First Tank - Cherry Barbs 2 dead in 24 hours - help!

[AlexanderBell]

Hi All,

We have bought our first aquarium - a 30litre aquarium starter kit from Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B014FOHXG0/?tag=)

Following a trip to the local pet shop they advised to set everything going, add tap water with the solution to make it safe and leave it running for a few days. We left it a week and then went to get our first fish. We chose 5 Cherry Barbs as a good start.

Sadly, 24 hours in we have had 1 fish die which I found this morning, and now another is floating on the bottom gasping. It will swim a little but I fear this 1 will die overnight.

I have used a 5 in 1 testing kit, everything came out fine, temperature steady, the other 3 seem ok but all are slow.

Here is a video of the aquarium setup:

Here is the currently struggling fish:

Could something be wrong with the filter??

Please help!! Thanks in advance!

Alexander

 

[matty111]

Hi there

It looks like you may have added fish a bit too soon it would be wise to take a sample of your water to a local fish shop so that they can test it more accurately. or get a api master test kit and do it yourself.

Dont worry i can imagine that there will be more experienced people oh here that will give you advice

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk

 

[Hyr]

Hi, I understand you are new to the hobby. With your 5 in 1 test kit, what is your pH, kH, gH, and nitrates/nitrites? Cherry Barbs should not be kept in a 30l tank. Especially 5 Cherry Barbs. For Cherry Barbs, you need ATLEAST (in my humble opinion, some will say 10 gallons, some will say 20, etc.) a 120l tank, or 30 gallons. I haven't personally kept them, but I do know a bit about them..Also, you should've waited longer than a week for a cycle, unless you have used filter media from your aquarium shop. Your aquarium stocking level is 105%, so your filter should be doing fine, (assuming it is good) as long as you do 25% water changes weekly, but I would recommend doing a 25% water change every two days until you can buy a 120l tank. They will outgrow your tank fast, at growing to about 5cm's long. Also I would stay away from buying kits, if you need help on what you need, just make another post and I'm sure people will help you out. Thanks, Hyr.

EDIT: Also I would recommend removing the fake plastic plant from the aquarium to insure they are not hurt by the plastic.

 

[Essjay]

I'm sorry to say that you have fallen victim to poor shop advice, like so many others. But don't be disheartened, we can get you through this

As Hyr said, 30 litres is too small for the vast majority of fish, including cherry barbs. In a tank that size I would keep only a single betta (siamese fighting fish) or one of the so-called nano species.

The second thing the shop didn't tell you - because most of them don't understand it - is that a tank needs to be cycled before fish are added. Cycling does not mean just running the tank. It means adding ammonia from a bottle until 2 species of bacteria have grown, which takes several weeks.
Fish excrete ammonia. The first of these bacteria 'eat' ammonia as their food and they 'poop' nitrite. The second bacteria 'eat' the nitrite made by the first bacteria and they 'poop' nitrate. Both ammonia and nitrite are toxic to fish in tiny amounts; nitrate is toxic at higher amounts and we remove nitrate by doing water changes.
But until the bacteria have grown enough of them, they can't eat all the ammonia or nitrite and those poisons build up in the water.

This is what has happened to your fish. They were excreting ammonia from the moment they went in the tank and you do not have any ammonia eating bacteria so ammonia had been building up. 5 in 1 tests do not test for ammonia so you had no idea the fish were being poisoned. Nitrite won't start to show up until your tank has grown some ammonia eaters to make it.



It is possible to cycle a tank with fish in it, but it is hard work. The first thing you need to do is buy an ammonia tester; a master kit of liquid reagent testers is the most cost effective. They contain testers for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. Fish-in cycling involves testing the water every day and doing a water change every time ammonia and/or nitrite show a reading above zero.

But since your fish are not suitable for this tank, I would strongly recommend that you return the surviving barbs to the shop and do a fishless cycle http://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/
The alternative to cycling is to use live plants, a lot of them, rather than fake. Live plants use ammonia as fertiliser. But the idea of looking after plants as well as fish in a first tank can be daunting so I do understand if you prefer not to go down this route.

While the tank is cycling you can research fish that are suitable for 30 litres. Do this research yourself, do not ask a shop worker. The good ones are few and far between, most of them will say any rubbish to make a sale. Ask on here instead - we are not trying to sell you anything and between us we have vast amounts of experience
We will need some information to help you. We need to know both the hardness and pH of your tap water. For pH test some freshly run tap water and a sample that has been allowed to stand for 24 hours. And your hardness should be somewhere on your water supplier's website. We need both the number and the units as they could use any one of half a dozen different units, and we need to know which one.
The fish in shops have come from a wide range of rivers and lakes in many countries. Those rivers and lakes have differing pH and hardness. We need to choose fish that come from rivers or lakes with the same pH and hardness as our tap water.


We'll soon have your tank running well

 

[Crispin]

Another option you could explore is using a bacteria culture (Tetra Safe Start is what I'd recommend) to 'cycle' the tank. I've had good luck with it the two times I used it, but try this only if the fish shop will not accept the fish back.

You've mentioned the temperature is holding steady, sorry for asking but have you measured it? Reason I ask is I cannot see a thermometer in the tank and wondering if you're basing the temperature off of the heater light being on or a measured value. The actual water temperature can be way off of the temperature set point on the heater in my experience which can lead to fish stress/losses!