1 Week In And I Have A Dead Neon Already

[Deleted member 55926]

Found a dead neon this morning, with one other missing (of 12 originally). I got them about 8 days ago, after I planted my tank.

Last night one of the neons was sitting alone, very still amongst some vallis at the side/back of my tank, and looked to be breathing very rapidly. I found one dead in the same area this morning, so I assume it's him. I have also searched the tank and could only ever count 10, so I'm wondering if another is dead somewhere. I'm worried that the others will start dying off now, as I am already aware of a few potential problems:

1. The pH is about 7.8 at best.
   
2. It's a new tank, although I did fully cycle it for about 10 weeks.
   
3. Two days ago, the nitrate was coming up to ~40ppm, so I did a 25% water change. Yesterday the nitrate seemed even higher; 40-80ppm (who knows, the colours look practically identical) so I did about a 40% water change. Was this the correct course of action? Can high nitrate like this kill fish within 24 hours? I thought plants were supposed to help keep nitrates down, but my plants don't seem to be doing anything other than dying.

For the record, ammonia and nitrite is at 0.

I have to admit, as a new fishkeeper, I'm nothing but paranoid, stressed and disheartened. Every day since I got them I've been counting the fish because I assume they're going to die, and the plants have been dying or looking pretty haggard after only a couple of days (we are talking standard, undemanding beginner plants). How is it I put in so much effort to get the tank set up, and already it's crashing when I have friends that have had fish for months with no cycling and not even any water dechlorinator? I'm pessimistic by nature, but... I knew this would happen.

It's a sad state of affairs when you assume your fish will die. I don't feel like I can relax and know they are happy. I just want to enjoy them.

 

[angelfishguy]

sorry to hear about your troubles

 

[Squid]

As said in you other thread here, unfortunately it's not too suprising you have had a neon casualty. They aren't really good in new tanks. Whilst most people were stating what a great LFS it was by giving some good advice, neons were not part of that good advice.

Just keep an eye on those stats, your ammonia and nitrite are obviously not a problem, so keep on top of those nitrates.

Are you providing any nutrients/liquid carb for the plants. Do you know your lighting levels?

Squid

 

[Deleted member 55926]

Yes, my lighting is 1.25 watts per gallon, and I have just ordered some Flourish Excel to dose the plants and hopefully get them healthy and growing. Would that help?

 

[Curiosity101]

Your plants may just be adjusting to your water. It's not uncommon to have a large amount of die back. And then the plants come back much stronger.

 

[Gilli]

Neons are very sensitive to water conditions and should never really be added to a tank under at least 6 months old.

Nitrates are only really harmful at high levels, although its best to keep them as low as possible and below 40 if you can. Nitrate is an important nutrient. The problem is that nitrate becomes toxic at high concentrations so you need to keep the nitrate level low. Four simple strategies to do this are :

1. Don't overstock the tank.

2. Don't overfeed.

3. Keep the tank clean: vacuum the bottom; remove dead plants, fish, and snails.

4. Perform regular partial water changes. Careful aquarium maintenance should keep excessive nitrate levels from being a problem for you.

Are you using a proper liquid test kit for accurate readings? Those paper strips are no good so if you are using those bin them and buy a proper kit.The more real plants you have the better as they will use up some of the nitrates

I would always go with cardinal tetras - the are just like neons but not only are the colours more vibrant and beautiful but they are also much hardier than neons.

 

[Assaye]

Found a dead neon this morning, with one other missing (of 12 originally). I got them about 8 days ago, after I planted my tank.

Last night one of the neons was sitting alone, very still amongst some vallis at the side/back of my tank, and looked to be breathing very rapidly. I found one dead in the same area this morning, so I assume it's him. I have also searched the tank and could only ever count 10, so I'm wondering if another is dead somewhere. I'm worried that the others will start dying off now, as I am already aware of a few potential problems:

1. The pH is about 7.8 at best.
   
2. It's a new tank, although I did fully cycle it for about 10 weeks.
   
3. Two days ago, the nitrate was coming up to ~40ppm, so I did a 25% water change. Yesterday the nitrate seemed even higher; 40-80ppm (who knows, the colours look practically identical) so I did about a 40% water change. Was this the correct course of action? Can high nitrate like this kill fish within 24 hours? I thought plants were supposed to help keep nitrates down, but my plants don't seem to be doing anything other than dying.

For the record, ammonia and nitrite is at 0.

I have to admit, as a new fishkeeper, I'm nothing but paranoid, stressed and disheartened. Every day since I got them I've been counting the fish because I assume they're going to die, and the plants have been dying or looking pretty haggard after only a couple of days (we are talking standard, undemanding beginner plants). How is it I put in so much effort to get the tank set up, and already it's crashing when I have friends that have had fish for months with no cycling and not even any water dechlorinator? I'm pessimistic by nature, but... I knew this would happen.

It's a sad state of affairs when you assume your fish will die. I don't feel like I can relax and know they are happy. I just want to enjoy them.

Yeah, the first few weeks can be hell for a new fishkeeper. They were for me.

Plants may be dying because they were cuttings that never 'took' or because there is not enough food for them. The waste produced by the neons may not be enough to keep them alive without supplements.

Neons are also notoriously fragile and can die inexplicably in cycled but otherwise very immature tanks. There is a lot going on in a tank that we don't test for and neons need mature tanks with mature water. They are also very prone to disease and often neons from pet shops are just badly bred and in poor health.

Keep going. You'll eventually get to the good point.

 

[Deleted member 55926]

Gilli, I'm using the API master test kit, and I have all live plants (2 amazon swords, 1 java fern, 10 or 12 vallis, 2 little echinodorus of some kind that are going brown, 2 anubias now dead, a bnuch of java moss).

I would always go with cardinal tetras - the are just like neons but not only are the colours more vibrant and beautiful but they are also much hardier than neons.

I liked cardinals more, but read everywhere that they are near impossible to keep alive, and that neons were a much easier choice.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Mig, Can't remember if we discussed it way, way back, about the neons? I thought I recalled something to the effect that you were mostly only getting neons/cards and perhaps there was little choice but for them to be the ones to go in during the first stocking.

I guess we say it so much that I may have assumed you'd seen it in some of the other threads perhaps that neons/cards do need a tank that is 6 months old regardless of cycling. There's just something about new tanks they are sensitive to and its been observed countless times. Another thing I've written many times is to always bring a couple extra when you buy these tetras because you'll always lose about 2 out of a dozen and so far you are right on the mark. In your case there could be a thing making it harder on them in that they like really soft acid water and yours is up at 7.6, so would normally be something they'd not like as much even if that's what they had at the LFS. It shouldn't be a long term problem at all though as they should adjust fine.

I do believe you are too hard on yourself though. New tanks are notoriously hard on both plants and fish and difficult for beginners to get quite right. Both neons and cards are very sensitive fish (the attempts to say one is harder than the other are myths, they're both about equal in the end.) Your tank will settle down and I predict it will be somewhere close to the 6 month point when you will one day think to yourself "now, its really feeling settled!" C101 makes a good point that many, many plants do a big die-off when moved. If its a root plant it may lose all its leaves but if you are patient and leave the roots/crown in there, the leaves may then begin to grow back. There is also just the thing that often different plants need to be tried and some will like your tank, others will not.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Deleted member 55926]

C101 makes a good point that many, many plants do a big die-off when moved. If its a root plant it may lose all its leaves but if you are patient and leave the roots/crown in there, the leaves may then begin to grow back.

Yes, one of my anubias nana has 1 small leaf left, so I uprooted it and have left it on the surface of the gravel to see what will happen to it, and maybe it can grow some new leaves (I will probably bury the roots a bit though). I hope that the ferts I started dosing yesterday will help things a little around my tank.

 

[Deleted member 55926]

Well, I think another one is on the way out. I am watching the poor little thing at the moment, and he has lost nearly all of his colour (his tail is a very faded red, and he doesn't really have a blue shine to his stripe). He's very small and rapidly 'breathing' as the other one was, as well as sort of clinging onto the back of the filter like he's too weak to swim. I feel quite sad that I can't help him.

I don't want to speak too soon, but it at least looks as though the others are quite strong and healthy. Some of them have noticeably grown and seem to be plump and very colourful, which I am sure can only be a good thing. Maybe it's just a case of the weaker ones dying off, as you said waterdrop.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Mig, don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to snorkle at any of the various coral reefs of the world but in my own case I found that snorkling, combined with various articles I've read about evolutionary population dynamics in fish and other animal species has given me a feeling of insight about smaller schooling fish. Academically this is not my area (only really ever had one college level limnology course that went at it somewhat) so please take my comments with a grain of salt. Anyway, the professors sometimes point out that populations can have a fair amount of evolutionary experimentation going on on a per species basis. Mutations will occur or other pressures on a species will push minor changes in what a given set of individuals are doing and some of the "experimentations" the individuals will just die in the process. Sometimes whole sub-populations with particular mutations will just turn out to be mal-adapted in some way and will die out.

I found that when one is out there floating, with facemask down ( so many of you here know me and can I'm sure get a laugh picturing waterdrop in late afternoon, after all the rest of the snorklers have gone in to eat out of exhaustion, still out there floating as the sun goes down, still drifing around despite losing body heat... well I could go on..) watching sometimes astoundingly huge shoals of millions upon millions of tiny fish, it just can't help but cause one to think... and what I thought of was how trivial it would be for a few small fish to die when one takes into account the massive genetic whole that is represented by the overall multimillion shoals of the species. I got to thinking that in numbers like these one thing that might be going on is that mother nature (forgive me my simplistic expressions!) might sometimes be at times in the midst of a genetic experiment with just how fast a given species can reproduce and reproduce again and exist more as a cloud of fast-moving genes rather than as a long-lived individual animal. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Incidently, one of the instances this came to me was when I was nearly lost, swimming out in a bay and completely surrounded by some sort of two or 3 inch long clear (salt water of course) minnow-like fish with a bluish neon side stripe, such that at times it was like I was a huge mammel swimming in a vat of fish rather than in the water. They were so thick they were all against my body and I couldn't see anywhere in any direction except to see fish all around me. It was an experience I will never forget.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

You are both right and wrong about plants taking care of nitrogen in your water Mig. Plants will remove virtually all of the nitrogen from your water if there are enough of them and they are growing vigorously. I have planted tanks that I must add nitrogen to in order for my plants to grow because they have used up all of the nitrogen produced by the fish. On the other hand, plants that are struggling and dieing back can make nitrogen problems worse. Something that I didn't see mentioned about your anubias is that they cannot grow with their rhizomes buried under the gravel. That will kill the plant almost as fast as it would kill a java fern. Both must have the rhizome above the substrate if you expect them to survive. By "uprooting" the anubias, you have probably given it a chance to recover and thrive. I killed a lot of java ferns before I learned this particular lesson.

 

[Deleted member 55926]

Thanks OldMan.

On the point of my recently deceased neons, I am wondering if perhaps Neon Tetra Disease is present?

During the initial stages, the only symptom may be restlessness, particularly at night. Often the first thing an owner will notice is that the affected fish no longer school with the others. Eventually swimming becomes more erratic, and it becomes quite obvious that the fish is not well.

As the disease progresses, affected muscle tissue begins to turn white, generally starting within the color band and areas along the spine. As additional muscle tissue is affected, the pale coloration expands. Damage to the muscles can cause curvature or deformation of the spine, which may cause the fish to have difficulty in swimming. It is not unusual for the body of the fish to have a lumpy appearance as the cysts deform the muscles.

This sounds like what I was seeing with the last one that died.

 

[Curiosity101]

It really is more likely that it's the fact it's a new tank. Afterall I'm pretty sure neon tetra disease wipes out a full tank very fast. Not the odd one in dribs and drabs.