My first fish death

[fish4phil]

Well, actually it was one of my frogs. I purchased 2 African Dwarf Frogs from PetSmart yesterday, along with 2 Dalmatian Mollies. I acclimated them over an hour and put them in my (otherwise empty) 10G quarantine tank. This morning I woke up and one was belly side up on the bottom :-( I took him out and immediately tested the water with API Liquid Test Kit:

pH: 8.0
Ammonia: .25
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10

My filter is Aquaclear 30 which I dialed down the output flow by about 25%. I did not feed them yesterday at all. Yesterday one of the frogs kept playing in the filter, getting blown away, floated around, and kept going right back to it. The other stayed pretty still and quiet in the corner. I'm not sure which passed. My main tank has been going for 2 months with no deaths. I have since performed a 50% water change. Could it have been something I did?

 

[fish4phil]

What a bad day! I just looked at my main tank, been up for 2 months, and one of my pregnant guppies that I've had for a month was dead and stuck to the filter intake :-(

I liked things better when they didn't die :'(

 

[Sidman24]

Try to get your ammonia to 0 with water changes. Any signs of ammonia can kill a fish pretty quickly depending on how hardy they are.

 

[fish4phil]

Ammonia wasn't a factor in either tank. It was 0 in my DT, only .25 in QT, more importantly 0 Free Ammonia in both tanks, and had just used Prime the day before in both tanks.

I believe the frog death was due to improper acclimation, partly on me :/. I did the bucket method over 30 minutes, except my QT is in my basement. My tank, being at 75 degrees F...my bucket of water, over 30 minutes, cooled to (I tested the process today) 71/72 degrees. That's a 3-4 degree temperature difference at the moment I added my frog to the tank. I have since purchased this acclimation kit, which should drastically help.

Any other thoughts?

 

[rmiller]

It was likely the temp difference that did the frog in. Why not just float the bags in the tank? Open them up and add a bit of tank water every few minutes until you have more tank water than store water. The net them and put them in the tank.

If you prefer the bucket/drip just get a small heater to put in the bucket for the time you're using it.

 

[jpchin]

i do the bucket method but i put a heating pad under the container to keep the water warm while acclimating.