Guppies Dying

[snoowball]

Hi guys, I just bought 4 guppies yesteday, but one of them has died now, the others are not doing well either. I need urgent help, thanks!

I set up the aquarium one week ago, 30 gallon, didn't do fishless cycling since I bought one bottle "Stress Zyme" which says that it contains the good bacteria.

List of things inside:
Gravel: collected from beach, washed several times and put under sun for a couple of days
Sand: play sand from Home depot, washed 6 times
Plants: four green plants which I don't know the name, but the seller said they go well with guppies
Filter: Marineland 170. This may be the problem since this is a second-hand one, and I found the dead body attaching to the pipe of the filter. I wonder if the water force was too big.
Temparture is 72F, PH is 7.6.

Bad thing is: water seems to be not transparent, so I am planning to change the water ASAP
Another bad thing is: the rest three has branchia to be red, although the dead one does not have a red branchia.

I appriciate any help, thanks a lot!!!

 

[drobbyb]

Welcome to TFF!

I'm afraid that the stress-zyme won't be enough to cycle your tank instantly. It's meant to be a suppliment/booster. With a fish-in cycle things get a little more delicate and guppies probably won't survive. I would start with a test kit (API Master test kit will work) and test your water with all the tests and post back here the results.

 

[LauraFrog]

Stress zyme and other products are useless. What you have basically is an un cycled tank so you are currently going through a fish in cycle. I presume since you mentioned the fishless cycling that you understand the nitrogen cycle, but if you don't I'm happy to help more with that. I strongly recommend returning the guppies and doing a fishless cycle. Guppies are very weak fish due to inbreeding to create fancy strains and to be honest I would be amazed if any of them survived a fish in cycle.

If you decide to keep the fish:

Do large water changes, at least 50% daily. If at all possible, do water tests. Your aim when cycling with fish is to keep the ammonia levels below 0.25ppm at all times. Dip in test strips are rubbish, get a liquid test or don't bother.

Free ammonia levels are higher in a tank with alkaline water. Basically the lower the pH, the more ammonia is found in its less toxic ionic form (NH4+ or ammonium, pure ammonia in aqueous form is NH4OH) If it's possible, buy some pH down and take the pH to 7 or slightly below. Do this over at least three days or you will stress the fish more. Also lower the temp slightly.

Cut right back on feeding - feed LIGHTLY every three days. This will not hurt your fish.

The filter is not killing your fish. Dead fish or fish that are too weak to swim drift around the tank until they eventually get stuck to the filter. This is normal. If it is very fast flowing though and your guppies have large tails you might want to consider changing filter or blocking it up - there is a method to do this in Articles - Bettas.

In a 30 gallon tank ammonia may not have built up to kill fish this quickly and it's likely that there is some other pollutant in the water, probably introduced on the sand or gravel which you should always buy, or else bleach, boil or similarly treat. You need to do huge water changes, probably 90% now then switch back to 50% daily.

Whether you cycle fish in or fishless you will greatly speed and enhance the process if you use a bacterial supplement that works. The only ones that seem to produce results are Bactinettes (UK) and Bio-spira (USA), both refrigerated and Aquarium Science Eco-start (Australia) freeze dried. Bacteria left inert in room temperature liquid in a bottle with no food source and limited oxygen, will not survive, so all you are doing is adding dead bacteria to your tank.

Better than bacteria-in-a-bottle you could go for cycled filter media - ask your LFS if they will give you a cycled filter sponge. This will vastly reduce your cycle time and make things safer for the fish if you keep them.