Dead Guppies

[Syrabob]

I have a fairly large aquarium with a very very large Guppy population. Previously, it has
been a balanced environment. Lots of live plants for fry to hide, snails, 12 in airorater, new submersible filter and except for feeding and regularly cleaning or changing filters etc. I have always had three very active bottom eaters simular to very small carp. Some time ago I introduce three very black and fine speckled ugly cat fish looking bottom feeders. Every thing was doing fine, babies born, some die some live, survival of the fittest so to speak. In the past few days I have discovered at least ten dead fish. Tails eaten off or just belly up. I have been feeding them very fine granule feed recommended by my dealer. The only difference is that I ran out of regular food and fed them one feeding of Betts Granules. These were two big and i netted them out. My filter has three separate charcoal filters which I cleaned in dishwasher. Could that be my problem, or the Betts Feeding or the Catfish eating them? Help

 

[mbkemp]

Or, maybe a couple of things. I would start by getting the charcoal that was washed in a dishwasher out and follow that with a water change or two

What kind of catfish did you buy? The missing tails make me think something is hungry

 

[V227]

It's not a good idea to over clean your filter media and probably even worse to clean it out in your dishwasher. Dirty filters support substantial benificial bacteria popations which in turn equals clean water. A dirty, clogged filter is not good, so rinse your filter cartridge in used tank water once every 3 or 4 weeks. If you have multiple power filters, rotate the cleaning. Don't clean them all the same day. Don't replace your filter cartridges until they are literally unraveling. Over cleaning power filter media leads to ammonia spikes, which causes sudden fish kills.