New Tank Deaths

[DanB87]

Hi everyone,

First time posting & newbie to the hobby & the forum.

I have a 48 litre (roughly 12 gallon) tank which’s about 5 weeks old & I’ve had fish dying roughly one per day for the past week or so now. For reference the tank finishing its initial cycle after 17 days & I slowly added fish over the next 2 weeks.

I had 15 maulata rasboras, 5 peppered long fin corys & 6 fancy guppies in the tank. Everything was going fine & then one day I found a guppy dead in the morning & this has continued almost daily since.

I’ve been testing water daily & the parameters as of a few hours ago were as follows:

PH: 7.2, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10, GH 6(107) KH 3 (57) temp 26 Celsius (78 Fahrenheit) 

I’ve been checking for ammonia spikes sporadically throughout the day which have some back zero. 
I’ve had some of the fish checked for bacteria but they came back clean. I’ve also been dozing the tank for the past 7 days with API Melafix.

From what I understand my Gh & KH look a little low, I have Seachem Equilibrium on order which should get here in a day or so.

I really need help on this as I’m now down to 1 guppy, 9 rasboras & 4 corys 😞 

Anyone have any help / thiughts on things I might have missed? A guy at the local fish shop said this could be the tank being overcrowded but without the ammonia spikes it doesn’t feel like this is simply new tank syndrome....

Any help would be appreciated 8 if I’ve made some blundering error please be kind, I’m very new to the hobby but am keen to learn & want to give my fish the best care I can.

Thanks

Dan

[Atitagain]

Sorry to hear about your troubles, my first thought was the stocking as well seems like a lot of fish for a néw tank. But as you said without the ammonia doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not really experienced enough to go much deeper, don’t wanna give bad advice. But there are plenty of very helpful and knowledgeable people on here and they will help you troubleshoot your problems.

keep your head up we all need help from time to time 

welcome to the forum BTW

[Guppysnail]

I’m sorry this has happened.  Getting started if the hard part. Guppies are not hardy from store or shipped. Overcrowding is definitely an issue not enough elbow room causes stress for fish. Did you quarantine your fish first. In crowded circumstances disease and parasites transfer quick coupled with stress will be fast acting. Did any fish show any signs or abnormal behavior? Possibly hiding not eating etc? We were all new once and gave all had issues. No worries folks here are kind and will help 😁

[DanB87]

@Atitagain. @Guppysnail thank you for responding I really appreciate it

 No I didn’t quarantine the guppies (was aware at that stage that was a thing). Some of the fish would seperate off into a corner or hide pressed up against the side of the filter, other times there were no signs & id just find them dead in the morning... I’m hoping the Melafix would have taken care of any bacterial issues but it’s there a parasite thing I should try using? 
 

in terms of the over crowding, I’ve been going off the inch per gallon rule but is that no good? Based on that my tank shouldn’t have been overstocked but again I’m new to this so maybe I’ve made an error in the calculations.

i did notice that live hearted need a much higher gh, is this something that could have also affected them / added to the stress? The deaths are just so sudden & regular that it’s got me scratching my head

[Guppysnail]

1 inch per gallon is loose guide based on adult size to start at in my opinion. Guppies esp females reach 2+ inches males 1.5 so 6 guppies in12 gallons is a good number total fish to start. There is a website aqadvisor I but I’m not sure how accurate it is that helps with stocking numbers. I’ve heard folks talk of it on here. I tried to find the aquarium coop med trio video for quarantine of new fish. Hopefully someone has it and can link. I think that would be a great place to start at the point. There are folks here much more knowledgeable about meds than me I’m sure they will chime in. This may and or may not be the video 

 

Edited September 24, 2021 by Guppysnail

[Griznatch]

 In a tank that small, fish can get stressed easily with a bunch of new tank mates. Not a lot of room for them to get away and chill out until they are comfortable.  I've had the best success with letting my first tank inhabitants get accustomed and acclimate to the tank before adding any new additions.  This sometimes takes months depending on the fish.
 

Your water parameters look good, so can't give you much advice there. As @Guppysnail stated, a lot of fancy guppies are bred for color and not sturdiness or disease resistance.

[KentFishFanUK]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:27 PM, DanB87 said:

Hi everyone,

First time posting & newbie to the hobby & the forum.

I have a 48 litre (roughly 12 gallon) tank which’s about 5 weeks old & I’ve had fish dying roughly one per day for the past week or so now. For reference the tank finishing its initial cycle after 17 days & I slowly added fish over the next 2 weeks.

I had 15 maulata rasboras, 5 peppered long fin corys & 6 fancy guppies in the tank. Everything was going fine & then one day I found a guppy dead in the morning & this has continued almost daily since.

I’ve been testing water daily & the parameters as of a few hours ago were as follows:

PH: 7.2, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10, GH 6(107) KH 3 (57) temp 26 Celsius (78 Fahrenheit) 

I’ve been checking for ammonia spikes sporadically throughout the day which have some back zero. 
I’ve had some of the fish checked for bacteria but they came back clean. I’ve also been dozing the tank for the past 7 days with API Melafix.

From what I understand my Gh & KH look a little low, I have Seachem Equilibrium on order which should get here in a day or so.

I really need help on this as I’m now down to 1 guppy, 9 rasboras & 4 corys 😞 

Anyone have any help / thiughts on things I might have missed? A guy at the local fish shop said this could be the tank being overcrowded but without the ammonia spikes it doesn’t feel like this is simply new tank syndrome....

Any help would be appreciated 8 if I’ve made some blundering error please be kind, I’m very new to the hobby but am keen to learn & want to give my fish the best care I can.

Thanks

Dan

The only thing I can think of is that adding that many fish in two weeks is a little quick, I was told to add one small group at a time and wait at least a week between groups. With no ammonia spike though I'm not sure how that could cause a problem, maybe it just stresses them out like someone else suggested? 

Even with waiting 1+ weeks between adding each group of fish I still had unexplained deaths, lost one out of almost every new batch of fish, I never worked out why and luckily for me it never affected the rest of the group (or the individuals I replaced them with). Each time they had seemed fine, swimming and eating normally for days or weeks until one morning they were just dead (or in one case, disappeared entirely)

I know I should have quarantined each new group I just don't have the space or set up to do it (yet) so I totally understand your situation - I'm guessing you might be from the UK too? I think quarantining is much less common here. 

Hope it works out for you! Keep me posted

[Torrey]

On 9/24/2021 at 11:27 AM, DanB87 said:

I had 15 maulata rasboras, 5 peppered long fin corys & 6 fancy guppies in the tank. Everything was going fine & then one day I found a guppy dead in the morning & this has continued almost daily since.

Do you have any plants in there?

Any ornaments?

Your gH & kH are low for livebearers, but they would generally develop a curved spine from low calcium levels before they perished.

I suspect that it is stress, unless live bearers are the *only* fish you are losing.

Fish will always have bacteria in their environment. Bacteria and virus exposure help strengthen immune systems, which is why fish bred outdoors in tubs are frequently hardier and more resilient than fish bred indoors in sterile aquariums.

It's added, **extended** stress that will result in a sick fish.... and I have talked with folks at the NCSU vet school, and there is postulation that stressed fish can also die of heart attacks (or the fish equivalent).

So, if your tank has zero live plants to be absorbing stress hormones in the water, and you have corydoras in there that are known to secrete a toxin when they are stressed, there might not be any virus, bacteria or anything else besides stress, killing the fish.

Are you a member of the Aquarium Co-op YouTube channel?

 

If yes, go watch the member's only video on corydora, and see if any of the information regarding corydora poisoning matches the behavior of your fish.

If it does, maybe rehome/separate the corys until you have enough plants to break up line of site in the tank, and also allow the plants to absorb/clean stress hormones out of the water. 

If it doesn't look like corydora poisoning, I would still buy floating plants to help keep the water filtered and reduce fish stress.

If bellys are not sunken in (or obscenely bloated) I don't think parasites are responsible. 

If you don't see any signs of infection, and testing the deceased fish didn't identify an infection or parasites, then the answer that is left, is stress.

Reduce the stress with plants.

[Guppysnail]

On 9/25/2021 at 12:43 PM, Torrey said:

Do you have any plants in there?

Any ornaments?

Your gH & kH are low for livebearers, but they would generally develop a curved spine from low calcium levels before they perished.

I suspect that it is stress, unless live bearers are the *only* fish you are losing.

Fish will always have bacteria in their environment. Bacteria and virus exposure help strengthen immune systems, which is why fish bred outdoors in tubs are frequently hardier and more resilient than fish bred indoors in sterile aquariums.

It's added, **extended** stress that will result in a sick fish.... and I have talked with folks at the NCSU vet school, and there is postulation that stressed fish can also die of heart attacks (or the fish equivalent).

So, if your tank has zero live plants to be absorbing stress hormones in the water, and you have corydoras in there that are known to secrete a toxin when they are stressed, there might not be any virus, bacteria or anything else besides stress, killing the fish.

Are you a member of the Aquarium Co-op YouTube channel?

 

If yes, go watch the member's only video on corydora, and see if any of the information regarding corydora poisoning matches the behavior of your fish.

If it does, maybe rehome/separate the corys until you have enough plants to break up line of site in the tank, and also allow the plants to absorb/clean stress hormones out of the water. 

If it doesn't look like corydora poisoning, I would still buy floating plants to help keep the water filtered and reduce fish stress.

If bellys are not sunken in (or obscenely bloated) I don't think parasites are responsible. 

If you don't see any signs of infection, and testing the deceased fish didn't identify an infection or parasites, then the answer that is left, is stress.

Reduce the stress with plants.

This is not my topic but I wanted to say you always give the most insightful and inspiring advice. 

[ARMYVET]

On 9/25/2021 at 12:53 PM, Guppysnail said:

This is not my topic but I wanted to say you always give the most insightful and inspiring advice. 

I have to totally agree with that comment.  @Torrey responses are always full of relevant information and always helpful!

[Torrey]

On 9/25/2021 at 10:53 AM, Guppysnail said:

This is not my topic but I wanted to say you always give the most insightful and inspiring advice. 

Thank you!

On 9/25/2021 at 10:55 AM, ARMYVET said:

I have to totally agree with that comment.  @Torrey responses are always full of relevant information and always helpful!

It's my autism.

My spouse is thrilled that I finally have a place to talk to people who actually **want** to hear the information 😅

[DanB87]

Hi everyone just wanted to say a bug thank you for all the responses!! It’s been a long & strange weekend so just getting round to this now.

I think it does look like stress from overcrowding as my tank seems to have found an equilibrium now with no new deaths in the last 3 days (which I’m taking as a good sign 🙂

will keep you all posted & thanks again for all the support, feels great to be part of this community 👍🏻

[Chad]

I wanted to jump in and say good luck and that these folks really do know their stuff. Their advice is spot on. I also wanted to share my novice thoughts. Again, novice experience level but I just went through a fish die off and have some advice I wish I had done. Okay, I have lots of thoughts but only one worth sharing: act quickly at the first sign of trouble in a fish. My gut told me to give it a minute, wait and see if they'd rebound. But once a die-off starts any symptom in the remaining fish should raise loud alarms. For me, a fish every other day would die, usually overnight. Once, a week went by but the troubles came back and always with signs a couple days beforehand. Lethargy mainly, hanging at the bottom or the top. Eating, but not as voraciously as the others. I wish I had removed them (quarantine tank) at the first sign of trouble. I'm not sure it would have helped that fish but I have to wonder if I could have stopped the loss of all my fish. I'm glad a couple days have passed and that equilibrium seems to have been reached but caution you to not let down your guard just yet. Because that's what I did.

[Guppysnail]

On 9/27/2021 at 11:19 AM, Chad said:

I wanted to jump in and say good luck and that these folks really do know their stuff. Their advice is spot on. I also wanted to share my novice thoughts. Again, novice experience level but I just went through a fish die off and have some advice I wish I had done. Okay, I have lots of thoughts but only one worth sharing: act quickly at the first sign of trouble in a fish. My gut told me to give it a minute, wait and see if they'd rebound. But once a die-off starts any symptom in the remaining fish should raise loud alarms. For me, a fish every other day would die, usually overnight. Once, a week went by but the troubles came back and always with signs a couple days beforehand. Lethargy mainly, hanging at the bottom or the top. Eating, but not as voraciously as the others. I wish I had removed them (quarantine tank) at the first sign of trouble. I'm not sure it would have helped that fish but I have to wonder if I could have stopped the loss of all my fish. I'm glad a couple days have passed and that equilibrium seems to have been reached but caution you to not let down your guard just yet. Because that's what I did.

Always share. Be it novice or adept. I learn new things from novices all the time both directly and indirectly through discussion it spurs 😁

[Chad]

Thanks @Guppysnail, I only clarified my novice experience level to inform, and not belittle, what I've learned. I've seen too many without the cred try and sell themselves as an authority on the do's and do not's of this hobby. Not on this forum tho. Also, if I was ABSOLUTELY sure of my answer I would be more assertive. It hasn't happened yet in fishkeeping other than this: FISH NEED WATER OR THEY WILL DIE SOONER OR LATER. That, I am certain of... almost 😉