2 Fish Suddenly Sick/dead?

[sfgiants13]

I've had this tank for a couple months. I cycled it with safestart and initially added 5 cardinal tetras. A few weeks passed and I added 6 cory catfish. It's a 29G tank. I've left it this way for a couple months and have had no problems until now. I do about a 15-20% water change every week. The water temperature is about 78 degrees. I just checked the readings and it's been the same for the past few weeks. The PH is a bit high at 7.5 but the water here is also very hard. The ammonia is a bit hard to read on the strip but I'm fairly certain it's at 0 or maybe slightly above but no more than .25 for sure. At this point a few months in I'd have no reason to suspect that I'd have an ammonia problem. 0 nitrite and about 10 nitrate. A few days ago I had my first catfish die suddenly and I had no idea why. Just today I found another stuck to my filter and I freed it from there and it's swimming sideways or just laying on one of the decorations or plastic plants in a weird spot and not moving. I have no idea why all of a sudden I'm having problems. The only thing I add to the water is a dechlorinator from big als.

 

[techen]

The strips are no good at reading the water. I highly recommend you buy a API masters kit. You may indeed have a ammonia problem that the strips are failing to see

But I could be wrong andd the stripd are fine. I prefer double checking though maybe even take a water sample to a lfs

 

[KCB]

I would probably do a large water change immediately and then buy an API test kit as soon as possible like techen suggested. General consensus is that strip tests are very inaccurate.

 

[MrsM]

if the tank was still cycling when you added the cat fish they could have been damaged due to the high levels of ammonia and nitrite when a tank is cycling, especially if you are only doing quite small WCs during a tanks fish in cycle.....

 

[sfgiants13]

Ok thanks I did a 40% water change as suggested in addition to my weekly water change a couple of days ago. Unfortunately I found the guy dead this morning and there's yet another who's starting to lose color and look pretty pale. The stores are all closed today so tomorrow I'll take the water in to be tested. I was under the impression that using safestart should make the tank cycle very quickly and thus the 2 weeks I waited to add the catfish should have been plenty of time especially if (according to the possibly inaccurate strips) the readings show good. Then again if they were inaccurate there would be my problem. Doing a large change made me realize that there is a lot of waste in the gravel which means I'm missing a lot when I do my water change so I'm sure that's not helping the situation.

 

[Flute]

I would do another large water change, at least 75 %, as it sounds as though they are suffering from ammonia poisoning. There's very little proof that these bacteria in bottles type products actually work, which means your tank may not have cycled properly. You'll need to be doing very large daily water changes until it cycles, and hopefully then the rest of your fish will start to pick up.
Where abouts are you? Maybe another member near you could donate some mature media, or you could ask your LFS if they're willing to give you any media to help your filter along If you can keep the ammonia at 0 ppm at all times you should be ok, but even 0.25 ppm over a period of time will be devastating to your stocks health.

 

[sfgiants13]

I will do another change. I live in Seattle, USA. Tomorrow after work I'll get the water tested. Since I'll be getting a new test kit and I was curious I did about 5 tests with the strip and I got a range from 0 to .5 ppm in the results so I can see how the accuracy is suspect and there probably is an ammonia problem. After a couple months what can cause the tank to not cycle properly and still have ammonia building up? I'm a little confused especially since I only added 5 fish to start and waited several weeks before adding more and went over 2 months without problems.

edit: I wonder if maybe my tank is cycled but I'm possibly overfeeding so there isn't enough bacteria in the tank yet to handle all of the waste? The catfish weren't eating all of the sinking wafers I fed them (pretty small...but there are quite a few floating in the tank that I've noticed when doing my weekly water change). I definitely need to cut down on the feeding and removing excess food as that's not helping the situation.

 

[sfgiants13]

Also, brown algae first appeared a few weeks back and I read that it's common in new tanks and it's a sign that the tank is cycling. Not sure if that's significant information at all but apparently it goes away as my tank gets established.

 

[MrsM]

The bottled bacteria do not cycle the tank, they may help but using any bottles claiming to cycle your tank in days is a money making gimmick. It seems as you added fish so soon after setting up the tank the fish you have have gone through a harsh cycle...they will have suffered high levels of ammonia and nitrite which can be very damaging to fish if not fatal, therefore your fish will be weaker now and will most likely die prematurely, i also fell for the bottled bacteria trick and suffered losses, no one starts fish keeping perfectly, some people still do fish in cycling...its personal choice...it does sound like you are over feeding, have a clean of the gravel to remove uneaten food, that will cause an ammonia spike, hold off feeding for a day too, fish can go a while without food so dont worry, its better to under feed than over feed, how many fish do you have? They say a fishes tummy is the size of its eye.....hope this helps, mrsm

 

[phoenixgsd]

a build up of uneaten food and fish poo causes ammonia, the filter probably had just started to mature and had enough good bacteria to deal with the ammonia with the 6 fish you started with, when you added more fish the filter couldnt catch up with the bioload and the ammonia started to build again and will untill the colony of bacteria in the filter catches up , this is why fish in cycles are long and hard work and can shorten the fishs life if you dont do it properly

 

[sfgiants13]

I took a sample into the lfs and they are showing no ammonia as well. I wonder if that's a result of the large water change. I lost 3 fish in consecutive days from the symptoms of ammonia poisoning so I'll just have to monitor for overfeeding and spiking ammonia levels.