Neon tetras

[aerdnna]

Hi, I set up a 5.5 gallon rectangular tank, with a filter for a 10 gallon tank. I put 5 neon tetras in it, then 5 ghost shrimp. Over the course of 3-4 days, all of the ghost shrimp died. I got an oto. 2 days and it died. The neons continued to seem fine. I had my water tested and it was high in ammonia. In an attempt to speed up lowering it, I did about a 40% water change (the tank had been set up for over a month, and had fish in it for a few weeks by then). The next day I saw what looked like cotton on all of the neons. So I got some Jungle brand tablets that treat ich, fungus, etc and treated the tank for 5 days like the box said. It is now day 6 and only one neon survived. I'm faced with a dilemma. I don't really want neons anymore, but I have this lone survivor. I don't feel comfortable looking for someone who has neons to take it because it was in a sick tank. I also don't want to put a new kind of fish in this tank that had sick fish recently. What are the chances the tank and fish are disease free after a course of the tablet medicine?

Should I just suck it up and get more neons and shrimp once my water tests show I've got my levels good?

I've had tropical fish before, but never been faced with anything that nearly wiped out my tank and never such a small tank

 

[Ch4rlie]

Hi and welcome. Sorry to hear of your losses.

Couple of questions before we continue any further, how exactly did you cycle this tank?
The point of cycling a tank is to get it ready to deal with ammonia which all fish and shrimps breathe and execrete ammonia 24 / 7.
Ammonia is toxic to all fish and shrimps so you need to cycle the tank in order to build up good bacteria to deal with ammonia. If the tank is not properly cycled, the fish and shrimps will simply get ill and die quickly if ammonia levels are too high for them to tolerate.

Have a read of this article, it will explain in more details and also gives instructions on how to do cycle a tank and filter - Cycling Your New Fresh Water Tank: Read This First!

Secondly, neon tetras will not be comfortable in a 5.5 gallon tank, the tank is too small for them to be honest am afraid. They need space as they are fairly active little fish. Neon Tetra - Paracheirodon innesi

According to that website (a site I use often as is fairly reliable on accurate information) you need a tank of at least a 60cm x 30cm rectangular tank, which is around 15 gals US.

And also tetras are soft water fish, meaning they prefer water parameters of up to 7.5 pH maximum, so if you have hard water then these soft water fish will not fare well. If you do not have a test kit for pH, you could take a sample of tap water to your LFS and they could test it for you, also you can chack your local water authority's website, they should have all the information regarding your tap water.
Once you have readings / results, you could post this on here and we then can help advise further.

Lastly, ghost shrimps, like any other shrimps really, can be fickle about water parameters especially if theres ANY ammonia in the water, they will not do very well if the water quaility is not very good. They need an established tank that has steady parameters.

EDIT - should have mentioned, if you do go onto your local water authority to see what the water hardness levels are, it will prove useful if you could also provide the gH (general hardness) and kH numbers al well as the pH levels, this will all help determine what species of fish would be more suitable for your water parameters.

 

[StevenF]

Also note that fore water changes in an established tank should be done about weekly. If ammonia or nitrite are high daily water changes are recommended.