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balajake

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Well since installing my new ex1200 ive had nothing but nightmares. i transfered old media to it, washed everything. even left in an internal filter to smooth the transition. ive done so many massive water changes to keep ammonia levels down its untrue. im starting to pull my hair out as it can't be good for them.

yesterday was very bad.

lost this week

7 neon tetras (yesterday, dropped one by one)
3 torpedo barbs just dropped one after the other ( yesterday within an hour of being fine)
4 juvi apistogramma
my beautiful pride and joy female ellioti
juvi firemouth
2 juvi rams
1 juvi festivum


the neons and torpedo barbs i noticed just suddenly stopped being able to swim. i was going to buy another 3 but no point now they died. my ammonia spiked yesterday to .50ppm 24 hours after a 90% water change, i'm utterly gutted. only 1 neon had a mark on it but i think that was because a festivum had a nip at it because it had stopped swimming. i have another tank with my baby guppies in it but i darn't move anything over incase its a disease.

i've ordered prime, melafix,primafix, cycle etc should be coming anytime.

my ammonia is testing at 0.25 and 0.50 yesterday before yet another massive water change. i cleaned pads iin old water, cleaned the substrate. no nitrites, slight level of nitrates. testing with API liquid kit. im thinking my little cherry barbs will be next as one looked iffy before but then picked up.
 
sorry for your losses. was wondering when you said you washed everything, your talking about the filter media, right? that might be where your ammonia spike is coming from depending on what you use for media. if there is still good bacteria present in the media after washing, it dies in the washing process. and when you introduce a colony of dead bacteria into a system, its almost the same as throwing some dead fish in there. this happens also with things like lava rocks, sand or gravel when you rinse them. it is a good idea to keep somethings in the tank "unclean", that way your beneficial bacteria is already somewhat established, and so the cycling process doesn't have to completely start all over again.
 
i washed the new media that came in the new ex1200 filter. the old media was swished in old tank water.
 
ammonia to 0.5 isnt really a spike, a spike is when it scoots up to 3/4ppm and does some real damage.

with less fish, your tank should take longer to get toxic so water changes might be less frequent now, although every 24 hours will be a near must do.

Sorry to hear about your losses.
 
Sorry for your losses, losing so many fish so quickly must be awful (I've had my share of losing schools over the last two years, dropping one by one over months with no indication as to what was going on). :rip:

Were any fish new?
Were any fish relatively old (kept for years)?
What temperature do you keep the tank at?

Torpedo Barbs have a reputation of being very sensitive to water chemistry changes, my six have had 2-3 hour drip acclimitisations after buying and then any tank transfer.
 
That sounds really bad, sorry for your losses :rip:
I'm sure you did the right things as you had advised me on how to clean my filter and everthing was fine.
I just hope everything will be fine soon and you don't lose any more fish :angel:
 
Thanks everyone. haven't introduced anything new except that bloody filter and all the fish are under 1 year old, thankfully so far no losses today. i was thinking neon tetra desease because it got neons barbs and cichlids. everything else in my tanks looks healthy with no red gills or gasping on the surface.

i'm hoping this is the end if it because im thinking the massive water changes are stressing them out. im going to test again later
 
Thanks everyone. haven't introduced anything new except that bloody filter and all the fish are under 1 year old, thankfully so far no losses today. i was thinking neon tetra desease because it got neons barbs and cichlids. everything else in my tanks looks healthy with no red gills or gasping on the surface.

i'm hoping this is the end if it because im thinking the massive water changes are stressing them out. im going to test again later

Maybe some kind of toxin on the new filter components? I was doing some reading yesterday on pyrethrins. They are considered somewhat natural and eco-friendly bug killers that work very well on insects. They're eco-friendly because they break down quickly (hours) in sunlight, unfortunately they can last for weeks in your fish tank. They're common in roach sprays and flea powders and shampoos and a host of other things. Turns out that they are extremely deadly to many tropical fish. We're talking ppb concentrations, not ppm. Small exposure might not cause any deaths for as long as two weeks afterwards when suddenly a bunch of fish die off. Fatal concentrations vary by fish type and even sex.
http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/emon/pubs/fatememo/pyrethrin_efate2.pdf

I'm wondering how often something like this is responsible for sudden die offs in peoples tanks. You spray something in the house and a tiny bit lands on the tank water or gets inhaled by the air pump and injected into the water column. Or you wash your dog with flea shampoo and accidentally transfer some to the tank when feeding. The scary thing is that you might not see any problems for days and then it might take days for the problems to progress to the point of killing the fish. These are neurotoxins so the fish might exhibit all kinds of strange behavior before dieing.

On a side note, another common fish killer seems to be anti-fungal treated scrubbing sponges. You clean your tank and your fish die six hours later, or new fish die six hours after being introduced to the tank. Does that sound familiar?
 

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