not testing water, etc). All sorts of things can happen to fish before you buy them and sometimes being bought and moved to a new home is all that it takes to kill them off.

It could also be that the water they came from was very different to yours, so the change may have harmed them. Perhaps check the pH and hardness of the suppliers water so you know what acclimation approach to take?

What method did you use to acclimate them to your tank?

The pleco will get very, very big. Not "lets get a lovely 30 gallon tank" big but "oh hell, we need to find room for a 5-6 foot tank" big (perhaps bigger). A 10 gallon is very, very likely to cause permanent growth damage. Please do not replace this fish with another pleco. There are no species of pleco suitable for a 10 gallon tank. If you would like a sucker-mouth catfish, consider a group of otocinclus. These prefer mature tanks as they are fairly delicate and often malnourished when purchased.

If you lose the glofish, remember to keep the bacteria fed in the tank with some fish-food or ammonia until you get more fish.

I agree about the pleco and will not be replacing him until a larger 100+ gallon tank is being used. I actually went over to a friends house who holds a 125 Gallon tank and he had a pleco which was probably the size of a 10 gallon tank! I was like WHOA! He also mentioned he grew fast...the only reason I had bought one is because they are my favorite fish since being a kid and just never knew that they got that big!

The way that I acclimated the fish to the tank was I first took the bag they were in and sat it in the tank for 30 minutes to allow adjustment to the tank. I them opened the bag (folded the top down) continued to let float and added about a 1/4 cup of the tank water into the bag every 15 minutes for about an hour. I then took a shrimp net or any net for that matter, just the shrimp net fits into the bag and transferred them into the tank.

Yeah LFS stock is always iffy at best on quality. I'm currently actually getting my fishes for my new tank from local breeders. And when I do buy LFS stock, I usually wait a week after the new shipment before picking the fish up. Or you can buy right before they get there new shipment as the fishes been in the tanks a little longer.

Thanks, I will take this into consideration.

This is an important query and possibly somewhat difficult for us to approach. Most of the time when our members are patient enough to take the collective advice here and willing to put the energy in to their tank, the result is indeed the simple rewards that tna is seeking. I'm sypathetic that this result would be very frustrating!

I'm not the best diagnostician out here but the one direction I see would be what Assaye mentioned, to seek a simple jar of water from your LFS and to run liquid based hardness and pH tests on it (and usually smart to run ones on your tank water side by side with this just so you know you are using the test reagents at the same time.) See if you detect any large difference in any of these 3 measures.

Now that partly assumes this LFS is your only source or the one you've chosen and of course there may be others or shipped fish to think about. We're all looking at the source of fish for the most part but I wonder if there are any other possibilities we are overlooking.. the only other thing I can think of is that virtually all the fish mentioned are in some ways not ones I think of as extremely familiar to beginners or in some cases maybe not ones I personally would introduce early but smaller tanks like 10Gs present a problem as you don't get freebie slots for test fish.. each of the few fish you can have is pretty important to you in other words.

Gosh, I wish I were of more help...
~~waterdrop~~

You are always a big help WD The next time I goto the LFS I will go ahead and ask them for a sample of their water.

Now my question to you guys. When you see a sale on certain fish at the LFS...what does that mean to you? Because about a week after I bought my cardinal tetras, they decided to put them on sale from $3.99 to $1.00!!! I was so mad but at the same time was thinking wait a minute...why so cheap? Could this because they know the fish won't last, maybe sick or infected? A new shipment coming in? Or am I just looking to far into this and the LFS is just having a sale?

-Thanks and yes WD I am not giving up...this is something I want to do now and for a long time to come!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

entirely possible that the sale is because they know the fish are dodgy.

the advice about checking the water stats of your LFS is good, it may be that the fish need a more careful acclimatisation to the new conditions. you can always drip acclimatise fish if there is a big change in conditions or they are sensitive breeds, do a quick search on this forum and you'll find a method for it.

it's wise to carefully survey the fish shop before you buy fish, look in all the tanks and see how healthy the fish look, a few tell tale signs are below

- fish sitting on the bottom of the tank floor (obviously not fish like plecs that sit there naturally)
- fish gasping for air at the top of the tank
- fish rubbing against ornaments
- white spots on fish
- red or white edges to the fishes fins
- hollow or sunken looking bellys
- lack of colour

ask the fish shop how long they quarantine fish for, when they get new arrivals they should be quarantined before going on general sale, it's good practice for the shop to do this for a week or so. some shops don't do it at all, some just do a day or so. as someone suggested above if you only buy fish that have been in the shop a few weeks they should be fairly strong (assuming of course they're not already showing signs of disease).

also look if there are any dead fish in any of their tanks, it is normal for odd fish to die in a fish shop as conditions are not ideal even in the best run fish shops however if there are a lot of dead fish it's cause for concern. if you find any then point them out to the shop assistant and watch what they do. good practice is to immediately net the dead fish out, inspect the body for signs of disease, inspect the rest of the tank for signs of diseases, mark the tank up with fish not for sale and possibly add medication (if needed).

any new shop i always do the above and only buy fish if i am happy with the quality and response of the staff. i usually visit on a number of occasions before buying fish as well so i'll see what they are like on a busy weekend and also a more quiet day.

near where i used to live there was a fish shop with an excellent range of stock, lots of rare and unusual species, they just didn't know how to look after them though and the fish were always ill. i once was tempted by the species of fish it was and bought some ignoring the reputation of the shop, didn't quarantine the fish before adding them and got stuck with a disease that wiped out half my tank in a week or so and that didn't respond to any medications. once bitten twice shy i guess but i'm always very careful where i buy my fish from.

 

[tna2327]

Awesome response Miss Wiggle. Thank you!

 

[tna2327]

just wanted to give a bit of an update...I did save the 2 glofish...maybe they just werent sick to begin with...since then I added 4 zebra danios and they are doing great! However I think the trick might be that I found a better LFS then petsmart... I found a place that is actually dedicated to marine life thats a little further drive but well worth the knowledge of the staff as well as the quality of the fish...not to mention their selection is MUCH bigger! Going to add some neon tetras probably 4 to call it a tank and hopefully they will all survive...they are all doing well right now!

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

The six danios you have are going to reach ~5cm each as adults, all being well. For a 10g tank, especially if that is a 10 US gallon, you are fully stocked now... Before you buy those Neon Tetras or any other fish.

Personally, I hope you will feel the urge to buy a new tank in the next six months, that is at least 3-feet long but ideally 4. Why? Well Danios species are very active fish for such a relatively small size and so are an exception to the general guidelines of what size fish thrive in a certain length tank.

Another thing worth mentioning is that both Neon and Cardinal Tetras have heavy odds stacked against them if introduced to tanks that are less than six months mature, despite the myths and the sales hype given by fish store staff, even then it pays to ensure that the stock for sale have been settled into the store tank for at least two weeks.