minkymaid
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- Jan 10, 2006
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Hi guys,
I've just had 48hrs of fish upset and i wanted to see if any of you could suggest what went wrong so it doesn't happen again!
I bought a load of gear to set up a quarentine tank so i could buy some cherry barbs and quarentine them befre adding them to my main tank of danios and corys. I bought a sponge filter and put the sponge into the filter of my main tank for a week to get the bacteria to grow onto the sponge.
On saturday I put the sponge onto the filter in the quarentine tank and used half water from my main tank and half treated water (treated as I treat water for my main tank with stress coat) to fill up this smaller (20litre) tank and added some Stress zyme too. I checked out with my lfs (who've been really helpful and spot on with advice so far) when I bought the gear and they suggested putting the sponge in the main tank filter for a week, so i reckoned that with the addition of the tankwater then I'd have enough bacteria. Was I wrong?
I put in 5 lovely cherry barbs. Two days later decided that they wern't right (even taking into account it was all new and weird to them, they looked unhappy). Tested water - no ammonia, just about registering nitrite (no more than the little spike i had in the big tank when i added new fish and that went fine) and nitrate at 40 - but i decided that i should do water change (it was about midnight - was my decision clouded by sleep- should i have changed the water?) of 50% just in case the nitrite or nitrate was too much.
In the morning i had 4 dead fish and 1 unhappy fish. whipped her out and put her in the main tank where she languished yesterday. (I cant find her this morning).
So last night i thought that this poor solitary fish would be pretty unhappy alone if cherry barbs like the company of each other and that being alone would add to her stress, so i bought 4 new cherry barbs. All was going well, floating bag in main tank water (given up on the quarentine tank til i know what went wrong) lights turned off in tank and v dim room. all fish happy, barbs go into main tank and shoal with danios. Mmmm, 3 danios. Should be 4.
In the time taken for me to leave the room while the bag of new fish was floating to acclimatise and turn on the kettle in the kitchen (not even make the tea) one of my beatiful magnificent and lovely pearl danios had flipped himself out of the tank and i found him covered in fluff on the floor at the side. Goodness knows how long he'd been there but miraculously he survived and is swimming around this morning - so, why did he flip out? and more importantly his fins and scales look a bit raggy - what can i do to help him? I don't want him to get any infections.
Finally, the other 3 danios suddenly hid and turned absolutely white. This was after the new fish had gone in and after my escapee had flipped out and been put back in, so not really a related event. Any idea what that was about? it took them about 5 hrs to settle back down.
A very very bad 48hrs. A very upset newbie fish keeper (many tears). It had all being going SO well!
Any ideas on any of this would be really welcome. I thought i was doing the right thing and i'd taken advice - although i know ultimately that its my responsibility, so i want to be sure i get it right next time
Thanks everyone
Minkymaid
I've just had 48hrs of fish upset and i wanted to see if any of you could suggest what went wrong so it doesn't happen again!
I bought a load of gear to set up a quarentine tank so i could buy some cherry barbs and quarentine them befre adding them to my main tank of danios and corys. I bought a sponge filter and put the sponge into the filter of my main tank for a week to get the bacteria to grow onto the sponge.
On saturday I put the sponge onto the filter in the quarentine tank and used half water from my main tank and half treated water (treated as I treat water for my main tank with stress coat) to fill up this smaller (20litre) tank and added some Stress zyme too. I checked out with my lfs (who've been really helpful and spot on with advice so far) when I bought the gear and they suggested putting the sponge in the main tank filter for a week, so i reckoned that with the addition of the tankwater then I'd have enough bacteria. Was I wrong?
I put in 5 lovely cherry barbs. Two days later decided that they wern't right (even taking into account it was all new and weird to them, they looked unhappy). Tested water - no ammonia, just about registering nitrite (no more than the little spike i had in the big tank when i added new fish and that went fine) and nitrate at 40 - but i decided that i should do water change (it was about midnight - was my decision clouded by sleep- should i have changed the water?) of 50% just in case the nitrite or nitrate was too much.
In the morning i had 4 dead fish and 1 unhappy fish. whipped her out and put her in the main tank where she languished yesterday. (I cant find her this morning).
So last night i thought that this poor solitary fish would be pretty unhappy alone if cherry barbs like the company of each other and that being alone would add to her stress, so i bought 4 new cherry barbs. All was going well, floating bag in main tank water (given up on the quarentine tank til i know what went wrong) lights turned off in tank and v dim room. all fish happy, barbs go into main tank and shoal with danios. Mmmm, 3 danios. Should be 4.
In the time taken for me to leave the room while the bag of new fish was floating to acclimatise and turn on the kettle in the kitchen (not even make the tea) one of my beatiful magnificent and lovely pearl danios had flipped himself out of the tank and i found him covered in fluff on the floor at the side. Goodness knows how long he'd been there but miraculously he survived and is swimming around this morning - so, why did he flip out? and more importantly his fins and scales look a bit raggy - what can i do to help him? I don't want him to get any infections.
Finally, the other 3 danios suddenly hid and turned absolutely white. This was after the new fish had gone in and after my escapee had flipped out and been put back in, so not really a related event. Any idea what that was about? it took them about 5 hrs to settle back down.
A very very bad 48hrs. A very upset newbie fish keeper (many tears). It had all being going SO well!
Any ideas on any of this would be really welcome. I thought i was doing the right thing and i'd taken advice - although i know ultimately that its my responsibility, so i want to be sure i get it right next time
Thanks everyone
Minkymaid
