New tank, Fish dead after 2 days

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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 :facepalm:: 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?
 
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Did you use a tap water conditioner? One that removes cholorine / chlorarmines from the tap water?

That your tank still showed evidence of being cycled I'm guessing you did (or else the chlorine would have killed off the bacteria), but I thought I'd ask since you didn't mention it.

Other than that, it sounds like you did everything right to me.

Sorry for your losses. :(
 
Yea I used a water conditioner to remove the chlorine and detoxify heavy metals on my tapwater before putting it in
 
Sounds like "new tank syndrome". Sometimes for no reason whatsoever, fish in a perfectly good tank just end up dying. You could try re-cleaning it and going for a second run. Just make sure not to use soap when you clean the tank, or anything you put in it.
 
There could be any number of reasons for your first time losses but in my opinion, your acclimization method was not the best. Simply floating the bag and adding a bit of tank water over a short period of time is just not good enough. You may have shocked your fish. Next time, I would suggest pouring the entire contents of the bag (water and fish) into a cleaned and rinsed plastic container, remove some of the water from the container and s..l..o..w..l..y replace the removed water with tank water. I use the drip method which is no more than airline tubing knotted a couple of times. One end in the tank and the other in your container. A quick suck on the end going into the container will start a slow drip. This method takes at least 45 mins to an hour to complete with pour offs of the rising container water every 10 mins or so. You are gradually changing both the water parameters and temp in the container to match the tank. Gently pour the contents of the container into your tank. At least, you will have done a good job at acclimating the fish to their new home.
 
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