I am new to having fish so I went back and forth about where to post this but I definitely need help and this is the place!
My hubby and I inherited a 16 gal freshwater tank about 10 wks ago. It was really dirty and had 4 fish in it. My husband changed out about 80% of the water and refilled with plain tap water (and then found out you're not supposed to do that!) We bought a test kit, new filters,and surprisingly the water was pretty good. We bought water conditioner and drops and it tests great. We purchased 4 new fish for a total of 8 and 1 pleco. We did not quarantine as no one told us to do that. I don't know what the fish are. I think some are Cichlids or gourami's, maybe a Rasbora, mollie and tetras. I don't know but they all seemed to get along fine.
We were getting a lot of algae on the glass so over Labor Day, I put all the fish in a huge bucket with 50% of the water and then cleaned the rest of the tank totally. I did not use any detergent; just elbow grease and water. I rinsed the gravel with water (our tap water has little or no chlorine in it based on the test kit). I did not scrub any of the furniture (fake plants, arches, fake (I assume) corral...). I just rinsed off the real plants. I have been putting tap water in huge glass bottles (3gal) and putting in water conditioner and the nitrate/nitrite/chlorine drops to save for future water changes. They test perfect (per Petco). So when I got everything back in the tank it was clean, the water tested great (other than a little hard which Petco said was no issue) and everything was fine. Oscar the pleco was not very busy so we decided to purchase another and added him to the tank over Labor Day weekend.
I tested the water and it was still perfect so I just rinsed out the filter and did not do a water change last week. Everything was fine until this weekend!
Saturday morning I woke up to 5 dead fish. I ran to Petco with a water sample. They said the only thing that was slightly out of whack was the nitrates or nitrites (the end square on the test strip) and even then it was only 2 squares over from totally fine and he said it wasn't enough that it would have killed them. No amonia levels. Thought it might be overfeeding, but I only feed them once a day and they always seem to want more than I give them. He told me to do a 20% water change (which I did) and leave it for a week to see what happened. And only feed every other day.
Over the course of Saturday another fish died and Sunday morning the pleco that we got Labor Day died. Sunday night the original pleco died. That's a total of 8! I only have the two larger orange guys (I don't think they are goldfish but don't know what they are) and figure the odds of them surviving is rather slim.
But I don't know what happened and what killed the fish? I did notice, after reading several of the threads here, that the pleco did look like he might have white spots on him. I didn't notice that they were raised but I flushed him and can't take him to Petco to check for ich.
Could the pleco we got over Labor Day have been sick and passed it to the others? Wouldn't Petco know if they had a sick pleco? How could something go so wrong so fast as to kill 8 in basically the course of a day?
Need suggestions! Should I take the last two out and get them into different water? Take them to Petco to check for ich and get them on meds? Don't know what to do. Obviously we won't be adding any additional fish until we figure this out.
Thanks for any help for this new fish girl. (sorry about the novel)
My hubby and I inherited a 16 gal freshwater tank about 10 wks ago. It was really dirty and had 4 fish in it. My husband changed out about 80% of the water and refilled with plain tap water (and then found out you're not supposed to do that!) We bought a test kit, new filters,and surprisingly the water was pretty good. We bought water conditioner and drops and it tests great. We purchased 4 new fish for a total of 8 and 1 pleco. We did not quarantine as no one told us to do that. I don't know what the fish are. I think some are Cichlids or gourami's, maybe a Rasbora, mollie and tetras. I don't know but they all seemed to get along fine.
We were getting a lot of algae on the glass so over Labor Day, I put all the fish in a huge bucket with 50% of the water and then cleaned the rest of the tank totally. I did not use any detergent; just elbow grease and water. I rinsed the gravel with water (our tap water has little or no chlorine in it based on the test kit). I did not scrub any of the furniture (fake plants, arches, fake (I assume) corral...). I just rinsed off the real plants. I have been putting tap water in huge glass bottles (3gal) and putting in water conditioner and the nitrate/nitrite/chlorine drops to save for future water changes. They test perfect (per Petco). So when I got everything back in the tank it was clean, the water tested great (other than a little hard which Petco said was no issue) and everything was fine. Oscar the pleco was not very busy so we decided to purchase another and added him to the tank over Labor Day weekend.
I tested the water and it was still perfect so I just rinsed out the filter and did not do a water change last week. Everything was fine until this weekend!
Saturday morning I woke up to 5 dead fish. I ran to Petco with a water sample. They said the only thing that was slightly out of whack was the nitrates or nitrites (the end square on the test strip) and even then it was only 2 squares over from totally fine and he said it wasn't enough that it would have killed them. No amonia levels. Thought it might be overfeeding, but I only feed them once a day and they always seem to want more than I give them. He told me to do a 20% water change (which I did) and leave it for a week to see what happened. And only feed every other day.
Over the course of Saturday another fish died and Sunday morning the pleco that we got Labor Day died. Sunday night the original pleco died. That's a total of 8! I only have the two larger orange guys (I don't think they are goldfish but don't know what they are) and figure the odds of them surviving is rather slim.
But I don't know what happened and what killed the fish? I did notice, after reading several of the threads here, that the pleco did look like he might have white spots on him. I didn't notice that they were raised but I flushed him and can't take him to Petco to check for ich.
Could the pleco we got over Labor Day have been sick and passed it to the others? Wouldn't Petco know if they had a sick pleco? How could something go so wrong so fast as to kill 8 in basically the course of a day?
Need suggestions! Should I take the last two out and get them into different water? Take them to Petco to check for ich and get them on meds? Don't know what to do. Obviously we won't be adding any additional fish until we figure this out.
Thanks for any help for this new fish girl. (sorry about the novel)