Why Do My Fish Keep Dying?

[naya69]

i have a medium size tank and have never had a problem with keep troical fish but my fish started dying off so for a while i only had two fish a upside down catfish and 1 barb. so before i got more fish i did a full tank clean out cleaning everything ad put some tap safe in my water to get rid of any harmful things that could be in my tap water i then went out and bought some more barbs and guppies and a sieamese fighter male but over the next week my guppies started to die untill there was none left and so did my figher so i left it and now my barbs died except one i noticed my heater was broke and the water was quite warm so i went out and bought a new heater and keep checking on the temp which is staying at 80 i added a plec and 4 guppies and over the caurse of 2 days 3 of my guppies died i just dont know what iam doing wrong please help i would love to have a tank full of bright colourful fish but they keep dying

i for got to add in my tank i have 2 plastic plants, a few rocks 1 live plant, cement castle, gravel, heater, filter and when i found my fish their mouths were wide open like they were gasping for air ??

 

[Assaye]

In order for us to help, we need to know a few things:

What size is the tank?

How long has it been set up for?

Do you know what "cycling" is, have you done it and if so, how?

Do you have test kits for ammonia and nitrite, and if you do, could you post your most recent results?


To be honest, this sounds like ammonia or nitrite poisoning. In laymans terms, ammonia is fish wee and is really, really toxic to them. Imagine living in a toilet - it's like that, but way, way worse for fish. Cycling a filter is a way of building up loads of friendly bacteria that save your fish by eating the ammonia. In an unhealthy tank, there are not enough of these natural, friendly bacteria and so your fish die in their own waste.

This is a problem when tanks are newly set up and/or have too many fish and/or the owner adds too many fish at once (which I think you have done) and/or when there isn't a filter on the tank. There are a few other reasons, such as powercuts which stop the filter working for a while.

If you only had two fish in the tank, then added a group of barbs, a group of guppies and a siamese fighter, then I can assure you that even if this didn't kill the fish, it really, really didn't help and would have killed them eventually anyway.

Fishkeeping is a waiting game. Unless you do a fish-less cycle by adding ammonia yourself without any fish in the tank, you can't add all your fish at once and even then, the tank needs to be empty for a month or two before you can put fish into it.

Check this out - Beginners' Resource Centre

I know you have kept tropicals for a little while, but doing things in the way that actually is best for the fish is often the last thing that pet shops will advise. Sometimes they just don't know any better, sometimes the staff are forbidden from giving good advice (been there) and sometimes they are sort of hoping the fish die so you'll get new ones. Getting advice from friends with fish also leads to the same problems, as many of them will have recieved the advice from bad pet shops. Even if they did get good advice, they might have been impatient or forgotten some things and given you bad advice.

You should also be aware the siamese fighting fish are generally really bad community fish and also tend to fight guppies. They are best kept in their own tank of about 30 litres, 15 litres as an absolute minimum (and I'd say only do that if you really know what you are doing because as strange as it sounds, the smaller the tank, the harder it is to look after).

I hope this has been some help. Please check out the link. Any major disparities between how you do things and how it is recommended there may well be a contributing factor to your fish dying.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Naya.
Let me suggest your next step. Stop buying more fish. You need to get your chemistry under control before you add any fish. You also need to get the tank temperature under control. It sounds like right now you only have a guppy and maybe something else, I sort of lost track. By doing a full tank clean, you have probably destroyed the bacterial colony that was present to process ammonia in your tank water. Each time that you add a fish, you increase the need to process ammonia, but there is nothing there to do it.
As long as you have a living fish, you are in a fish-in cycle which means that you need to control the ammonia and the nitrite in your tank by doing water changes using your Tapsafe for the new water. What you do is simple but can be a lot of work. You measure the ammonia and nitrites present in the water using a liquid type test kit. Any amount over 0.25 ppm of either chemical means it is time for a large water change, I don't even bother with a change of less than 50%. If you have truly high levels, like say a whole 1 ppm, you do a really large water change of no less than 75% of the water and test again an hour later. If things are still high, repeat the water change. Once you can see ammonia and nitrites staying at zero by themselves, you can ease off the water changes and take a look at your stocking at the time. This process is not finished in a week or two but often can take as much as 2 months before you can add the next fish.
If you still have 2 live fish, you could then add one or two fish of similar size and then test again for the next few days. Assuming all goes well, you can add more fish once a week until you get to a proper stocking level for your tank. There is a link in my signature area to a thread that treats the subject in more detail called Fish-in Cycle.

 

[drobbyb]

I'd have to agree with the advice given. Keeping fish isn't really about fish at all, it's about the bacteria that break down their waste. Until those bacteria exist in a population that can support a group of fish, you are just wasting your time and money buying new fish.

 

[naya69]

hi thanks for your replys what great info you all have given me i had no idea about water cycling and all the other stuff how silly do i feel so ive added your water cycling page as my frav and iam gonna read if fully tonite when i have more time then tomorrow iam going to the pet shop for my water tester kit and any other stuff that i will need and iam gonna make sure my water is suitable for me to add more fish.heres a pic of my tank which measures 12 inch wide, 31 1/2 inch long, 14 1/2 deep. i still have 1 guppie, 1 upside down catfish, 1 barb and 1 very small plec.

 

[Assaye]

Don't worry too much, naya69. You're in safe hands here and as long as you sort the tank out now you have many years of happy, knowledgeable fishkeeping ahead of you =)

I would say, however, that you might need to rehome your plec. Do you know what kind it is? The problem with plecs is that many that are commonly sold are actually really big, dirty fish that need a whopping 400 litres or more! Can you post a picture? Do you know if he is a common, sailfin or gibbiceps plec? These are the most common large plecs and are often sold to people who don't have tanks big enough for them. They also poop a lot so getting your tank stable with one of those guys in it will be pretty tricky!

If he is one of these, the best thing you can do is take him back to the store, or give him to someone with a 400+ litre tank. It's best to do it before you get too attached. It's easy to say "I'll just get a bigger tank" but you never know what will happen in the future.

Hope we've helped! Good luck with your tank.