New Starter And All My Barbs Are About To Die

[funkyboots]

Hi, am a newbie to fish keeping. Have set up a cold water tank (was second hand) have left it to cycle for 2 weeks and water tested. water test kit shows that water is ok. I let the fish stay in the bag for 15 mins added some of the tank water to bag. Within minutes one of the barbs died. Gave it another 10 mins and added some more tank water to the bag and the remaining 5 just huddled at the bottom. Did another addition for 5 minutes then let the fish all out as I wasn't sure if it was me just stressing them keep messing with the bag. Now all of the fish have disappeared to the bottom of the tank. I can only see one and it doesn't look very well to me.
What have I done wrong here???
Is it possible my tank is too cold, the room where it's kept is not particularly warm and I'm pretty sure the tanks at the aquarium were warmer.
Any advice please???
Should I take the one out thats in and give it a quick ending??? I only say that as I don't want it to suffer needlessly

 

[mike455555]

someone will correct me if im wrong but i thought barbs were tropical fish.. you could of just given them a shock to the system which made them die... although even if they are tropical fish they shouldn't die straight away (it would be from there immune system failing because there metabolic rates would have slowed down)

id see how it does it might pull threw

 

[fluttermoth]

While some barbs prefer cooler water than many tropical fish, I can't think of any that would live happily in a totally unheated tank, especially in the winter.

Temperature shock could have killed them pretty quickly, mike.

What species of barb were they, OP?

 

[funkyboots]

I was told the cherry barbs are cold water and when I searched online it had said cold water but I'm thinking that maybe the water is still to cold as it's reading 12c at the mo. so gutted. I can see 2 but they are barely moving

 

[mike455555]

Temperature shock could have killed them pretty quickly, mike.

yes but he still conditioned them... so it wouldn't be a massive shock straight away? that's whats getting me. if he threw them in from one temp water to another then there would be a big shock. but they would have been cooling down in the bag on the way back from the pet store then slowly introduced to the tank they wouldn't have had that shock?

 

[Akasha72]

agreeing here. I've never heard of barbs in cold water ... I thought they were all tropical. I did a water change today and the cold water out of the tap was seriously icy. I took nearly 2 litre's (double the usual) of boiling water to warm it up

 

[onidrase]

I was told the cherry barbs are cold water and when I searched online it had said cold water but I'm thinking that maybe the water is still to cold as it's reading 12c at the mo. so gutted. I can see 2 but they are barely moving

Most certainly not cold water fish. Cherry barbs like the water is 24-27c. It was certainly the temperature that got to them. You'll need a heater if you want to keep tropical fish in that tank. Or just get a goldfish or two depending on the tank size instead.

 

[Akasha72]

12 degree's ... woah. I'd be going straight to the kettle and boiling some water

 

[mike455555]

id get a heater if i were you wider range of fish and plants

 

[funkyboots]

Really cross now, even told the guy at the shop that it's a cold water tank with no heater n he said to get the cherry barbs. They even went as far to say any fish labelled with a blue sticker are fine for cold water. Thats 6 fish thats are going to die needlessly and my little girl who is going to be really upset

I have very little money so if I was going to buy and run a heater it would have to be really cheap

 

[Akasha72]

welcome to the world of local fish stores that want your money and don't care about animal welfare

 

[mike455555]

how bigs your tank? heaters dont cost that much.

 

[funkyboots]

it's 45 litre
I tried really hard to go to somehwere that wouldn't be like that but seems my efforts were in vain

 

[Akasha72]

if he warmed the water up with some hot and wrapped the tank up for the night surely the barbs may get through the night until the shops open in the morning?

 

[Rummynose]

Is there some way you could get a heater and slowly raise the temperature in the tank? You set the temperature of the heater and it will keep it stable at that setting. So you still could do a coldwater tank, the heater will just insure that the temperature does not drop to such low levels to hurt your fish. In the meantime, not sure how the more experienced fish keepers feel about that, I wonder if you could float some bags with warm water in your tank to get the temp a little up? (like the opposite to cooling tank water down in the summer with floating bags of icecubes)

When you say the water parameters are OK, you do mean Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0 and Nitrate between 5 and 15?