Guppies Dying Off

[Drummer230]

Hey there,

I’m new to aquariums. I got into it by watching cory’s YouTube videos, and decided to give guppies a go. I purchased a 20g L and planted it moderately. I was able to get a filter from another aquarium to start my cycle. I let it cycle until my plants showed new growth, then added 2 guppies and a mystery snail. They did fine. The next week I added 5 more guppies. The week after, I added 6 more guppies and some cherry shrimp. My water parameters stayed stable the whole time ( I was testing twice a week). Out of nowhere, my guppies started dying and I’m losing at least one a day. I went from 13 to 5 in five days. My water parameters are:

• pH 7.8
• Nitrates 0ppm
• Hardness tds=110ppm
• Nitrite 0ppm
• Ammonia 0ppm
• KH/Buffer not sure
• Water Temperature was at 76, increased to 86 for possible ich 

I did not quarantine the fish as it was a new tank and figured I’d follow Corys method of treating with his three quarantine meds once I bought everything I wanted to put in the tank. The problem is that they started dying before I got to that point. I’m pretty sure they have ich now, which I am treating with a temperature of 86 f and APIs super ick cure. I’ve ordered ichx and paracleanse from Cory, which I’m waiting to receive. 

I’m just wondering where to go from here  I’m superbummed to lose so many fish so quickly and feeling down on myself. I’m scared to buy more to restock the tank. I don’t know if the ich killed them or if it’s a secondary issue. Any suggestions would be super helpful!

Thank you!

 

[FrozenFins]

is it only one fish with the white dots? also did you eve test you water before adding in new fish? I'm thinking it could be ich but also maybe your tank wasn't properly cycled.

[Sapere_Ceta]

Hm, maybe the fish were added to quickly? If that’s the case, perhaps that made them more stressed and prone to disease, which could have made them susceptible to getting ick. 

[Sapere_Ceta]

More deaths could definitely make it worse, since an ammonia spike usually ends up happening from them. It could definitely have created a bit of a chain reaction, in relation to everything else occurring. 

[Drummer230]

43 minutes ago, James Black said:

is it only one fish with the white dots? also did you eve test you water before adding in new fish? I'm thinking it could be ich but also maybe your tank wasn't properly cycled.

No, they all have white dots. Just this guy has the most and easiest to see. I did test the water before adding fish. I waited until Ammonia and nitrites measured 0 before adding fish. I have never been able to measure nitrates, but I’ve assumed that was because I’m doing about 30% water changes and the plants use the rest?

[Drummer230]

22 minutes ago, Sapere_Ceta said:

Hm, maybe the fish were added to quickly? If that’s the case, perhaps that made them more stressed and prone to disease, which could have made them susceptible to getting ick. 

I’m not sure. How long should you wait before adding a higher bio load?

Edited December 8, 2020 by Drummer230

[Drummer230]

20 minutes ago, Sapere_Ceta said:

More deaths could definitely make it worse, since an ammonia spike usually ends up happening from them. It could definitely have created a bit of a chain reaction, in relation to everything else occurring. 

I did have an ammonia spike when I found three dead one day. I did a 30% water change then and brought it back down. 

[FrozenFins]

25 minutes ago, Drummer230 said:

I’m not sure. How long should you wait before adding a higher bio load?

Usaully you should wait a week or two and then add a little more fish

[FrozenFins]

27 minutes ago, Drummer230 said:

No, they all have white dots. Just this guy has the most and easiest to see. I did test the water before adding fish. I waited until Ammonia and nitrites measured 0 before adding fish. I have never been able to measure nitrates, but I’ve assumed that was because I’m doing about 30% water changes and the plants use the rest?

Usually you will still be able to mesure nitrates. But it seems that your problem was the adding too many fish, too soon.

[Sapere_Ceta]

33 minutes ago, James Black said:

Usaully you should wait a week or two and then add a little more fish

Yeah, I agree with this. It’s often better to go the slower route when adding fish. Makes it easier to monitor them and keep everything from being overwhelmed. It could definitely be that the higher number of fish added was too much and that triggered it all. 

[Sapere_Ceta]

1 hour ago, Drummer230 said:

I did have an ammonia spike when I found three dead one day. I did a 30% water change then and brought it back down. 

It’s good that you did a water change to bring the spike down, that definitely helps. I think as long as you consistently monitor the water quality and keep up with the ick treatment, it should hopefully help the remaining fish recover.

[toothgrinder]

Personally I doubt introducing the fish is the problem. Those spots definitely look like ich but it’s hard to tell for sure. You have the right idea cranking the temperature, I beat ich on my clown loaches that way (plus UV sterilization, no medications were used) but they also love hot water, I keep them at 84 normally, I’m not into guppies so I couldn’t say what temp they like. For reference once I increased the temperature and started UV it took roughly one week before everyone was ich free. 

Do you have a bubbler going? Excellent oxygenation is a must at high temperatures and I believe the medicine makes this even more true. Very important! 

Your tank has to have some amount of nitrates, it doesn’t have enough plant growth to keep them at 0. If ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates are all reading 0 I would be skeptical of the test kit being used. 

Gravel vacuuming helps get the ich spore thingies out of your tank that fall off your fish once they mature, before they hatch. 50% water changes help remove free swimmers that have hatched but your meds should kill them as well. 

Best of luck and please don’t be discouraged. Fish die, it is a part of the hobby, however frustrating it may be. 
 

Edit: Also, it’s worth mentioning that the increase from 76 to 86 should have been over the course of a couple days, a couple degrees each day, that seems like a big overnight swing in my opinion. Go slow when you eventually bring it back down.

Edited December 9, 2020 by toothgrinder

[Drummer230]

2 hours ago, Sapere_Ceta said:

Yeah, I agree with this. It’s often better to go the slower route when adding fish. Makes it easier to monitor them and keep everything from being overwhelmed. It could definitely be that the higher number of fish added was too much and that triggered it all. 

 

2 hours ago, James Black said:

Usually you will still be able to mesure nitrates. But it seems that your problem was the adding too many fish, too soon.

Thanks for all the help. Once I have this under control, I’ll try adding fish slower. 

[Drummer230]

26 minutes ago, toothgrinder said:

Personally I doubt introducing the fish is the problem. Those spots definitely look like ich but it’s hard to tell for sure. You have the right idea cranking the temperature, I beat ich on my clown loaches that way (plus UV sterilization, no medications were used) but they also love hot water, I keep them at 84 normally, I’m not into guppies so I couldn’t say what temp they like. For reference once I increased the temperature and started UV it took roughly one week before everyone was ich free. 

Do you have a bubbler going? Excellent oxygenation is a must at high temperatures and I believe the medicine makes this even more true. Very important! 

Your tank has to have some amount of nitrates, it doesn’t have enough plant growth to keep them at 0. If ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates are all reading 0 I would be skeptical of the test kit being used. 

Gravel vacuuming helps get the ich spore thingies out of your tank that fall off your fish once they mature, before they hatch. 50% water changes help remove free swimmers that have hatched but your meds should kill them as well. 

Best of luck and please don’t be discouraged. Fish die, it is a part of the hobby, however frustrating it may be. 
 

Edit: Also, it’s worth mentioning that the increase from 76 to 86 should have been over the course of a couple days, a couple degrees each day, that seems like a big overnight swing in my opinion. Go slow when you eventually bring it back down.

Thank you for the advice! I did read about hotter water having less dissolved oxygen, so I added a bubbler in before cranking the heat. I also did increase the temp slowly over 24 hours, but I will go slower when I lower it. 
 

im really confused about the nitrates thing. I’m using API freshwater master kit and following the instructions including the vigorous shaking of bottle number 2 for one minute. I even brought a sample to a chain by my house to be tested and all three were zero. If my tank wasn’t cycled, how could the ammonia be zero with everything in there (minus the dead fish spike)? I’m just confused....

ive already invested this much money; I’m not giving up yet 😁

[toothgrinder]

6 minutes ago, Drummer230 said:

Thank you for the advice! I did read about hotter water having less dissolved oxygen, so I added a bubbler in before cranking the heat. I also did increase the temp slowly over 24 hours, but I will go slower when I lower it. 
 

im really confused about the nitrates thing. I’m using API freshwater master kit and following the instructions including the vigorous shaking of bottle number 2 for one minute. I even brought a sample to a chain by my house to be tested and all three were zero. If my tank wasn’t cycled, how could the ammonia be zero with everything in there (minus the dead fish spike)? I’m just confused....

ive already invested this much money; I’m not giving up yet 😁

I don’t suppose you are changing such a large volume of water so often that everything stays down near 0? This could interrupt your cycle development.

Heres a question for ya, you got established media from another aquarium you mentioned, did you continuously add a source of ammonia during the time you let it settle in? Without an ammonia source like fish food that you let rot in the tank, the bacteria that existed would have died off with nothing to eat, killing the cycled environment. Plant growth means nothing, they will grow in water that will kill fish without problems.

Nevertheless they do have white spots, that’s probably the issue, not your parameters. 

[Drummer230]

Here’s some better pictures 

[Drummer230]

1 minute ago, toothgrinder said:

I don’t suppose you are changing such a large volume of water so often that everything stays down near 0? This could interrupt your cycle development.

Heres a question for ya, you got established media from another aquarium you mentioned, did you continuously add a source of ammonia during the time you let it settle in? Without an ammonia source like fish food that you let rot in the tank, the bacteria that existed would have died off with nothing to eat, killing the cycled environment. Plant growth means nothing, they will grow in water that will kill fish without problems.

Nevertheless they do have white spots, that’s probably the issue, not your parameters. 

I’m changing about 30% weekly, so maybe? I did drop food in there like I was feeding an empty aquarium. My ammonia was less than .25 ppm the whole “cycle” time so, I assumed it was cycled/working from the start. My thought process was I added good bacteria, fed them, ammonia stayed low, plants used converted nitrates for new growth, safe to add fish lol.

I have no doubt that my fish have Ich at this point. I guess the question is did I do something wrong that caused them to die/get ich or were they already infected and ich is causing them to die? I guess I will really never know. 

[toothgrinder]

11 minutes ago, Drummer230 said:

I’m changing about 30% weekly, so maybe? I did drop food in there like I was feeding an empty aquarium. My ammonia was less than .25 ppm the whole “cycle” time so, I assumed it was cycled/working from the start. My thought process was I added good bacteria, fed them, ammonia stayed low, plants used converted nitrates for new growth, safe to add fish lol.

I have no doubt that my fish have Ich at this point. I guess the question is did I do something wrong that caused them to die/get ich or were they already infected and ich is causing them to die? I guess I will really never know. 

It came with them or the plants or something you didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t believe it simply manifests. Those water changes don’t sound like too much, but I would recommend only changing your water when your nitrates get high enough that they may bother the fish. Like 30-40 ppm. Otherwise there’s not really a reason to change the water outside of special interests like cool water changes are supposed to trigger corydora breeding. Your plants will grow better if you let the nitrates go up a bit too.

[Drummer230]

48 minutes ago, toothgrinder said:

It came with them or the plants or something you didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t believe it simply manifests. Those water changes don’t sound like too much, but I would recommend only changing your water when your nitrates get high enough that they may bother the fish. Like 30-40 ppm. Otherwise there’s not really a reason to change the water outside of special interests like cool water changes are supposed to trigger corydora breeding. Your plants will grow better if you let the nitrates go up a bit too.

Got it! I actually just found a water change guide on the website from Cory for guppies, so I’m gonna give it a go. Thanks for all the help!

[Drummer230]

So I wanted to update. I went and took a ride to the fish store I bought the guppies from today and guess what? The tanks were full of ich now that I know what I’m looking for! I’m glad that I know what’s killing my fish and that I didn’t cause it; I’m sad I didn’t realize it sooner and save them with treatment.