Entire tank wiped out after WC

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confusedfishmom

Aquarium Advice Freak
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Feb 2, 2014
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I'm so devastated, my husband did a WC while I was out of town and our entire tank was dead the next day. 4 neons, 4 cochu blue tetras, 2 ottos, 2 rummynose tetras. We have one neon and one oto left. He feels awful too and isn't sure what happened. Has anyone experienced something like this? We've had the tank going for 2 years but several of the fish were new but it just seems it has to have been the WC. It was a 25% WC. Ammonia was at like .25-.5 before WC. All the levels were good after WC. Ugh this stinks! :( ETA: he did not test the PH so I don't know if that might be a factor.
 
I'm so devastated, my husband did a WC while I was out of town and our entire tank was dead the next day. 4 neons, 4 cochu blue tetras, 2 ottos, 2 rummynose tetras. We have one neon and one oto left. He feels awful too and isn't sure what happened. Has anyone experienced something like this? We've had the tank going for 2 years but several of the fish were new but it just seems it has to have been the WC. It was a 25% WC. Ammonia was at like .25-.5 before WC. All the levels were good after WC. Ugh this stinks! :( ETA: he did not test the PH so I don't know if that might be a factor.
Why was there .25-.5 ammonia before the water change?
 
I'm wondering what the temperature differential was between the tank water and the tap water.
 
I agree, hopefully when OP gets back to us with more info it will become obvious.
 
Did he use water conditioner to take out the chloramine and chlorine?



He says that he did but its hard to believe. He's done these 100+ times but he had been traveling so I'm wondering if he forgot from exhaustion.
 
My feeling is he forgot to add conditioner. I have done that a time I realized after the second bucket already in that I did not condition the previous two buckets. Imagine if high chlorine in tap could cause that. Luckily mine has very low so I was good.
 
Also want to add that is a high level of ammonia especially at prolonged periods. I would add some kind of ammonia remover in your filter. It is not good
 
Did you test for Chlorine after the losses?



I don't think we have a test kit for that. I think we've got nitrite; nitrate; ph and one other that I'm blanking on but I don't think is chlorine. I'll check when I get home though.
 
Also want to add that is a high level of ammonia especially at prolonged periods. I would add some kind of ammonia removed in your filter. It is not good
[emoji106] ammonia in tap causes many issues, leaves little room for error.
 
I don't think we have a test kit for that. I think we've got nitrite; nitrate; ph and one other that I'm blanking on but I don't think is chlorine. I'll check when I get home though.



The tetra test strips would have. Should have at your lfs
 
Check your heater. If the water level dropped and it wasnt turned off, then it could have broke which has the potential to kill fish.

Other things to look at:
1 - contamination of the bucket. Is it used for anything but fish?

2 - Signs of infection? Some nasty strains of bacteria are dangerous enough to wipe a tank in a few hours.

Its unlikely that a temperature fluctuation caused the deaths of an entire tank, tap cold water woth a 25% change just isnt gonna cause enough of a fluctuation. Maybe 1 or 2 fish, but not a whole tank.
 
Thanks Mebbid and everyone else. I have two suspicions. 1) rapid illness; or 2) water company/water changes from the aquifer that our local water comes from. We have a water softener and I'm also wondering if we are not providing important minerals for the fish and the water played a role in their deaths. The only survivor was an oto we've had for years and is frankly the hardiest fish of all we've had). I've since added 2 Bolivian Rams to the tank and they've done fine. Everyone else is in a QT tank waiting to go to the main tank. Fingers crossed. Hard lesson learned, but QT is part of my new fish routine from now on
 
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