Hello. It's Wednesday. On Sunday we purchased 8 new fish from let's at home. Our tank is settled and our fish were thriving. We have had no dead fish for already 4 months. We floated the fish. Added them gently. But, over the last couple of days 7 of the new fish died but so have 6 of the existing fish in the tank for a year. What might be the cause and will they reimburse us?
Pets at home dead fish
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Hi. Sorry to hear of your troubles with your new fish.
Unlikely Pets at Home will reimburse for loss of fish once its been in your tank.
The deaths coud be down to a number of reasons. So a few question will be asked here, but the first and most important qustion is -
Did you cycle your tank before adding fish?
If you're unsure, have a read of the the Fishless Cycling article - Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!
Basically what means making sure your tank and filter is ready to deal with any toxic elements that naturally occurs when you have fish in your tank. Namely amonnia, this is what occurs when fish breathe, waste and rotting plants and debris will produce. This is toxic to livestock in your tank, but this ammonia will turn into nitrite once you have the ammonia types of bacterias to consume then this nitrite will start another colonly of bacteria which will turn this into nitrate, the least toxic of the three elements and fish can deal with a certain amount of nitrate short term.
Nitrate is dealt with by us, the fish aquarist, by doing water changes at least once a week of around 40 - 60 % being the normal practice.
Can you describe any symptoms the fish had just before they died, this can sometimes point to clues. For example, did the fish stay at the surface of water, or low near the gravel/sand, appear to gasp rapidly, gills showing red imflamation, lethargy in swimming, or unsual swimming patterns etc etc
The more details of any symptoms you saw in your fish before they passed you can give, the better.
Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate water test readings would be most useful if you have those. PH and water hardness reading may prove useful too, you can get water hardness numbers from you local water authority online.
if you can add if you used tap safe/dechlorinator, water temp and how long the tank has been running and also if you have live plants in your tank.
Once these questions have been answered, we then can proceed to the next steps or following questions. A lot of questions I know and probably a lot to take on but all this will help you and more importantly help your future tank livestocks.
Unlikely Pets at Home will reimburse for loss of fish once its been in your tank.
The deaths coud be down to a number of reasons. So a few question will be asked here, but the first and most important qustion is -
Did you cycle your tank before adding fish?
If you're unsure, have a read of the the Fishless Cycling article - Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!
Basically what means making sure your tank and filter is ready to deal with any toxic elements that naturally occurs when you have fish in your tank. Namely amonnia, this is what occurs when fish breathe, waste and rotting plants and debris will produce. This is toxic to livestock in your tank, but this ammonia will turn into nitrite once you have the ammonia types of bacterias to consume then this nitrite will start another colonly of bacteria which will turn this into nitrate, the least toxic of the three elements and fish can deal with a certain amount of nitrate short term.
Nitrate is dealt with by us, the fish aquarist, by doing water changes at least once a week of around 40 - 60 % being the normal practice.
Can you describe any symptoms the fish had just before they died, this can sometimes point to clues. For example, did the fish stay at the surface of water, or low near the gravel/sand, appear to gasp rapidly, gills showing red imflamation, lethargy in swimming, or unsual swimming patterns etc etc
The more details of any symptoms you saw in your fish before they passed you can give, the better.
Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate water test readings would be most useful if you have those. PH and water hardness reading may prove useful too, you can get water hardness numbers from you local water authority online.
if you can add if you used tap safe/dechlorinator, water temp and how long the tank has been running and also if you have live plants in your tank.
Once these questions have been answered, we then can proceed to the next steps or following questions. A lot of questions I know and probably a lot to take on but all this will help you and more importantly help your future tank livestocks.
Hi. We have had the tank about 3 years and no issues. We have live plant but we added a new plant at same time as fish. We put the new fish in the tank in their bags to adjust to temperature. Then added small amount of tank water to the bags. Finally adding fish to the tank which is 23degrees and in the green range of our thermometer. The fish seemed to become weak and slow and sat on bottom. It seems strange this happened after new fish were added. I don't know pH levels etc. We use a tap safe and clean every two weeks with a 25% change.
ShinySideUp
Fish Herder
Without the water parameters there is not a lot anyone can do to help you. It seems certain the new fish have brought something to the tank since you say some of your existing fish have died although that may be coincidence.
One thought I have had depends on the size of your existing tank most especially if it is small and that is a difference in pH. If the pH in you rtank was of one reading and the water from Pets at Home was significantly different and you put all the new water into the old tank you may have suddenly changed the pH to both sets of fish; it's unlikely but I would say it was remotely possible that the fish have been affected by pH shock (too rapid a change in pH).
You really need to buy a water test kit as it will be very revealing; the API Master Test kit is expensive but lasts for a long time and will test everything from pH through, Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates.
One thought I have had depends on the size of your existing tank most especially if it is small and that is a difference in pH. If the pH in you rtank was of one reading and the water from Pets at Home was significantly different and you put all the new water into the old tank you may have suddenly changed the pH to both sets of fish; it's unlikely but I would say it was remotely possible that the fish have been affected by pH shock (too rapid a change in pH).
You really need to buy a water test kit as it will be very revealing; the API Master Test kit is expensive but lasts for a long time and will test everything from pH through, Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates.
Right, first thing, I would advise upping your water change regime from 25% every two weeks to once a week water change at 50%.
This has several benefits, namely the fresh water containing many minerals and elements thats the plants and fish NEEDS.
Also changing at 50% will help to reduce your nitrate levels by half, even though we do not know what your water parameters are, this is gauranteed unless you have high nitrate in your tap water. One other benefit of doing once weekly water changes is that the new water helps to 'buffer' your ph levels, meaning to keep parameters more steady rather than flucuating levels which is detrimental to fish health no matter which way you look at it.
Another recommendation is to do tests on your tap water just so that you know what comes out of the tap and into your tank.
The tank, after 3 years, should be cycled so thats not a concern to me at this point now. Unless you change the filter media regularly or do large cleaning of filters and tank when you do that 25% water change every other week.
Now this narrows my suspicions to two areas as to why your fish health is deteriorating once added to your tank. Could be way off the mark but may warrent further investigating.
1 - Old Tank Syndrome - here is a little article from PFK which should give you a good idea -
How to avoid 'old tank syndrome'
2 - The pH, gH and kH hardness readings are unknown here and simply adding fish without knowing their requirements as to these parameters is an important issue and one that should be researched BEFORE buying any new stocking to be sure your new fish will survive and better yet, thrive in your tank water conditions.
So with these two suggestions for you to research and see if these patterns fit your fish deaths would be a good step to start with.
I see sunnysideup had responded with good advice while I was writing this response, and I do wholly agree with buying a half decent test kit such as API MAster Test kit, fairly inexpensive in UK usually between £20 to £35 max. And tank size is another important factor of course, though doubt it would have caused the fish's demise in such a short space of time but not to be ruled out at all whatsoever.
This has several benefits, namely the fresh water containing many minerals and elements thats the plants and fish NEEDS.
Also changing at 50% will help to reduce your nitrate levels by half, even though we do not know what your water parameters are, this is gauranteed unless you have high nitrate in your tap water. One other benefit of doing once weekly water changes is that the new water helps to 'buffer' your ph levels, meaning to keep parameters more steady rather than flucuating levels which is detrimental to fish health no matter which way you look at it.
Another recommendation is to do tests on your tap water just so that you know what comes out of the tap and into your tank.
The tank, after 3 years, should be cycled so thats not a concern to me at this point now. Unless you change the filter media regularly or do large cleaning of filters and tank when you do that 25% water change every other week.
Now this narrows my suspicions to two areas as to why your fish health is deteriorating once added to your tank. Could be way off the mark but may warrent further investigating.
1 - Old Tank Syndrome - here is a little article from PFK which should give you a good idea -
How to avoid 'old tank syndrome'
2 - The pH, gH and kH hardness readings are unknown here and simply adding fish without knowing their requirements as to these parameters is an important issue and one that should be researched BEFORE buying any new stocking to be sure your new fish will survive and better yet, thrive in your tank water conditions.
So with these two suggestions for you to research and see if these patterns fit your fish deaths would be a good step to start with.
I see sunnysideup had responded with good advice while I was writing this response, and I do wholly agree with buying a half decent test kit such as API MAster Test kit, fairly inexpensive in UK usually between £20 to £35 max. And tank size is another important factor of course, though doubt it would have caused the fish's demise in such a short space of time but not to be ruled out at all whatsoever.
Last edited:
StandbySetting
Fish Aficionado
Pets at home - notorious for their poor husbandry and welfare of animals. For me the most likely cause of any problem here lies with the fish you were sold, personally I avoid pets at home like the plague, I'm not sure of their returns policy but most places will refund or replace if you take the dead fish back with a tank water sample within 7 days.
Thanks for the advice. We took a water sample to pah and they tested and said our ammonia was high. They refunded the money spent and are happy to test again in a few days. They said adding fish to a tank will spike the ammonia and this must have happened
The only times that addingfish to cause a spike is either by adding way too many fish at once and the bioload therfefore then be too much for your bacteria colony but even in that case, bacteria do grow fairly rapidiy and would expect things to reach an equilibrium in 24 hours or less. So would be fairly unexpected to face a mass loss in such a short space of time.
Its good P@H did give a refund but their advice is not wholly accurate.
Can you elaborate on what the ammonia level with the p@h test kit was at?
Did they happen to test for anything else? i.e nitrite, nitrate, pH etc and with what kind of test kit. ( got a feeling going to be paper dip kit rather than a liquid based testing kit, these tend to be fairly innacurate and unreliable, hopefully they used a liquid kit.....)
It would have to be higher than at least 1ppm ammonia for such loss of fish in a short space of time, probably nearer 2 or 3ppm would be my estimate. even 1ppm is far too high in any case, you may get away with 0.5ppm for a sjort length of time but the longer fish have to endure 1ppm plus ammonia levels the more damage there will be to their organs.
Testing again in a few day will achieve little if your tank indeed has OTS.
I'd would recommend again, to get a water test kit, this way you will be able to determine more easily what is occurring in yoru tank. This is usually standard kit for most keepers.
Its good P@H did give a refund but their advice is not wholly accurate.
Can you elaborate on what the ammonia level with the p@h test kit was at?
Did they happen to test for anything else? i.e nitrite, nitrate, pH etc and with what kind of test kit. ( got a feeling going to be paper dip kit rather than a liquid based testing kit, these tend to be fairly innacurate and unreliable, hopefully they used a liquid kit.....)
It would have to be higher than at least 1ppm ammonia for such loss of fish in a short space of time, probably nearer 2 or 3ppm would be my estimate. even 1ppm is far too high in any case, you may get away with 0.5ppm for a sjort length of time but the longer fish have to endure 1ppm plus ammonia levels the more damage there will be to their organs.
Testing again in a few day will achieve little if your tank indeed has OTS.
I'd would recommend again, to get a water test kit, this way you will be able to determine more easily what is occurring in yoru tank. This is usually standard kit for most keepers.
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