Help Fish Dying

[poohbear1]

Ok I have a 2 foot tank set up.
I did a fishless cycle and added 2 kribs. Apart from the male bullying the female I had no problems.
Last week I bought 5 flame tetra and 2 plattys.Monday night I found one of the plattys dead and tonight I found one flame tetra dead and one still missing.
My water perameters are ammonia 0, nitrites 0 and nitrates 40.
Does anyone have any idea why the fish are dying.
There are no signs of whitespot etc and the others are swimmign about perfectly fine.
Thanks for any help

 

[rabbut]

Presumably, the water quality has remained perfect for the duration of the week uptill the losses?

If so, I can't see any caurse for deaths unless there is anything unusual. Nothing has coloured down, nothing hiding, gasping e.t.c?

All the best
Rabbut

 

[poohbear1]

Yep Ive been testing daily since I found the first dead fish and they have been fine.
No signs of anything at all on any of the fish.
On closer inspection there seems to be dust or someting covering the top of the filter, the heater and the bogwood Ive got.
Baffled me whats happened

 

[rdd1952]

When you only added the kribs after cycling, most all of your bacteria would have died off so adding 7 more fish would have caused a mini cycle. I doubt the ammonia or nitrite would have ever gotten high enough to kill the fish in that time frame though. It's possible they were injured when the LFS employee netted them. I've had fish that were dead when I got them home for that reason. Other than that, as rabbut mentioned, if the water parameters are and have been fine, I don't see anything that would be suspicious.

Edit: I posted the same time as your reply and now see that you started testing again after finding the dead fish. Although I said I doubted it was the cause, it is possible that the ammonia and nitrite were high enough last week and that killed the fish. How much/often were you feeding them?

 

[poohbear1]

When you only added the kribs after cycling, most all of your bacteria would have died off so adding 7 more fish would have caused a mini cycle. I doubt the ammonia or nitrite would have ever gotten high enough to kill the fish in that time frame though. It's possible they were injured when the LFS employee netted them. I've had fish that were dead when I got them home for that reason. Other than that, as rabbut mentioned, if the water parameters are and have been fine, I don't see anything that would be suspicious.

Edit: I posted the same time as your reply and now see that you started testing again after finding the dead fish. Although I said I doubted it was the cause, it is possible that the ammonia and nitrite were high enough last week and that killed the fish. How much/often were you feeding them?

Ive been feeding flakes once a day with some brine shrimp once a week to build up the female krib before I let them back together.
Ive been testing weekly up till now to make sure everythign is ok until everything is settled in the tank and the peramaters have been fine.

 

[rdd1952]

It's hard to tell what happened then. Sometimes you lose fish and never figure out why. When you do add new fish though, you should always test daily for the first 2 or 3 days just to make ure you don't get an ammonia spike.

 

[poohbear1]

Just an update from the 5 flame tetras I got only one is now alive and both plattys died.
However my kribs are both fine and getting big

 

[blackguppy]

Hi Pooh. While Kribs are a peaceful fish, breeding Kribs, or even just paired off Kribs, can be very territorial. It wouldn't surprise me if the fish had been bullied to death. They wouldn't always show marks from being hassled constantly. Just the stress of not being able to get away, is enough to kill them. I'd suggest going to a Kribs only tank. They're beautiful fish, and it's a joy to watch them raise their young in a tank by themselves.

 

[poohbear1]

The kribs are seperated cause the male was bullying the female.
And I know kribs can be territorially which is why I bought fish that stay near top of tank as kribs tend to stay at the bottom. And I never once noticed the kribs bullying the other fish.