Sudden Fish Deaths! Please Help!

[Sunny_16]

Hi,

In the last 4 days I have had 4 fish die. 1 Guppy, 2 Neon Tetras and a GBR.

The Guppies were introduced to the tank last week, after spending a week in my quarantine tank. All looked very healthy and happy (nice colour, no fin issues or red gills etc). I have checked my levels and all are fine (0 ammonia, nitrite and low nitrate, pH was same as normal too (around 7.6) The only variable I can think of is that the guppies were introduced, and the problem is, is that all of the fish look perfectly healthy until about 5 minutes before they die! Surely this is not a coincidence? I have had the neons for about 6 months and the GBR for about 4 months and all looked great until 4 days ago! These are actually the first fish I have ever lost, so I am a bit bewildered as to the cause.

I am very worried about the rest of the fish in my tank now, and I am not sure where to go from here. I do not want to add any medicines into the tank as I have no idea what these fish died of! For the minute I have done 2 50% water changes in the last 3 days, but I have still lost the last fish this morning.

Any suggestions as to the cause would be greatly appreciated!!

Please Help!

Clare x

 

[KittyKat]

1 week is not exactly long for quarantine, 4-6 weeks is usually recommended. Call up the place you got them from and ask if they've had any problems with their guppies.

 

[Sunny_16]

Thanks for your reply, do you recommend that in the mean time I take the guppies back out and into the quarantine tank then?

I was told that a week is long enough to quarantine them to see if there is anything wrong, because normally any problems will present themselves in this time frame. I will definitely be doing the 4-6 week thing now, thanks! I feel a bit stupid because I really thought I was trying to do everything right for my fish!
Do you have any ideas what the problem could be?

 

[Baccus]

I would check with the place you got the guppies and ask if they add salts to their tanks, many pet shops in my area have the guppies in with a bit of salt as they think that it's the only way to have good colour. I how ever keep my guppies in my normal tap water (not always an option I know but it hasn't done ours any harm and we literally end up with hundreds of them), if your quarantine tank had any salts in it or your normal tank did that the guppies weren't used to it might have killed them (or vise versa). To me it really sounds as if the guppies had been breed or kept in with a bit of salt, but that is just my opinion, at least it gives you an anvenue to investigate.
I should probably put here to that our guppies in normal old tap water have beautiful colours and the local pet shops can't believe I don't add salt to their tanks.

 

[KittyKat]

Leave them as they are now You are trying - that's the point! Everyone gets stuff wrong occasionally.

Sorry, no idea about the problem, but I did once have an LFS guppy wipe out half my stock with a disease it brought in (same happened to every fish near and in the guppy tanks in the LFS too). NEver found out what it was.. guppies are kinda known for sometimes carrying symptom-less diseases which wipe out whole established populations in one go, there are a few recorded cases of professional breeders losing all their stock that way.