TexasBlues
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Hi all, I have lurked here for a while and am hoping I can get some advice about what went wrong yesterday so that I can make sure it doesn't happen again.
The summary is that - I had 6 cardinal tetras and a albino pleco in a 2.5G (LFS told us it was the way to go, I know now F that guy) and believe it or not, they survived great for about 3 weeks. I upgraded them to a 10G tank after doing research and finding out the 2.5G was no good, and we set it up and put them in - all tetras dead in 30 minutes to an hour.
Longer version - our closest, non-chain LFS did us very wrong in telling us that 6 cardinal and 1 albino cory would be the way to go for the 2.5G set up my wife had gotten as her Bday present from her sister. This is our first time having fish (my wife had had bettas before as a kid, but that's it) and unfortunately we didn't know enough to know this guy was lying through his teeth (the kicker - after three weeks, we went to the store for the 10G and found out our "albino cory" was actually an albino pleco - I'm about to go on a terrible review rampage.) We did get them very young as the tetras were all less than an inch and the cat was an inch? Inch and a half? Not sure.
I got a bottle of tetra safestart (a small bottle saying it would work for tanks up to 15G.) And we went home. The filter had been running for a couple weeks, but we took out the water in the fish tank to make room for the bag and let it acclimate. We put them in there, and I put the bottle of tetra safestart in.
Believe it or not, with 7 fish in that 2.5G (that I now know was terrible) the ammonia read .5 the first day, .25 the second and third day, and read 0 the fourth day. I attributed this to the TSS doing it's job, though I was researching enough to know the LLFS was full of it and we needed more space.
After a couple weeks of bugging my wife, we got a 10G set up. (Also, after a few weeks they had grown to a little over an inch to 1.5 inches. I got another bottle of TSS (this one said it was good for 40g of new tanks), and I put about 7.5G of tap, let it run an hour, used the 2.5G of cycled water from the small tank and added the tetras and the fish. I'll note that I made sure to make sure the temperature between the temp water and the tap water was the same (about 76-78 degrees).
They looked very happy immediately. After 30 minutes, the first was swimming upside down and on his way out. I added prime (about 3 ML.) In the next 30 minutes, all but two were dead. I moved the other two to a pitcher and added a ml or so of prime to that. They were dead as well in the next hour. The pleco has seemed fine, as far as I can tell - after seeing what the new tank was doing, I put her back in the 2.5G with the two ADFs we picked up for the small tank (I was going to take her back to the LLFS since we didn't have room for a pleco, but am open to suggestion.)
====================
I have no idea what could have happened. I checked ammonia of the larger tank and the ammonia read 1.0-1.5. However, (1) I heard TSS will give false positives because of the solution it's in, and (2) even 1.0-1.5 doesn't seem like it would kill them in an hour and (3) I don't see where it could have come from, because those fish didn't live long enough to poop or get fed, and we tested the tap water and it showed 0 ammonia.
The only things that seem possible are:
(1) somehow the TSS killed the tetras? I don't know how that's possible, but it seems to be a pretty great coincidence for them all to die so quickly after I put it in. Should I have made sure not to get the bottle for 40G, as maybe that's too much? I believe the bottle said "up to 40g" with no minimum listed, which seems to indicate that it's not something that gets overdosed easily.
(2) We bought new gravel and didn't think to clean it. After looking it up, it looks like people advice that you clean it. But would new, uncleaned gravel kill all your fish in 30-45 minutes?
(3) The tap water somehow? What doesn't jive to me is that we repeated the exact same process with the tiny tank and the 10G and had no problems with the former, which I have now read enough to understand is more difficult and more volatile.
(4) The trip from the old tank to the new tank? I don't know how. We used a large plastic pitcher to hold the fish and the 2.5G of good water to carry it across the living room. I do know we've washed that pitcher with soap and water, but (a) we used it in moving the fish to the 2.5G as well, and (b) I rinsed it and dried it with a non-soap rag pretty good before we used it yesterday.
I'm completely at a loss, and pretty sad.. My intention was to do right by the fish by giving them enough space, and instead I killed them all somehow.
Can anyone help with the cause or what I did wrong? I definitely want to make sure it doesn't happen again. I'm honestly not 100% sure I'm going to get any more fish, as I don't want to just kill everything I get near - I've . This is a bummer too, as although I am very new to keeping fish, I enjoyed watching, feeding, etc. a great deal.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The summary is that - I had 6 cardinal tetras and a albino pleco in a 2.5G (LFS told us it was the way to go, I know now F that guy) and believe it or not, they survived great for about 3 weeks. I upgraded them to a 10G tank after doing research and finding out the 2.5G was no good, and we set it up and put them in - all tetras dead in 30 minutes to an hour.
Longer version - our closest, non-chain LFS did us very wrong in telling us that 6 cardinal and 1 albino cory would be the way to go for the 2.5G set up my wife had gotten as her Bday present from her sister. This is our first time having fish (my wife had had bettas before as a kid, but that's it) and unfortunately we didn't know enough to know this guy was lying through his teeth (the kicker - after three weeks, we went to the store for the 10G and found out our "albino cory" was actually an albino pleco - I'm about to go on a terrible review rampage.) We did get them very young as the tetras were all less than an inch and the cat was an inch? Inch and a half? Not sure.
I got a bottle of tetra safestart (a small bottle saying it would work for tanks up to 15G.) And we went home. The filter had been running for a couple weeks, but we took out the water in the fish tank to make room for the bag and let it acclimate. We put them in there, and I put the bottle of tetra safestart in.
Believe it or not, with 7 fish in that 2.5G (that I now know was terrible) the ammonia read .5 the first day, .25 the second and third day, and read 0 the fourth day. I attributed this to the TSS doing it's job, though I was researching enough to know the LLFS was full of it and we needed more space.
After a couple weeks of bugging my wife, we got a 10G set up. (Also, after a few weeks they had grown to a little over an inch to 1.5 inches. I got another bottle of TSS (this one said it was good for 40g of new tanks), and I put about 7.5G of tap, let it run an hour, used the 2.5G of cycled water from the small tank and added the tetras and the fish. I'll note that I made sure to make sure the temperature between the temp water and the tap water was the same (about 76-78 degrees).
They looked very happy immediately. After 30 minutes, the first was swimming upside down and on his way out. I added prime (about 3 ML.) In the next 30 minutes, all but two were dead. I moved the other two to a pitcher and added a ml or so of prime to that. They were dead as well in the next hour. The pleco has seemed fine, as far as I can tell - after seeing what the new tank was doing, I put her back in the 2.5G with the two ADFs we picked up for the small tank (I was going to take her back to the LLFS since we didn't have room for a pleco, but am open to suggestion.)
====================
I have no idea what could have happened. I checked ammonia of the larger tank and the ammonia read 1.0-1.5. However, (1) I heard TSS will give false positives because of the solution it's in, and (2) even 1.0-1.5 doesn't seem like it would kill them in an hour and (3) I don't see where it could have come from, because those fish didn't live long enough to poop or get fed, and we tested the tap water and it showed 0 ammonia.
The only things that seem possible are:
(1) somehow the TSS killed the tetras? I don't know how that's possible, but it seems to be a pretty great coincidence for them all to die so quickly after I put it in. Should I have made sure not to get the bottle for 40G, as maybe that's too much? I believe the bottle said "up to 40g" with no minimum listed, which seems to indicate that it's not something that gets overdosed easily.
(2) We bought new gravel and didn't think to clean it. After looking it up, it looks like people advice that you clean it. But would new, uncleaned gravel kill all your fish in 30-45 minutes?
(3) The tap water somehow? What doesn't jive to me is that we repeated the exact same process with the tiny tank and the 10G and had no problems with the former, which I have now read enough to understand is more difficult and more volatile.
(4) The trip from the old tank to the new tank? I don't know how. We used a large plastic pitcher to hold the fish and the 2.5G of good water to carry it across the living room. I do know we've washed that pitcher with soap and water, but (a) we used it in moving the fish to the 2.5G as well, and (b) I rinsed it and dried it with a non-soap rag pretty good before we used it yesterday.
I'm completely at a loss, and pretty sad.. My intention was to do right by the fish by giving them enough space, and instead I killed them all somehow.
Can anyone help with the cause or what I did wrong? I definitely want to make sure it doesn't happen again. I'm honestly not 100% sure I'm going to get any more fish, as I don't want to just kill everything I get near - I've . This is a bummer too, as although I am very new to keeping fish, I enjoyed watching, feeding, etc. a great deal.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
