Complete failure what am I doing wrong?

[Tim Wheatley]

greetings everyone;

so the conclusion we must draw from this is that companies that produce products are evil, as well as the stores that sell them and the fish.

sincerely;
nrk.

In my opinion the trick is to find a LFS which just sells fish, or sells very few accessories for fish. This way the fish are their stock, and are therefore important. Chain stores make way more money from tanks, heaters, all those things we need to keep fish, they make less from the fish themselves and are therefore less likely to value them as an asset and care for them as much as they should. It is also less likely that they will actually know anything about the fish, this being increased by many factors if their store also sells things for every other animal we keep in our homes.

 

[Gunk]

Have you tested your nitrAtes? Particularly those straight out of the tap.

You describe typical newbie errors, i.e. putting fish straight into an uncycled tank. However as others have said, on a 29 gallon with that amount of fish, even without a filter they wouldn't build ammonia up to toxic levels within a matter of hours, perhaps 2-3 days, so something else is going on here.

BTW, what you mean by "Black Tetra", that could refer to many different types of fish? Do you mean Black Skirt Tetra?

Yes I tested water straight out of the tap and got .25 ammonia and 0 nitrites and nitrates=0. Yes they were Black Skirt Tetras.

The tetra that died after a few days may have been lost because of ammonia/nitrites in your tank. I agree however that the rest of the fish which died within hours most likely died from another cause. It's possible some of them may not have been healthy to begin with (common thing when buying fish from a LFS) but it's also possible that you didn't acclimate them well enough. 15 minutes floating in a bag does little more than adjust the water in their bag to the water temperature in your tank. You might want to read this article, I find it's a pretty good one-

Acclimating Tropical Fish to Your Fish Tank

I'm not saying you should go all out and do a drip acclimation method, but I would certainly recommend that you try the "The Floating Bag Method" mentioned in the article. When I bring new fish home, I float the bag just as you did for 15minutes but then I add a small amount of water from my tank to the bag and float it for 15 more minutes. I may repeat this several times over a period of 30-60minutes before netting the fish and putting them in my tank. This allows for the fish to become slowly accustomed to your water parameters, ph/alkalinity. (This is especially important if your LFS's water differs from your own.)

While fishless cycling is a great way to go next time around, you still have fish left that need taken care of. You need to be testing your water parameters and doing PWCs at minimum once every day. Any ammonia or nitrites over .25ppm can stress your fish and is harmful to them.

Thank you for answering. I have been using the floating bag method like you stated for all the most recent fish I have got. Another lesson learned the hard way. (LFS said to just float the bag to get temp matched and they will be fine hence my initial ignorance).

Welcome from a nearby neighbor!

Sorry to hear you're off to a rough start. Hold off on getting any more fish until you've got your problems resolved.

If I read your post right, you've still got a couple fish living in the tank, so the fishless cycle is ruled out. You'll have to do a lot of PWCs to keep your ammonia levels below 0.25ppm.

Try to get some established filter media or substrate from an LFS. If you're willing to make the drive, I can give you a few pieces of biomedia from one of my tanks. It'll help seed your tank with beneficial bacteria and speed up your cycle some.

What brand and model of filter are you running? What water conditioner are you using?

Thanks so much for your offer. I'm gonna try and get the fish i have left treated. If they don't make it I'm going to try the fishless cycle with ammonia. Thank you so much for your generous offer and I will keep you in mind if I continue to have cycle problems. I am running Aqueon HoB Power Filter 30 and Aqueon Water Conditioner(obviously I bought an Aqueon all in one kit).

greetings everyone;

personally, when i first obtained an aquarium, the salesman recommended two things to me, one were a worthless sale gimmick, and the other one were bacterial starting pills.

with those pills, the necessary bacteria is initiating the required cycle over the curse of a night, or a day, depending on your current vampire state.

does no stores sell this where you live?

also, if i were you would complain to customer service authoroties that the store was that horrible at advising you, and allowed you to purchase that many fish that just met an untimely death.

sincerely;
nrk.

Thanks for your reply. I don't believe I have seen that at LFS. The thing about purchasing the fish though is that i never bought that many at one time. Only after the first ones died i would try and correct what i thought was wrong then i would go back and get more and no more that 2 at once to make sure whatever it was that i thought was wrong was fixed and unfortunately have not got to that point yet and never thought it would be this many fish later with no real solution other than starting over which didn't really occur to me until recently. Also i got fish from 3 different stores because i thought originally maybe it was "bad" fish from the store so i thought another one might be different. I put all the blame on me especially because i don't think those guys really know anything anyway.

Did you buy all your fish from the same place? I had this trouble when I was first starting out. Every time I bought fish from Pets at Home, most or all of them died within 24 hours.

I've now found a lovely family run LFS, and haven't had any deaths since. So it might be worth trying a different shop.

I was also told by pets at home that I could have my 10 gallon tank running for three days, and then put six fish in to start with. No mention of cycling the tank at all, and way too many fish in one go! How do they get away with it? Thank goodness I found my lovely LFS!

As stated above i got them from 3 different places. Two of them were large chain pet stored and one was local family owned place. No success with any of them. I'm going to look for some better shops now for sure. I live in chicago area so should be able to find some good ones i hope!

It can be a pretty sleazy business, unfortunately.

While your tank is cycling, look around for a better LFS.

Good ones do exist, but even the healthiest of fish need a healthy environment.

Do test your tap water to make sure it doesn't contain ammonia or nitrates. If your tap water is unhealthy, there are other steps you will have to take to keep fish, but it can be done.

When you do buy fish again (after the tank is fully cycled) ask the sellers the water parameters of the water the fish are in. If the ph is very different from yours, you will do to acclimate them with a drip method.

It can be done, it just takes patience and know-how.

I called my first aquarium the Death Chamber because I killed so many fish.

Thanks! Your first 2 questions I answered in the above responses. As to your third about the water parameters interestingly I have asked all 3 places about this and they all said don't worry about it the fish will adjust. I told them are you sure because my ph is 8.0 and I thought that was a bit high but they said the fish will have no problem and lowering the ph will do more harm than good


thank you everyone again...I'll update if anything gets headed in the right direction! Your help is greatly appreciated!

 

[jessibell]

sounded like that one fish you brought home had ich, too.

I have heard time and time again that "bacteria supplements" are a load of rubbish. I have a really hard time believing how on earth they do any good - because the bacteria need to be ALIVE, and if they are sealed up in a container with no food source for months and months, how can they be alive? Unless they are a sporulating bacteria. I had a bottle of seachem stability in my cupboard so i dumped it in when I started my tank cycling... I thought if it works, great, if it doesn't oh well.

Maybe the pH in your water is really different than that of the fish you're bringing home? That could also kill them pretty quick.

 

[DragonFish71]

*Shrugs*

I use Seachem Stability and raw,dead shrimp or dead feeders to cycle a tank. Actually, to cycle 15 tanks now, some mine and the rest for friends, and I've had nothing but good luck.

Maybe some nay-sayers should try things out BEFORE knocking it down.

 

[Tim Wheatley]

Yeah I don't use Seachem Stability, but I use (human food) shrimp and seed from one of my other tanks to cycle. I've never found it as hard to cycle as some people work on it.

 

[Coleallensmom]

Thank you for answering. I have been using the floating bag method like you stated for all the most recent fish I have got. Another lesson learned the hard way. (LFS said to just float the bag to get temp matched and they will be fine hence my initial ignorance).

No problem! It sounds like you are in a much better place than you were a couple of days ago. Just keep testing your water parameters and doing those PWCs to keep your ammonia/nitrites <.25ppm. I hope your remaining fish pull through!