New 20G Setup And Sick Fish

[Jenmar1024]

A couple of weeks ago my 9 year old daughter and I went to our local Petsmart for treats for our dog, she loves looking at the fish and talked me into going over and looking at them. Then I noticed a pretty good deal on a 20g tall start up kit, she begged and I caved and purchased the set along with other essentials not sold in the kit. We took it home followed the instructions and things were looking really good for 4 days so off we go back to the store to buy some fish.

We purchased:
2- Rosey Barbs
2- Tiger Barbs
1- Rainbow Shark

Within 3 days we lost one of the Rosy Barbs (he didn't look right as soon as he went into the tank, I did float the bag for about 30 mins before putting him in the tank), now 1 of the tiger barbs has buldging eyes and the other has a fuzzy greyish white film on him. I've been treating the tank with Erythrimycin (on the last day of treatment today) and Melafix as per the recommendations of the pet store "helper". I have seen very little to no improvement with the tiger barbs. As part of the treatment I have done a 25% w/c.

I purchased Jungle 5 in 1 Test Strips and I get the following readings:

No2 0 (safe)
No3 1.0 (stressed)
300 hardness (very hard)
180 Alkaline (ideal)
7.8 ph (alkaline)


During my initial set up I had ideal readings before adding the fish, now i'm getting stressed and high ph readings and 2 of my 4 remaining fish are sick. I honestly don't know what else to do for these poor fishies. Did they recommend the wrong products? What else can I do to save these little guys?

Thanks,
Jenn

 

[RossC]

Unfortunately it sounds like you got bad advice and didn't cycle your tank?

 

[fluttermoth]

Hi Jenmar, to the forum and I'm sorry to hear of your problems.

The trouble is that your tank is new and the filter isn't 'cycled'. That means it doesn't have any of the good bacteria you need to eat the fish's wastes for you, so that's building up in the water and making them sick.

First of all, as soon as you can do a very large water change. Switch off your heater and filter and drain nearly all the water out of the tank, leaving just enough water for the fish to swim upright. Then careful refill with warmed, dechlorinated water.

You'll probably have to do that every day for the next few weeks, until you have enough bacteria in the filter.

One thing you really do need is an ammonia test, and one for nitrite too, if you can. Don't trust the paper strips; first of all they don't test for ammonia which is what the fish excrete and which you need to be testing for everyday, but they're also not very accurate and can be misleading.

There are some really good articles in our beginner's resource centre (link is in my sig); the one on 'fish-in cycles' (which is what you're doing now) will be of most use to you right now.