What Did I Do Wrong?

[alli still]

I have lost two bristle nosed catfish in the last week. The first, a day after we bought it, the second, a week afterwards.
It's a new tank, 5 weeks, but the waters have been tested and levels are good. They were being fed 3 x a week with Hikari sinking wafers, 2 at a time.
Other fish in the 45 litre tank include 8 tetras and 2 guppies.

Any ideas would be more than welcome. Thank you.

Alli

 

[lilacamy931]

Hello just some questions to clarify, can we have your water stats for ph, ammonia, nitrate, nitrites, figures are always best to work with

How did you cycle the tank?

Were they eating well from what you could see?

 

[jacko9901]

how big where they? usually when you buy smaller ones they are more fickle and are more sensitive to illness.

hope this helps

 

[alli still]

Hello just some questions to clarify, can we have your water stats for ph, ammonia, nitrate, nitrites, figures are always best to work with

How did you cycle the tank?

Were they eating well from what you could see?

Not sure I will be able to give you too much info as I took the water to my local aquarium centre who tested it all for me. Ammonia was 0ppm, that I do know. The Ph is approx 8.5 from a test strip.

The one that died last night was eating well, the other one didn't seem right from the start.

As for cycling, I read up before we got the tank and there seemed to be alot of different ideas on what should be done and when. I went with the DVD that came with the tank which said to add aqua safe and easy balance and a live culture of bacteria into the filter who I think were from Hikari. Two weeks later we added the tetras and then a week later the guppies.

I hope this helps and sorry to be so vague, I really am one of those beginners who is being completely bamboozled by everything!
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

how big where they? usually when you buy smaller ones they are more fickle and are more sensitive to illness.

hope this helps

Thank you, they were approx 3.5cm.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there!

Well its a hard call because it could have been just those two particular fish by the sound of it... and at 5 weeks of having fish in there your filter may have managed to cycle, so your water parameters may actually turn out to look ok, but...

I'll tell you one of the funny things about this hobby: it turns out, no matter how nice and friendly and helpful your store folks are, that its just one of the baseline things of the hobby that you really need to learn about and do water testing yourself. The water is just too important and the several ways in which store testing can go wrong just happen too often. Sometimes they are using the wrong or outdated types or ages of test kits. Sometimes they "soften" the message the tests give when they tell you the "results."

We try to tell all our beginners here to get a good liquid-reagent based testing kit. The one I and many others like and use is the API Freshwater Master Test Kit, which includes tests for ammonia, nitrite(NO2), pH and nitrate(NO3), all of which are liquid based tests, with enough drops to last a long time. Its not that a good aquarist can't tell lots of the same info by watching his/her fish, but that as a beginner the test kit and numbers allow you to put some physical reality to the skills you need to learn and the knowledge you are trying to master about the connection between your water and the fish.

Besides getting a good kit the other thing I'd recommend for you is to start your studies by doing some initial reading in our Beginners Resource Center (here in the "New to the Hobby" section) and start with the Nitrogen Cycle, the Fishless Cycle and the Fish-In cycle. Your water parameters may test out to be pretty good now, 5 weeks later, but there's a good chance that poor water parameters might have contributed to the demise of your Bristles and may have also shortened the lives of your remaining fish even though they look fine for now. It just never hurts to understand...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[alli still]

Hi there!

Well its a hard call because it could have been just those two particular fish by the sound of it... and at 5 weeks of having fish in there your filter may have managed to cycle, so your water parameters may actually turn out to look ok, but...

I'll tell you one of the funny things about this hobby: it turns out, no matter how nice and friendly and helpful your store folks are, that its just one of the baseline things of the hobby that you really need to learn about and do water testing yourself. The water is just too important and the several ways in which store testing can go wrong just happen too often. Sometimes they are using the wrong or outdated types or ages of test kits. Sometimes they "soften" the message the tests give when they tell you the "results."

We try to tell all our beginners here to get a good liquid-reagent based testing kit. The one I and many others like and use is the API Freshwater Master Test Kit, which includes tests for ammonia, nitrite(NO2), pH and nitrate(NO3), all of which are liquid based tests, with enough drops to last a long time. Its not that a good aquarist can't tell lots of the same info by watching his/her fish, but that as a beginner the test kit and numbers allow you to put some physical reality to the skills you need to learn and the knowledge you are trying to master about the connection between your water and the fish.

Besides getting a good kit the other thing I'd recommend for you is to start your studies by doing some initial reading in our Beginners Resource Center (here in the "New to the Hobby" section) and start with the Nitrogen Cycle, the Fishless Cycle and the Fish-In cycle. Your water parameters may test out to be pretty good now, 5 weeks later, but there's a good chance that poor water parameters might have contributed to the demise of your Bristles and may have also shortened the lives of your remaining fish even though they look fine for now. It just never hurts to understand...

~~waterdrop~~

Thank you for all the advice, very much appreciated.

 

[arobinson1984]

A lot of good advice given by waterdrop there, a couple of other things

1. Does your filter have zeolite in it?
2. Have you performed regular water changes over the last 5 weeks, if so how often and how much each time?
3. I personally wouldn't put any bn plecs in a 45l tank, it's not big enough in my opinion

also as wd said, you need to get yourself a good liquid based test kit, ideally the API freshwater master kit as mentioned. You need to be able to test your water at the drop of a hat so you should have your own at home, also if your fish stores uses the test strips then I certainly wouldn't rely on their results as the test strips can regularly be inaccurate

Andy