Please Help...all Fish Are Dying :-(

[Dave T]

They are probably sufferering from ammonia/nitrite poisoning?!

Have you done a big water change? if not do one immediately otherwise you may lose more fish.

We are going to do this tomorrow morning, how much of a change, just 25% or more?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Hi i am very new to all this so not to sure if i should leave a comment
I have been having trouble with some of my fish rising to surface and dwelling there appearing to be taking air
one of the post left for me was saying that it might be advisable to change about 50% of the water and continue this untill
you have reduced the ammonia level to 0

again not to sure if this is of any use

 

[waynelle]

They are probably sufferering from ammonia/nitrite poisoning?!

Have you done a big water change? if not do one immediately otherwise you may lose more fish.

We are going to do this tomorrow morning, how much of a change, just 25% or more?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Hi i am very new to all this so not to sure if i should leave a comment
I have been having trouble with some of my fish rising to surface and dwelling there appearing to be taking air
one of the post left for me was saying that it might be advisable to change about 50% of the water and continue this untill
you have reduced the ammonia level to 0

again not to sure if this is of any use

Thats great, thank you very much.

We'll def do this tomorrow, going to take some water to our LFS tomorrow 1st to check ammonia levels etc, gotta feeling its going to be off the scale but fingers crossed.

Then we will do the water change.


Thanks again

 

[LittleMick]

I have never bought test strips, but with the LIQUID TEST KITS you get all the booklets with colour charts and ittells you how much of each regent to put in the test tubes. Sumple and easy to use.

With the amonia one, you get the colour scale 0 (light green) - 6.1 (dark green/blue), the best level is obviously 0, the dnager level is considered 1.2mg. If you have a level of 1.2 + then there is another chart that you cross reference, Amonia along the bottom with pH at the side, the chart goes from green, through yellow to red. The higher the amonia and higher the pH the more toxic your water is to the fish.

EXAMPLE - When I hadmy amonia problem -

Amonia level = 2.4
pH = 7.6
Cross reference = green, now I assumed this was considered safe so I didn't do a water changer.

1 Day later

Amonia = 3.7
pH = 7.6
Cross reference = yellow, still not toxic but needs lowering

Of coarse this was all when I didn't know any better, that's when I got some advice. I did a 50% water change for 3 days.
Now that I have had my tank for a while and have at least a little expereince I do an immediate water if it gets any higher than 0. Although that doesn't seem to happen these days.
If your test shows in teh red I would go by what Oldman said and do a 70% change.

Also on your water changes, just to make them quicker for each 10 litres you are putting in boil 1 litre, this brings your bucket water to around the same temperature as your tank water. So what I do on my regular maintanence water changes, I fill my 6 buckets, I take out 1 litre and boil it, put it back into the bucket, I do this for all 6 buckets. Then I add the dechlorinater. Then I syphon out the tank water. Just makes the whole process a little quicker.


Mick

 

[waterdrop]

They are probably sufferering from ammonia/nitrite poisoning?!

Have you done a big water change? if not do one immediately otherwise you may lose more fish.

We are going to do this tomorrow morning, how much of a change, just 25% or more?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Hi i am very new to all this so not to sure if i should leave a comment
I have been having trouble with some of my fish rising to surface and dwelling there appearing to be taking air
one of the post left for me was saying that it might be advisable to change about 50% of the water and continue this untill
you have reduced the ammonia level to 0

again not to sure if this is of any use

Yes, this is correct advice. You can repeat large (50-70% for instance) water changes as soon as an hour after the previous one. Always use good technique (use conditioner to remove chlorine/chloramine and rough temperature match.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[waynelle]

We took a sample of our water to our LFS and they tested it, the results were all completely wrong. Ammonia was in the region between 6.0 - 8.0 and the Nitrate was high too so we came straight home and done a 50% water change, added Tap Safe to the water along with some Safe Water which removes harmful ammonia and nitrite. Our LFS told us to repeat this again in 4-5 days then take some water back to the store and test it again. Since doing our water change, all fish seem a lot more active, altho the female fighter looks like it's def on its way out, don't think there's much we can do for her now, not eating or moving but still breathing

Our PH is 7 so that is fine.

I also asked about adding salt to the water for our Molly and she said to add this once the water was sorted and that any fish can tolerate salt as it helps their fins and gills, is this true?

Hopefully this should do the trick.

Thanks.

 

[bushbrother]

I am no expert, but if your ammonia was that high, you would need to do 50% water changes every day from now on, possibly even twice a day. You will also need to test your water every 12 hours to monitor the process of the fish-in cycle which you are no in ... I think anything above 0.25ppm of ammonia or nitrites are really bad for the fish ...

 

[waynelle]

I am no expert, but if your ammonia was that high, you would need to do 50% water changes every day from now on, possibly even twice a day. You will also need to test your water every 12 hours to monitor the process of the fish-in cycle which you are no in ... I think anything above 0.25ppm of ammonia or nitrites are really bad for the fish ...

Well they told us to leave it 4-5 days but we will do one everyday instead then.

Thanks you.

 

[Bugsvile]

Hi waynelle, Just wondered if you picked yourself a test kit up or not, much better for you and the fish in the long run, just so you can if neccesary do an immediate water change rather than waiting till morning.

Hows the femals Betta doing now?

Keeping my fingers crossed

 

[Gustavo]

Ammonia 6 to 8? That's way too high.

 

[waynelle]

We haven't got a test kit yet, looking to buy one off ebay, can anyone recommend a good one?

Unfortunately the female fighter died this morning we were really hoping to save her but she was too ill.

We've done 2 50% water changes, 1 yesterday and we've just done another one so we're going back to our LFS now so they can test it, if its no better then we will do another 50% water change tomorrow.

Thanks

 

[waterdrop]

Ammonia 6 to 8? That's way too high.

Agree. Anytime ammonia or nitrite(NO2) were way up above 1.0, let alone 6 to 8(!), I'd be doing 50-70% gravel-clean-water-changes morning and evening even without knowing what the liquid-based test results were yet. Those kinds of numbers would quickly test which species would die and which could handle extreme poison!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[waynelle]

Ammonia 6 to 8? That's way too high.

Agree. Anytime ammonia or nitrite(NO2) were way up above 1.0, let alone 6 to 8(!), I'd be doing 50-70% gravel-clean-water-changes morning and evening even without knowing what the liquid-based test results were yet. Those kinds of numbers would quickly test which species would die and which could handle extreme poison!

~~waterdrop~~

Everything is fine now, ammonia has drop below 1 which is still a little high...apparently? But we were told its nothing to worry about, so we done another 50% water change to bring it down even more. The female fighter didn't make it but the red honey gourami was fine along with our female molly and 3 neon tetra's.

Hopefully that is the last of that...fingers crossed.

Thanks for all your help, we will keep you posted.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I think we have a mismatch between the evidence ("fish didn't make it") and the statements somebody (LFS?) is making that "its nothing to worry about."

Waynelle, I don't mean to dispute someone far away talking about a situation I'm not there for but its just that week after week, case after case, here in the beginners section we read the tales of newcomers to the hobby who are trying to get started and learn the basic informaton and they turn to the LFS (or others sometimes) and just receive completely wrong info. Sometimes its just people who never knew themselves but like to sound confident in what they say and sometimes its just the rehash of the mismatch between the retail pet shop business model that doesn't expect consumers to understand or be patient to begin with, so why try to give them information that might result in fewer sales anyway?

Just my 2cents,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[waynelle]

Yes, I think we have a mismatch between the evidence ("fish didn't make it") and the statements somebody (LFS?) is making that "its nothing to worry about."

Waynelle, I don't mean to dispute someone far away talking about a situation I'm not there for but its just that week after week, case after case, here in the beginners section we read the tales of newcomers to the hobby who are trying to get started and learn the basic informaton and they turn to the LFS (or others sometimes) and just receive completely wrong info. Sometimes its just people who never knew themselves but like to sound confident in what they say and sometimes its just the rehash of the mismatch between the retail pet shop business model that doesn't expect consumers to understand or be patient to begin with, so why try to give them information that might result in fewer sales anyway?

Just my 2cents,
~~waterdrop~~

I totally agree.

We have in fact changed our LFS, I'm sure many people could guess which store we were using...??!!

The other shop we have started to use done a water test and the reading was still high, 1.2 - 2.0 so we are going to do 3 50% water changes today as advised by ''curiosity'' on the tropical discussion forum. Hopefully this works.

Thankfully all our remaining fish are very happy and active so they seem to have adapted to the level of ammonia, we don't want to loose anymore. I just hope that the water hasn't done any damage to their fins or gills.

The LFS also told us NOT to change any of the media in the filter, because even if the Neon has decomposed a little in the filter, they are not big enough to do much damage and it can be rectified without replacing everything by simple water changes and cleaning the media in tank water.

We have bought new carbon and added that to the tank as we took it out a couple of weeks ago but apparently that may help break down the ammonia...??!

 

[waterdrop]

Good to hear about your decision to do 3 50% changes! Your thinking is now going in the right direction. When you know you have a tank in this kind of situation its much better once you wrap your head around the idea that water changes are not really something you do in -response- to visiting the LFS and getting a bad test reading. They are something you do proactively based on your ability to cram them in to your schedule. Meanwhile, the urgency of getting your own good test kit becomes self-evident. It will be the tool that may free you up from so many water changes!

With a good liquid test kit, you can be (as my speech always goes, lol) a detective and work on figuring out what percentage and frequency of water changes will allow your water to stay below 0.25ppm of either ammonia or nitrite(NO2) until you can next get home to test and potentially change water.. again! Its that test coming up as either above or below 0.25ppm that's the major telling point. If its higher, then you need to change more water or more frequently or both. If its lower then you may be able to back off of the mania a little.. its not that hard to get the feel after some days of it.

Meanwhile, all this time, the ammonia (even when the test kits read zero ppm, there's enough ammonia flowing to fee the bacteria of course) will be feeding the growth of the two beneficial species you need growing in the biomedia inside that filter and eventually they will take over for you and you won't have to "manually" be the filter for your fish!

~~waterdrop~~