New fish dead

[2Corinthians57]

I had a heavily planted, fully cycled, 20 gallon long tank. I put 5 guppies and one honey gourami about a week ago. 2 guppies are dead, 2 guppies are missing (I can’t find them in the tank) and the one guppy and honey gourami are both fine. I’m assuming that the two I can’t find are dead but I am continuing to look for the bodies. Like I said, the tank was fully cycled and for the first couple days, all the fish were perfectly fine. Nothing seemed wrong. Does anyone have any ideas about what could have happened?

[lefty o]

have you tested the water? did the dead fish look to have anything wrong with them, are the remaining live ones showing red gills, breathing hard, anything even slightly off. need more clues to figure out what is wrong.

[Kirsten]

So sorry to hear that! They may have had illnesses, injuries, or weaknesses that were hard to spot in the store. Standard advice is to first put them in a smaller, relatively sparse quarantine tank, even if they're the first fish in the new tank, so you can keep an eye on them for the first couple weeks and more easily treat them if you spot something. But I have trouble following that advice, myself, when I'm excited to start a new tank.

The store you bought them from may have a refund policy for a certain number of days, but be prepared to bring in a sample of your tank water for them to test to prove it wasn't your fault.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Kirsten

[Cory]

How long was the aquarium setup before fish?

[2Corinthians57]

It was set up about 2-3 months before tank

9 minutes ago, Cory said:

How long was the aquarium setup before fish?

 

[2Corinthians57]

20 minutes ago, lefty o said:

have you tested the water? did the dead fish look to have anything wrong with them, are the remaining live ones showing red gills, breathing hard, anything even slightly off. need more clues to figure out what is wrong.

The dead fish were just upside down and didn’t seem to have any obvious problems. The remaining one look and act very healthy as of right now 

[2Corinthians57]

16 minutes ago, Kirsten said:

So sorry to hear that! They may have had illnesses, injuries, or weaknesses that were hard to spot in the store. Standard advice is to first put them in a smaller, relatively sparse quarantine tank, even if they're the first fish in the new tank, so you can keep an eye on them for the first couple weeks and more easily treat them if you spot something. But I have trouble following that advice, myself, when I'm excited to start a new tank.

The store you bought them from may have a refund policy for a certain number of days, but be prepared to bring in a sample of your tank water for them to test to prove it wasn't your fault.

Thank you for the quarantine tip! I think I heard something about that from my friend soon after I put the fish in. 

[Colu]

What are your water parameters do you use dechlorinator when doing water changes  what is the temperature