New To Tropical Fish - A Few Problems

[Deryck]

My partner decided that she wanted a fish tank so bought a 25 litre tank with filters, pump, and heater. We set up the tank and allowed it to stand for a while before adding fish.

We started with five Rummy Nose Tetra and these seem to be doing well. Then we added a couple of the Orange Mollies, again they seem to be doing well. The last fish to be added were two Cory Panda, Bulldog Plec and two Guppies.

Within 48 hours one Cory had died and the shop replaced it. Then the following day the second Cory died. We have not replaced this yet. Now one of the Guppies it acting very strangely - at first itsat on the bottom, then it sat on the broad leaf of an immitation plant, and this morning she was on top of the pump outflow pipe. It did come off to feed. The first day it was in the Guppy was swimming strongly into the outflow water from the pump but on the second seemed to lack any energy.

The test kit showed the water was high in NH3 but OK on pH and NO2 and NO3. Awater change has brought e NH3 down but still need to come down further. I have added a boost to get the bacteria going.

Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong? or the causes of the problems with the Guppy?

Thanks

 

[paul_219]

What are the reading of the water stats ammonia nitrate and nitrite. Second your tank is very small to add this amount of fish in it. It is highly over stocked, so water is turning bad so that the fish are dying.

 

[Deryck]

The nitrate and nitrites were zero. The ammonia was high at 1.2. I will do another water change tomorrow or Thursday.

Try telling my other half about the number of fish - always seems to know better The local aquatics shop reckoned on about 15 when she first bought the tank. When I went in to buy the fish another assistant reckoned on ten fish maximum. You can never get the same answer. I must admit the mollies look a bit on the large side for the size of the tank. The tetra seem OK.

Another question to which I get different answers: how much food and how often? First it was was once a day and a good pinch of flake (when just tetra). The last answer was two flakes twice a day. The packaging says to feed as much as they will take in a few minutes. Cofused! I now have special foods as we have the bottom feeders although the mollies seem to get to it before the Cory

 

[maximinimus]

In a 25 litre tank you should be looking at a theoretical maximum stocking of 6.7 inches of fully-grown fish. That means you are currently very overstocked in an uncycled tank.

Check this link courtesy of Miss Wiggle:
http/www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...eady-have-fish/

 

[Corleone]

You should do water changes immediately, not tomorrow or Thursday - ammonia at this level can be fatal in a matter of hours to some fish, and will cause permanent gill damage is even hardy fish if it continues. 0.25 is the generally recommended limit of "necessary evil" for ammonia in a fish-in cycle.

For feeding, since your tank isn't cycled, I suggest feeded them once a day or even once every other day whatever they'll eat in 1-2 minutes. This is light, but it is enough to sustain them for a long time if necessary. Fish don't need much food (people are used to eating a lot because most of what we eat gets burned up just keeping our body temperature where it belongs. Fish are cold blooded, so they don't burn energy like mammals do), and reduced feeding helps keep ammonia and nitrite levels down during the cycle (less food in, less poop out). When the tank is stable, once a day for 2-4 minutes.

As other said, the tank is very overstocked, and chances are the ammonia will never settle - the tank will remain in an effectively permanent cycle, and you'll have to do water changes accordingly - daily or more, as much as it takes to control ammonia levels. Even with a small tank, you'll be sick of it in no time. Not to mention that even under control, long term exposure to small amounts of ammonia will still take its toll in the form of gill damage, shortened lives, and reduced resistance to illness.

5x Rummy Nose: 10"
2x Orange Mollies: 6"
2x Cory Panda: 4"
Bulldog Plec: 4"
Guppies: 4"

As a bare minimum, I'd suggest a 20 gallon tank for the current stock - 1.5" per gallon in a mature tank is often possible, sometimes 2" per gallon with very good filtration, a religious maintenance routine, and a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder won't hurt. A 29 would be a bit better - after everything's sorted and a few months down the road you could add a bit to it. Something else to consider, rummy nose, panda corys, and some fancy guppies aer quite sensitive and probably won't make it through a cycle in good shape, if at all. The behavior you described in your guppy sounds like stress, which is to be expected with high ammonia levels.

What "boost" did you add? The bulk of bottled bacteria products are worthless or nearly so, and the few good ones are often unreliable. The best ones need to be refrigerated and are vulnerable to improper storage or transportation. Mature filter media from another tank could help, however, if the filter won't be able to keep up with the waste produced, you could dump all good bacteria in the filter you could find and it still might never catch up.

 

[locust267]

Ideally take all the fish back and follow a fishless cycle.

As stated above you are highly overstocked and I doubt any of these fish will pull through.

What test kit are you using?

Vicki

 

[Deryck]

Ideally take all the fish back and follow a fishless cycle.

As stated above you are highly overstocked and I doubt any of these fish will pull through.

What test kit are you using?

Vicki

I am using the Interpet Liquid Master Test Kit to test for water parameters and I added a dose of the Tetra Safe Start to boost the bacteria. The water is treated with Easy Life Fluid Filter Media to treat the water before adding to the tank. All were recommended by the shop.

 

[Corleone]

All were recommended by the shop.

This doesn't mean it's good - shops also recommned products like PH-Up and PH-Down, which put your tank at serious risk of fatal pH fluctuations.

Anyway, you've got one problem here, in that you're not using a dechlorinator. You're using a bottled bacteria product and whatever Easy-Life is considered... Safe Start is highly unlikely to work, but won't hurt either way.

I can't find any good word on Easy-Life, but it claims to perform thirteen consecutive miracles on your water quality, which is a huge red flag. The fact that you still have ammonia readings with it means that at least one of its claims is false. It claims to treat bacteria and parasites, one site about it claims it kills algae, it's a stress coat, a fertilizer, a bottled bacteria product (most of which as I said are junk), a color enhancer, an ammonia remover, neutralizes tanins and cloudiness in the water, and one site claims it prevents aggression... For all the stuff it says it does, it doesn't say it removes chlorine.

There's one chemical you need, and that's something to remove chlorine. That might explain why you still have no nitrite at all.

Your test kit is good though.

 

[Deryck]

Mmmm .. the information from the shops online details the Easy Life FFM should do the following:

Improving Water Quality
Fish become more agile, eat more and show brighter colours
Fish get a stronger physical resistance and become less prone to disease
Prevents bacterial infections
Lowers the mortality rate of very sensitive fish considerably
Eliminates and prevents stress
Makes water crystal clear
Removes heavy metals, ammonium, medication residue, pesticides and other chemicals
Removes chlorines and chloramines (freshwater)
Protects the fishes slime coat
Removes harmful bacteria
Assists healing wounds, sticky fins, fin rot and inflammations
Accelerates growth of useful bacteria
Prevents algae build up
Promotes breeding
Removes smells
Stimulates plant growth
Accelerates growth of young fry
Improves the opening and growth of corals
Makes biofilters perform better and last longer
Adds no chemical or biological substances to the water.

I quite understand the need to remove chlorine from the water as the fish will not tolerate this so I was sold this to address several issues with having a tropical tank. Is there a test kit for chlorine? I could ask our labs at work to test a sample for chlorine.

I changed 50% water last night and will do the same again tonight to see what that does for the NH3.

The guppy was swimming quite happily last night when the food was put in but was lethargic again this morning.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[Corleone]

Adds no chemical or biological substances to the water. [/i]

None of the sites I turned up mentioned that, though I bolded another part. The easylife.nl website also goes so far to say it "does not contain any chemicals, bacteria or other organic additives" which, to be pedantic, says the bottle is empty. So, that in mind, either it can't do most of the things it claims to do (which would require chemicals or organic compounds), or it's a chemical soup.

Many of the things it says it does it's often recommended to avoid using chemicals for, others such as its medicinal properties should be used for treatment rather than prevention, and many others are accomplished by simple filtration. Filter carbon (which itself isn't necessary but doesn't hurt) does many of them, others are accomplished by water changes which are nearly free. A plain drop-per-gallon dechlorinator like Prime will do the job cheaper. Your fish's current behavior and your tank's ammonia readings should both show that it's not doing several of the things it claims.

Jungle Labs does make a chlorine test. It's part of their 6-in-1 strips. I don't know how accurate the chlorine test is, but the nitrite, nitrate, and hardness tests are pretty lousy on the kit. It should at least suffice to give you a positive or negative on the chlorine.

The lethargy is likely from water quality, high ammonia can cause lethargy, loss of appetite, and laying at the bottom or gasping at the surface.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I agree with the above, generally anything which claims to perform miracles is snake oil and useless.

The thing is, from your water test readings we can tell that it is not performing the bacterial functions which it claims to do, so we have factual evidence that it's not working on one of the grounds it say's, for me that's enough to cast doubt over everything else.

As Corleone say's you need a dechlorinator, while you can test for chlorine it's not really necessary to do so. Dechlorinator is cheap as anything, it's nigh on impossible to dose with and virtually every sort of water supply uses either chlorine, chloramine or both. So most people just use it and have done with it. However if you work in some sort of scientific environment and wish to get the water tested then I'm sure they can do it for you.

One important thing to bear in mind if you do this is that water quality from your tap fluctuates, water companies may decide to start/stop doing something and won't give you any warning, equipment can malfunction and cause changes in the water. So don't assume that because you have tested it once and it gives one set of readings that it will be the same on any other day.

The main issue to look at here is that the tank is not cycled, the link provided earlier explains all this and what you need to do. You basically have two choices for now

1 - return all the fish to the store and do a fishless cycle (there's a link on this in my sig)

2 - persevere with a cycle with fish, this will mean daily water changes for several weeks and it's also highly likley that fish will become ill and may well die during this period. Even if they do not die they will most likley be left with permanent damage to their respiratory systems which can mean an early death or that the fish will be susceptible to illlnesses for their whole life.

The overstocking won't be an immediate issue as the fish will be juveniles, but if you choose not to return the fish now (or of course upgrade the tank to a larger one) you basically have a time bomb on your hands, even if you get all the fish past the cycle with no major issues then at some point in the future the filter will start to struggle with the load of fish and the fish will grow to a popint where they are cramped in to the tank. You'd be amazed how set up's like this can run for ages completely trouble free then overnight it all goes to pot and generally by the time you realise the damage has been done. I've known people to loose every single fish in the tank this way. They'll contract some sort of disease/infection and ecause they're cramped and the filter's not coping you just can't cure it (like imagine trying to treat diseases in a crowded unclean third world hospital..... you can imagine the consequences of the environment) and loose all the fish.

So while it's probably not gonna be a problem immediatley, and the cycling is the primary concern right now, you do need to think seriously about the stocking before it is too late.

 

[Deryck]

I will investigate the use of other dechlorinators.

The more that I read from you guys, the more I get the feeling that my partner was sold a pup! I was with her when she bought the tank - she asked the questions of stocking the tank, heating requirements, planting, etc. She originally wanted a cold water tank, but the guy in the shop said that tropicals were easier. They don't seem overly difficult to keep but I don't think that the while truth was forthcoming - after a week or two it seemed to be a never ending "You'll need this", or "You'll need that". And this is a well respected aquatics shop in the Midlands! Never two answers the same!

As you can tel I am frustrated by the shop! I want the fish to survive and be healthy, so I will do all I can for them.

Thanks.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I will investigate the use of other dechlorinators.

The more that I read from you guys, the more I get the feeling that my partner was sold a pup! I was with her when she bought the tank - she asked the questions of stocking the tank, heating requirements, planting, etc. She originally wanted a cold water tank, but the guy in the shop said that tropicals were easier. They don't seem overly difficult to keep but I don't think that the while truth was forthcoming - after a week or two it seemed to be a never ending "You'll need this", or "You'll need that". And this is a well respected aquatics shop in the Midlands! Never two answers the same!

As you can tel I am frustrated by the shop! I want the fish to survive and be healthy, so I will do all I can for them.

Thanks.

sadly it's an all too common problem

ultimatley a fish shop is a business, sadly in this business poor advice pays, if you don't tell people how to do it right at the start they'll have all sorts of problems and come back to buy all sorts of other products to fix it, they'll probably loose fish and come back to buy replacements too. if you give good advise on fishless cycling from the off then all they'll buy is one lot of fish, dechlor and a test kit...... not very profitable.

cynical maybe but we've seen it too many times on here. if you have a poke around this forum you'll see virtually every day someone is on in a very similar situation to you.

have a good old poke around the pinned topics, i've a selection of useful ones linked in my sig that you can have a read of. feel free to ask any questions and we'll do everything you can to get things sorted.