All but 3 died!!!

MeganLarson

Okay, hi, I'm glad I found a forum where I can ask about this. My husband and I have a 30 gallon tank that we've had for 4 years or so. We keep it between 76 and 78. I wasn't very good about cleaning the tank regularly (so bad!!), like every month (I know, terrible!). We've moved from place to place with 6 fish (catfish, gourami, hatchet fish and 3 blackskirt tetras) and they've always been fine for those 4 years, even with resetting up the tank, etc.

Our plastic plants were quite trashed this last move, so I replaced them with new plastic plants. I soaked them overnight in treated water (used Aquasafe) and then washed them again in just water. I also bought a two new centerpieces. One of them smelled REALLY weird after soaking overnight, almost like paint thinner or something, so I didn't use it. The plants smelled a bit like that thing, so I rinsed everything like I said before I put them into the tank. My fish were all fine.

Then, a week later, my husband and I decided to get some more fish. All the fish at the store looked fine. We bought 3 different types of tetras (blue tinted fins and orange colored), 2 tiger barbs, and a plecosomething (the dark kind that cleans the tank). We floated the bags for 20 minutes before releasing the fish. We did put the water from the bags into the tank. (bad???)
Yesterday, day 4 after the new fish, several fish were dead. Today, day 5 after new fish, all but 3 are dead: the survivors are the catfish (although he's swimming weird), the plecocleaning guy, and a gourami who is not looking well.
The dead fish had cloudy eyes, cloudy skin, and tattered fins. I debated taking all the corpses back to the store and demanding my money back, but I can't find the receipt (did I mention we just moved??). We're mostly upset about the deaths of our old fish that have survived our frequent moves.

I am planning to change out as much of the water as possible, rinse all of the plants again, and wait a couple of weeks to see if anyone else dies. Any other suggestions?

MeganLarson

Now it's just the catfish and the plecoguy.

Sniperelite8243

do a water change asap,

sounds like fin rot or some bacterial or fungal desease you recieved from the new fish. try a combo of melifix and primafix if you want to. all natral, no side effects and they treat all what it sounds to me what your tank has. heres a link to the meds.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...m?pcatid=11269

or was the catfish aggresive towards the other fish. i had 2 catfish and they slaughtered all my gouramis, got rid of them right away to my lfs. they put them in with other cats and they did fine. or the pleco. were you feeding him algea wafers or some sort of food like that. they will sick and sometimes kill other fish because the are starving.

could you give us your water params please,

mainly the nitrites, nitrates, and ammonia. because i think this might also be a BIG problem. when you keep seting up the tank it upsets the bacterial nature. and when you added more fish that ment the toxic chemicals would build up alot faster and your fish would get ammonia, nitrite, or nitrae poisoning because when you reset your tank it is now uncapable of taking out 2 of those deadly toxins. nitrates yyou can only take out by waterchanges.

the cloudy eyes i would assume because of the not cycled tank. buit the tattered fins i would think it would be because of an aggreasive fish towards the others, particuly the new ones. personaly im thinking pleco because he is the last new fish swimming.

Hope this helps.

MeganLarson

Thanks so much for your help.

Now all that's left is the pleco. I didn't put an algae wafer in there for him--I'd left a bit of algae on the sides of the tank, just didn't scrub it all off with my fish sponge so he'd have some food.

I'll change out the water and use what you suggested. How to I check the nitrates?? I'm also going to let it run for quite a while before I get any more fish. I'll also only get a couple at a time.

Anyway, the catfish was aggressive but he wasn't the one who killed everyone because like I said he was living with a bunch of those fish for a while and there were not any problems. When we first got him we had zebra danios in there and they became his daily $1 a pop lunch.

The tiger barbs seemed to be going at it all the time, so they could have tattered some of the fins. Now that I think about it, the older fish (who were first to die) didn't have the tattered fins.

Sigh.

I guess since I'm starting over I can get some mollies this go around. I couldn't before because of the catfish.

Again, thanks, and I'll do as you suggested and check back here with water info before I restock.

Sniperelite8243

you should be able to purchase testing kits at your lfs

ammonia test kit
nitriute test kit
nitrate test kit
ect

its very simple to test and will take 20 seconds per test pretty much.

also a suggestion, i dont know if your still moving around but when you do get a mop pale. brand new one so theres no chemicals left over. and just put all your substrate and filter media in there and cover it up with tank water. all you need is just enough for it to cover the objects. that should reduce the cycling to a day or two. just enough for the bacteria the reastablish because you kept them alive by putting it in the bucket via substrate and filter media. but you will want to cycle it first