Any Answers?

[summit67]

I have a 4 month old 55 gal freshwater tank. PH is 7.2-7.4. I originally had 5- 1 inch gouramis. I acclimated and added 5 neon tetras, 2 catfish, 1 algae eater, and 2 red tipped sharks. Within 3 days the neons were dead. One by one all the fish have died except one gourami and one red tipped shark (which seem to be doing fine). No visible signs of disease, no fighting, 10% weekly water changes. Filter system is a 30-60 gal Aquatech power filter. Plenty of hiding spots and 2 Amazon swords in the tank also a long airstone. Any advice? I have a 2 hour round trip to the fish store and I hate to see them die.

 

[Ryandsimmons]

I have a 4 month old 55 gal freshwater tank. PH is 7.2-7.4. I originally had 5- 1 inch gouramis. I acclimated and added 5 neon tetras, 2 catfish, 1 algae eater, and 2 red tipped sharks. Within 3 days the neons were dead. One by one all the fish have died except one gourami and one red tipped shark (which seem to be doing fine). No visible signs of disease, no fighting, 10% weekly water changes. Filter system is a 30-60 gal Aquatech power filter. Plenty of hiding spots and 2 Amazon swords in the tank also a long airstone. Any advice? I have a 2 hour round trip to the fish store and I hate to see them die.

I'd post this in the emergency section of the forum. Generally the guys there have awesome advice and are very quick in responding.

People will also need to know the nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels.

 

[VaegaVic]

I'm going to go with "adding too many fish at once syndrome".

5 fish to 15 is a bit of a jump.

I only ever advise to add no more than 50% of the current stocking at a time. E.g. 10 fish in the tank, add no more than 5.

Of course, you make allowances for messy fish like plecs, but I'm still going to go with an ammonia spike due to too many fish, and the stress of travel didn't help.

 

[Wills]

When you say those fish died straight away, was that in the first few days/weeks of having the tank?

Just a quick possibility of the issues, having a filter is quite useless unless it has grown a bacteria colony to deal with the poisonous chemicals that the fishes poop will give off into the water. And I suspect that your your bacteria colony has not grown sufficiently yet to handle the toxins like ammonia in the water and as a result that poisons your fish and thats why they die.

This is known as a fish in cycle situation and the best way to combat this is to do daily 50% water changes until the ammonia and nitrite is being dealt with by the bacteria in the filter.

If you had the tank stood with just water and were adding a product that said to set up your filter in that manor Im afraid the vast majority of those products dont work. As the bacteria needs to be provided with a source of ammonia in order to have something to eat, when people come with a view to setting up a tank we would advise a fishless cycle where you use pure house hold ammonia to mature your filter for 5-7 weeks without fish. This process with make a colony of bacteria to grow in the filter and that will then allow you to stock the tank as you want without the worry of death.

Dont get me wrong I would 100% understand if you said that the shop assistant helped you set it up and you did this under their advice but their ways are flawed and dont give the filter long enough to grow but its a bit cynical as they will sell the tank etc to you but then they need you to come back in a few weeks to buy fish see what I mean where as realistically if they agreed to educate about the fishless cycle you would be coming back in a month to 2 months time.

Wills