My worst fish stocking experience ever... what's yours?

[cgcaver]

Wow... do I have a story to tell here!

1) I plant my tank, and wait patiently for weeks on end for the plants to get to a point where I feel they are "done."

2) I save a large amount of money to populate my tank.

3) I test water religiously and am pleased with the nearly perfect water conditions day in and day out.

4) I proceed to spend about $150 on 92 Neon Tetras for my tank (it was already cycled), and stock my tank. (Wednesday, Aug 10) I orginally wanted an Mbuna tank, but I didn't want the cichlids to tear up my plants too bad; so I figured Neons would look great too.

5) I PICK DEAD NEONS OUTTA MY TANK AT LEAST TWICE A DAY - every day since last Wed.

On average, I have 7 Neons dying every day. However that average is a little misleading. In actuality, I have about 4 dying every day... but on days that I do a water change (I've been having to do a lot lately because of a constant green-water problem, and trying to get my ferts situatued), I have about 8-9 die in total.

Seriously, it's ridiculous. I do a 50% WC, and you'd think I was running a Nazi gas chamber. About half of them float around the surface acting like they're on death's doorstep, but most of them seem to recover. However, 4-5 usually don't.

No, I don't have any other fauna in the tank that would be killing/eating them. No, they don't have Ich, NTD, misshaped spines, etc. - they look absolutely fine when they die. Yes, their color looks perfectly normal. Yes, they behave perfectly normal, until about 15-30 mins before they die, then they start to break away from the school, kinda float around the tank (usually near the surface), and are bellyup-at-the-bottom-of-my-tank-dead within an hour for sure. Yes, my water params are IDEAL for neon tetras; I test religiously:

gH: 2
kH: 7
pH: usually 7.0 -/+ .2
NH4: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 5-10
PO4: 1-2
Temp: 75F

The ONLY thing I can think of to blame this on is pH shifts caused by water changes. My tap water is about 8.2, and the CO2'ed water in my tank is about 7.0. However, I don't even think this fully explains it because I was having Neons die at this rate even before I did the first water change.

You know, dropping a little food in the tank and watching the Neons go crazy all over my planted tank was purely breathtaking. I have never "created" something so beautiful. However, I truly despise the little A-holes now. Neon's are the least hardy fish I've ever seen. I've had aquariums for about 13 years now (I haven't kept any Neons since I was a kid), and I know for sure now that I won't be keeping any more. If you're considering doing a large school of Neons - you may really wanna reconsider. Im so frustrated I feel like throwing a temper tantrum

I now have 49 Neons. At this rate, they will all be dead by next Tuesday, Aug 23 - possibly sooner should I have to do a 8O *GASP* WATER CHANGE 8O - just 13 days after I spent $150 and stocked them.

Alas, Murphy was an optimist.




I'm sure some of you guys can beat this though What's your best "worst" fish buying/stocking story ever?

 

[talloulou]

Yikes so sorry.....Those neons do have reputations for being fragile. Maybe you just had too many.

My worst stocking story involves my husband.......

He loves to fish and when we lived back east he use to fish with shiners. Well he liked to leave for fishing super early in the morning and shortly after we first moved in together he got a great idea for how he could get an even earlier start......you know how those fisherman fight for the prime locations...but I digress.

You see he always had to wait for the local tackle shop to open around 5 A.M. to buy his shiners. Previously when he tried buying them the night before many would die in the bucket before morning.

Well one day he got the brilliant idea that my fish tank was the answer to his dilemna. He went out the night before he was going fishing, bought a ton of shiners, and threw them in with my tropical fish.

Of course he was right the shiners all lived, but a bunch of my tropical fish keeled over during the night. When I found out what he did I couldn't believe it! The man is lucky I still married him.

 

[Criptos]

Cgcaver your problem is you added to to many fish at one time.... Hopefully some will survive.

 

[Blazeherd2306]

I have to agree with Criptos in that you added too much fish at one time. You also may want to increase the temp from 75 to 78-80.

 

[TankGirl]

I have had this happen with cardinals, and I think if your ammonia or nitrite did not spike then you did not add too many at once, but perhaps they were not acclimated to your tank properly. You need to get an idea what the water params were where you obtained them, and if they are very different from your own then they need to be very slowly acclimated in a bucket on the floor with a drip line. The stress of completely different water conditions can cause them to slowly die off like you describe.

I'd sit on your current group of neons and let the school stabilize, and wait a good 2 weeks after you stop having deaths before adding any more fish. You are obviously not having a water quality issue, but is your CO2 level stable? You look to be running about 21ppm CO2 now, but does your KH and pH remain the same consistently?

I'd hold off on water changes unless your NO3 rises above 40.

I know you did not ask for advice, but I can't help myself!!

 

[Guest]

i agree with the others.. you added too many fish at once... and also that is way too many fish for a 55 gallon. Now that your down to a normal stocking rate they should stop dying.. also neons are fragile. so even if you accimilated themcorrectly, they can still die from the shock.. how often do you do water changes? Maybe try very tiny water changes instead of big ones.. like only 5 gallons every other day. Until they get established and get used to your water.

 

[cgcaver]

why do 3 of you say I added too many fish too quickly? What reasoning is there behind saying this? My NH4 never went above .25ppm, even when they were all added at once. The bioload is fine. Neons are a very small bioload individually, and I'd love to know why yall think that's too many.

Do they die simply because they are crowded or something? That really doesn't follow any logical thinking at all. The water was perfect. BTW, I'll be glad to post a pic of an Amano tank that has about as many Neons as I did, and it appears to be about the same size tank.

Just saying "yep, you added too many at once" without any kinda backing-it-up seems kinda trite to me. :?

 

[Zagz]

Not knowing much about planted tanks, is it possible that the ferts are getting stirred up during the water changes and poisioning the neons? Perhaps smaller water changes would be the answer then. I think thing should start to settle down now. Sorry I can't be more help. Just a guess on my part. Hope things start turning around for you.

 

[Guest]

even .25 of ammonia can kill a neon.. come on , common sense will tell you that you can't put 100 inches of fish in a 55 gallon aquarium, thats only like .5 gallons of swimming per fish.. poor fish.

 

[cplawrence]

I may just be expressing my ignorance here, but I thought the idea when setting up a heavily planted tank is that once the plants were going, you could fully stock the tank without a traditional cycle as the plants would consume the ammonia. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Guest]

ummm.. the plants will help but they can't keep a bioload up of htat much.. you still need the bacteria and still need to cycle your tank.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

You can slightly overstock. But when the 92 Tetra's are their full size, that's about 184 inches of fish. WAY too much for a 55 gal tank. Even the most planted tank. The general guideline is 1 inch per gal. This guideline can be varied, but it is good to start with that.

 

[Guest]

yes.. and even if you've cycled your tank.. stocking with that many fish is still going to cause water problems.

 

[greenmaji]

yes.. it is overstocked.. but Im currious how you acclimated the fish?

 

[megladonsharky]

from what I have been told two or three fish added at a time... no plants dont cycle the tank for you , only bacteria do that

 

[Codefox]

I don't think anyone has to back up their comments that you overstocked and added way too many fish too quickly with anything other than pointing out that you've had 43 fish die already.

 

[tetrin]

cgcaver, i'm really sorry for your loss. and i believe its not because of the apparent overstocking. neons are tiny fish that add very little to your bioload, as you stated earlier. IMO, the 'inch per gallon' rule definitely doesn't hold in this case (and in many many other cases).
i had a somewhat similar experience when i tried to add neons to my established 10g. i don't know exactly what my ph was, but it was on the higher side. and after adding about 7 neons to a planted tank(10g), i was down to about 2 in a month. nothing i'd do would prevent this death. they'd come close to the surface, or hide, and then die.

My tap water is about 8.2

i think the neons are falling prey to this fluctuation in ph. and the fact that they are genetically weak doesn't help the fact. i feel that it's just that you got a bad strain.

i haven't given up on them though. i still have 7 in my 20g and will increase the stock in near future. the sight of a school cruising through a planted tank is too good to be true.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

That may be true Tetrin, but don't you agree that 92 Neon's are too many fish in a 55 gal tank? They may not produce much of bio-load, but that's still ALOT of fish to add at once.

 

[tetrin]

sorry for the double post earlier (could the moderators please remove one).
but i still think it would be ok to do so. the plants absorb ammonia (as ammonium), which would relieve a lot of the bioload. i wouldn't advise it in a non-planted tank.
to draw an analogy, say cgcaver owns a shop and tries to stock his neon tank (non-planted). he'd be really frustrated if the same thing happened in a space of about 5-6 days. but i have seen heavily stocked neon tanks surviving in 3 of my lfs for at least a week(there are daily dieoffs, but in the range of 1-2. actually in one, i have to go and point out that they are dead).

i'd blame it on the neons and not the aquarist .

 

[talloulou]

Hey....part of the point of the post was to give your own stocking nightmare stories......where's all the stories???? 8O