Starting Up

[hobby57]

Hi after many years away from tropical fish i have just started up again,bought my self a tank 60lt pump,heater,filter pump all cleaned out put in coloured stones and lava rock,and sunken ship inside set it up and all looked well left it running a few days temp looked good every thing working fine, went with some water sample to shop to get it teasted first before getting any fish all checked out ok so i bought 10 guppy's did as they said and as i read in books flot them in the tank for 30 mins added water from my tank and let stand again for another 20 mins, netted them out and put into tank emptying water they camr in away, great all looked good till about 3 hours then went to bed got up next morning and all was dead? we dont know why. went back to shop and asked them if they know what was wrong and they didnt know,said it might be coloured stones or larva rock and i asked him for his advice he said start again from scrach and put sand in insted of the coloud stones, we bought some sand the right sand what they had stripped tank out cleaned it again cleaned allequipment put in sand and heater filter air stone re filled it and left it for another 3 days took sample in and had it tested again some thing as before every thing looked good so bought just 2 guppy's repeted the same way of interducing them and they looked good keeped my eye on them and as before with in 4 hours they acted strange and shortly after they died as well. was hopeing some one could throw some light in my problem. many thanks .... hobby57

 

[Gvilleguy]

Hi hobby - welcome to the forum, and I'm sorry you are having so much trouble. I have a few concerns and questions for you.

1. If you are willing to do so, you should consider trying to prepare your tank with a fishless cycle, where you feed ammonia into your tank, without fish, and let the helpful bacteria that we need in your filter grow. This process can take weeks to complete. If you go to the beginner's resource area you can read up on it.

2. If you do not do a fishless cycle, then you will find yourself in a fish-in cycle, where your fish are causing ammonia and nitrite levels to build up in the tank water, requiring you to do frequent water changes to keep them from getting ill.

3. However, in your case, there is no way that the fish were in there long enough to build up bad levels of ammonia or nitrite. Something else is going on here. It sounds like you even did a decent acclimation process before putting them in your tank. So I think we will need a little more information:

A. What size is the tank? 60 litres?
B. What temperature is the tank?
C. Was the tank new or used?
D. Would you be able to buy a water test kit to check for ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/pH levels? API makes a great freshwater test kit that gives you hundreds of tests for the money. This could tell us if your water source has unhealthy levels of ammonia/nitrite/nitrates, which sometimes can happen.

 

[coolie]

I wonder if there's some electrical short causing such rapid deaths?

 

[Aquascaper]

Did you treat the tapwater you used?

 

[london_wayne]

what did you clean the tank with