Hello, I’m new to this website and
I really need help!
I’m still in my early teens and I had no idea what I was doing when
I bought 6 glofish but my mom and I thought it’d be a good idea.
I’m going to try to provide as much information as possible, so please bare with me. I’m desperate for advice, I feel like a horrible person because so many of my fish have died and I want to be a good fish owner but I’m starting to think I’m killing way too many of them and at this point I should stop and just sell everything.
On March 26th I went to the pet store and bought a
Aqueon Neoglow Aquarium Kit Hexagon. My mom
told me that we had to let the filter run for 72 hours before putting the fish in. We ended up asking the manager if it was okay to put the fish in as soon as we got home, he said it was fine. Of course this was our first mistake, I realize that now. Moving on,
we bought 6 glofish. The funny thing is, I didn’t know they ran in groups of 6+ but thank god I thought 6 was a good number.
I’ll have you know that I was very irresponsible and didn’t do any research on these fish until after I got them and the tank.
The tank is an 8 gal. tank, when I actually did research I read that glofish are supposed to be in 10 Gal. or more. This was another mistake. When I got home,
I made sure to let the bag sit in the tank for 20 minutes before releasing the fish into the water. They were fine the first couple 2-3 days, but then my pink and blue glofish had died.
Within the next few days I noticed that my orange glofish didn’t look too good.
He was bloated and his eyes were popping out (bulging) I was really concerned so I looked it up and I figured that he had a sickness? I didn’t want the other remaining fish to become sick, so I quarantined him in a separate bowl. I was aware that fish couldn’t live too long in a bowl without oxygen, and that’s what filters were for( but I was desperate and I would have rather he died instead of the other three just in case. I learned that fish can’t pass on diseases to eachother, but I wanted to keep him in the bowl in case if he did die, his body wouldn’t contaminate the tank and kill the remaining 3.
Of course the fish in the bowl died. I didn’t know what to do for him, I learned that there were antibiotics but at that time it was too late and I felt horrible for allowing him to suffer like that. I had a tiger barb, a purple fish, and a neon green fish remaining. I went to check on the fish because I was paranoid and they were all alive, I saw that they were playing and I thought it was fine. Not seconds later, the tiger barb got stuck in an artificial plant and died. I felt like such a crappy person for allowing it to happen, I was really over it at this point.
A few days later, I woke up and saw that there were two new fish in my tank. My mom placed them in there while I was asleep, it was a yellow glofish and a blue glofish. The 4 of them were fine, we decided we were going to add another fish because they run in groups of 6+ and all of the fish were doing great. We added a red glofish, and soon after that we added a red tiger barb.
At this point I had a purple glofish, a neon green glofish, a blue glofish, a yellow glofish, a red glofish, and a red tiger barb. A total of 6 fish once again, I was back at the beginning.
We cleaned the tank out at least twice a month.
They were fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (3 times a day.)
Sometimes we took half of the water out and replaced it.
We usually took out the decorations and cleaned them, along with vacuuming the floor and adding some pebbles here and there.
The fish were fine. Yesterday, May 4th, around 4 PM me and my mom did our usually routine. We took the decorations out, vacuumed the tank, and replaced some of the water. (With the fish inside, she said that she used to do this with her fish in the tank and they would be fine.) We added a new bag of pebbles and mixed them with the original ones, we also added a new decoration to the tank. Everytime we clean the tank we add stress reliever and conditioner, the fish were doing great.
They were swimming normally, eating normally, they looked really happy.
I woke up at 4 AM on May 5th and saw that three of the fish were dead. One was sideways at the bottom of the tank dead, one sideways lying on a plant dead, and the other one floating at the top upside down. I completely panicked and had a total mental breakdown. I don’t understand, they were all completely healthy and they were usually fine when we did all of this.
We took out the dead bodies in case of contamination. But that’s all we did. We were really confused and hurt because we didn’t know what we did wrong. She decided not to mess with them and just leave them alone to see if any more die. Yes, this was still at 4 AM. I stood awake until 7 AM and went to school,
when I came home at 3 PM she told me that the red tiger barb had died too.
Now only two fish remain.
10 of my fish died, and I feel like crap. I really don’t know what to do, or how to do it. Please, my red glofish and my purple glofish are the only two left and I feel so bad I don’t want them to die.
The ones that died at 4 AM looked healthy, but the red one looks sick. It’s eyes are bulging and it’s stomach looks bloated, or maybe I’m just paranoid?? At this point I don’t know I’m really frustrated and heartbroken. I know they’re just fish but they’re living beings, I used to wake up every morning and they would all swim up to me and greet me but now the remaining 2 swim away and try to hide from me.
I’m scared that the red one is going to die and I can’t do anything about it.
I’m sorry for writing a lot, I didn’t want to leave anything out. I hope you guys can help me out.
pictures.
Here’s the tank, what food I feed them, what I use to put in the tank, the remaining fish, and the test kit I use.
Levels
pH: 7.2
Ammonia: 0.25 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 0 ppm
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