dying fish

[eve-paddy]

looking for some advice! i have a 180 litre tank with a variety of fish, 4 gourami's 2 bala sharks,4 mollys,8 cardinals,3 rainbow tetra,5 black phantom,4 red phantom,4 cherry barbs,2 swordtails,2 glass catfish,2 platys and 4 bottom feeders. when we started the tank up never lost any fish for about 2 months but recently they seem to be dropping like flies!up and running now about 4 months,we have the water checked very frequently and all seems to be fine! once 1 of 1 breed goes the rest seem to follow suit over the course of a week. help!!!

 

[SENETOR]

Check for white spot and fungal growth. Did you add all the fish at once? It could be new tank syndrome. Do you have an oxygen pump? If they are gasping at the surface they are most likely suffocating.

 

[melosu58]

Moving this to the FW unhealthy fish forum. This forum is for Staff contact and technical support.

My guess is your tank is overstocked. I`m a SW person but that`s alot of fish in that size tank.

 

[bruinsbro1997]

looking for some advice! i have a 180 litre tank with a variety of fish, 4 gourami's 2 bala sharks,4 mollys,8 cardinals,3 rainbow tetra,5 black phantom,4 red phantom,4 cherry barbs,2 swordtails,2 glass catfish,2 platys and 4 bottom feeders. when we started the tank up never lost any fish for about 2 months but recently they seem to be dropping like flies!up and running now about 4 months,we have the water checked very frequently and all seems to be fine! once 1 of 1 breed goes the rest seem to follow suit over the course of a week. help!!!

How did you cycle your tank? That seems like an awful lot of fish for that tank, and bala sharks will outgrow it. Are you having pH swings or swings in GH, KH, alkalinity etc? This is a good link you might want to check out:
I just learned about cycling but I already have fish. What now?!

 

[glassbird]

When you say you had the water checked, what exactly was checked? If you can get us solid numbers for ph, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate that will enable us to see where you are in the cycle. Then we can help you better. Be sure that the test results come from a drop-type test kit...NOT strips. (Strips are very inaccurate.) If you do not already have your own test kit, try to find the API Master test...a serious test kit is an essential tool for a healthy aquarium, especially in the first year or so.

Are you doing regular water changes? How much and how often? For now, until we get this figured out, hold off on getting any more fish. You may be on the edge of a bigger problem, and there is no need to add more bio-load to a tank that is already heavily stocked.

Also, what kind and size of filter are you using?

 

[eve-paddy]

we had every thing checked that you said on your list and it is all fine and the ph is also bang on.its also a drop test kit that they use so very accurate.have being doing water changes every 2 weeks and removing about 25% of the water. haven't got new fish for over a week cause 1 of the mollies we got died the day we put it in so have held off. the aquarium we have is a juwel 180 vision so its the filter that came with it. we had white spot a few weeks ago but treated it and it all seemed to clear up but dont know if that might have something to do with it. you reckon its over stocked? i know it sounds alot of fish but alot of them very small.

 

[eve-paddy]

also we took our time adding the fish,we were very careful about that and we cycled it for about a month before adding any.