Im Soo Confused! Lol

[top_boy_taz]

ok hello lol
basically what it is i have had my tank for about 3 to 4 months now and i only wanted it because i wanted a red tail shark...lol when i had bought the tank i had set it up according to what i was told and i had bought a load of fish 2 weeks after...the fish that i had bought were:
- 2 silver sharks
- 1 black red tail shark
- 1 blue red tail shark
- Sucker fish (i think they're caled plecs)
- 6 neon tetras

ok basically all them fish are now dead! in the 1st day the blue red tail shark had ate all the neons!

the rest of the fish i dont really know what had happend i had woke up and they were at the top of the tank floating 1 by 1

the suker fish was the only survivor and i had bought a siamese fighter fish and a talking catfish i currently only have them 2 alive!

the suker fish i had woke up and noticed it was missing and i was lookign around the tank and realised it had been ripped to shreads and bits of it were all over the tank.

whilst i had the sucker fish in the tank, the water wud get cloudy and i would have to do water changes but since it has gone the water hasnt become cloudy not once.

so my question to you is have yu any ideas on how to get over this problem and also what sort of "shark" species culd i have with the two remaing fish i have?

oh yeah also anyone in wolverhampton, uk know of any good tropical fish retail stores! lol

thank you

Tarun

 

[Davo86]

Hi Tarun

ok firstly what size is the tank?
secondly a tank needs to be cycled before you add fish, especially the number that you added
if you just keeping adding fish to an uncycled tank they will simply keep dying.

I'm studying at Wolves uni atm but i don't know of any aquatic stores in the area so can't help you there,
(you may even be able to help me with that, Lol)

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, looks like a straightforward case of not knowing about cycling info.

Looks like Davo's got you covered. It can take a while to get your head into the weird ideas but you've come to the right place find it all out.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[top_boy_taz]

thank you both for your replies just another question...whats cycling lol...and for pet stores around wolverhampton i have found 1 called Dolittles which is abit out of wolverhampton and also one next to PC world calle Pets for home or soomething like that. hope that helps

 

[waterdrop]

When you buy a filter at the LFS, its just a piece of hardware meant to be cycled by a hobbyist who knows the process.

Unlike humans, when fish respire, they give off ammonia in addition to CO2 from their gills. In nature, this ammonia is immediately diluted by millions of gallons of fresh water. This gill ammonia, along with fish waste, excess fish food and plant debris all produce too high a level of ammonia in a fish tank. Different species have different sensitivities to ammonia but on average an ammonia level higher than 0.25ppm (parts per million) (or mg/l, same thing in our case) causes permanent gill damage to most fish, either shortening their lives or killing them.

Cycling is the process of growing two specific species of bacteria in the aquarium filter in order to process this ammonia out of the water. The first species will eat the ammonia and change it into nitrite(NO2.) Nitrite is unfortunately also a deadly poison to fish, damaging their blood hemoglobin and suffocating them, quickly causing permanent nerve damage which, like ammonia leads to shortened lives or death.

The second species of bacteria we grow will eat the nitrite(NO2) and change it into nitrate(NO3) which, thankfully, is much less of a poison to fish although its not generally a good thing in a tank. We can remove the nitrate(NO3) with weekly water changes.

OK, so all this is implementing the "Nitrogen Cycle" of nature, a part of environmental science, when you study that.

I'll let other members take up the story from here...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[top_boy_taz]

thank you soo much lol i got another black red tail shark and the fighter fish keeps chasing it lol but the black red tail makes it look like such a numpty! lol thanks agen really appreciate it!

 

[OldMan47]

Tarun, something that WD did not bring up is that you never replace any fish during a fish-in cycle. It will just make your water change job harder by making you change more water more often. If you haven't already found the thread about fish-in cycling, there is a link to it in my signature area. Please read through it and then feel free to come back and ask any questions you still have.