DTCubone104
Aquarium Advice Newbie
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2012
- Messages
- 2
So I'm new to fish for the most part, and thought I had some my homework well enough but after 2 days all the fish I had in my tank are dead : I honestly have no idea what caused it, so perhaps someone has some ideas.
I have a 6 gallon tank (small apt all I have room for atm) that has been doing a fishless cycle for alittle over a month. It took 3 weeks to cycle then a weekish of being cycled but no fish (with me still adding ammonia during the week to keep my new Bactria friends happy)
I did a large water change the night before I got my fish to get my nitrates down. My API kit read 0 ammonia, 0 Nitrites and between 10 and 20 nitrates, as I can't see a difference between those colors at all at the chart. PH was 7.4 and temp is around 74 as well.
With my tank seemingly ready I put in 6 Celestial Pearl Danios, I would have liked to do 3 at a time, but had to do all 6 at once. To put them in the tank, I let the bag they came in float in the tank for about 15 minutes, then added a bit of tank water to the bag and let that float for another 15 minutes. After that I netted the fish out of the bag and into the tank, so that no bag water would get in the tank. I kept the tank lights off for 2 hours and did little to disturb them until about 8 hours later, when I attempted to feed them. I put in a small amount of food and scooped/vacuumed up what they did not eat around 5 minutes later. I did not watch to see if they ate as I did not want to distress them anymore then they already were.
That was the end of day one. Day 2 was the 4th, so after a morning feeding, and removing uneaten food, i did see one eat from across the room, Morning test showed 0ammonia, 0 nitrites and 20 nitrates. I did 4th of july things for the rest of the day. When I came back in that evening, Two had died and another was behaving oddly and died within 15 minutes. The next morning one more had died, one acting oddly (same way the other was and died within the hour) and one had managed to get into the filter, but was alive. However he began acting the same as the others and I removed him from the tank and put him to sleep using clove oil. I did several water tests and all showed up with .01ish ammonia(not quite 0.25 but not quite 0 either, guessing the dead fish in the water had something to do with that but I also can't half read the differences between these readings sometimes), 0 nitrites and 10-20 nitrates
So any ideas on what could have went wrong? I'm thinking it's perhaps my tap water. I do treat it before I put it into the tank but perhaps something else is in there that I'm not treating for? Should I just swap to bottled water and if so what kind? Or is it something else like the fish getting overly stressed somehow or just hating my face? And as far as putting new fish in my tank, should I scrub it down and re-cycle or just try again?
I have a 6 gallon tank (small apt all I have room for atm) that has been doing a fishless cycle for alittle over a month. It took 3 weeks to cycle then a weekish of being cycled but no fish (with me still adding ammonia during the week to keep my new Bactria friends happy)
I did a large water change the night before I got my fish to get my nitrates down. My API kit read 0 ammonia, 0 Nitrites and between 10 and 20 nitrates, as I can't see a difference between those colors at all at the chart. PH was 7.4 and temp is around 74 as well.
With my tank seemingly ready I put in 6 Celestial Pearl Danios, I would have liked to do 3 at a time, but had to do all 6 at once. To put them in the tank, I let the bag they came in float in the tank for about 15 minutes, then added a bit of tank water to the bag and let that float for another 15 minutes. After that I netted the fish out of the bag and into the tank, so that no bag water would get in the tank. I kept the tank lights off for 2 hours and did little to disturb them until about 8 hours later, when I attempted to feed them. I put in a small amount of food and scooped/vacuumed up what they did not eat around 5 minutes later. I did not watch to see if they ate as I did not want to distress them anymore then they already were.
That was the end of day one. Day 2 was the 4th, so after a morning feeding, and removing uneaten food, i did see one eat from across the room, Morning test showed 0ammonia, 0 nitrites and 20 nitrates. I did 4th of july things for the rest of the day. When I came back in that evening, Two had died and another was behaving oddly and died within 15 minutes. The next morning one more had died, one acting oddly (same way the other was and died within the hour) and one had managed to get into the filter, but was alive. However he began acting the same as the others and I removed him from the tank and put him to sleep using clove oil. I did several water tests and all showed up with .01ish ammonia(not quite 0.25 but not quite 0 either, guessing the dead fish in the water had something to do with that but I also can't half read the differences between these readings sometimes), 0 nitrites and 10-20 nitrates
So any ideas on what could have went wrong? I'm thinking it's perhaps my tap water. I do treat it before I put it into the tank but perhaps something else is in there that I'm not treating for? Should I just swap to bottled water and if so what kind? Or is it something else like the fish getting overly stressed somehow or just hating my face? And as far as putting new fish in my tank, should I scrub it down and re-cycle or just try again?
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