Brand New Fish Dead

[Romans116]

Yes, I tested today. Nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia were 0. Only thing that looked a bit high was GH, but not by much 

[Trish]

26 minutes ago, Romans116 said:

Yes, I tested today. Nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia were 0. Only thing that looked a bit high was GH, but not by much 

You should have some nitrates.. 5- 20 ppm.  Are you sure you are cycled?  

[AquaAggie]

3 hours ago, Romans116 said:

Nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia were zero.

Sorry but I’m concerned that your tank may no be fully cycled. How did you cycle it? Just letting water sit in the tank won’t cycle it. A cycled tank should read some nitrates. With them all being zero I worry it isn’t cycled and adding all those fish at once will cause ammonia or nitrite spikes and cause further death. I agree with @Trish. I would recheck your parameters. 

[Wes L.]

 

5 hours ago, Romans116 said:

So yesterday, I set up my first community tank...I believe my tank was well cycled but I am kind of a newbie so maybe I did something wrong.

Wait......I see a couple of red flags here. Can you clarify....you said you set up your first tank yesterday and you thought it was well cycled.........in one day? I'm taking this to mean you added the first fish yesterday, but you've been cycling the tank for some time prior to adding the fish yesterday? How did you cycle and what makes you think it's cycled?

The second red flag is that your nitrates are 0. That's a problem. If your nitrogen cycle is functioning properly there will be nitrates....unless you have more plants than water in your tank. I can see Trish and Aqua Aggie noticed the same thing above.

You also said you have a high GH....so exactly how high? It sounds like you bought the fish from a local fish store, which means they are most likely using the same water that you have coming out of your tap....unless you're on well water, but if it's city water the GH is most likely irrelevant since your water will be the same as the fish store. Although that's a great question to ask your LFS next time you're there.....besides dechlorinating, is there anything they do to the water in their tanks?

Most likely what killed your fish is ammonia poisoning. It's the number one killer of fish in new aquariums....in fact, almost always. The thing about an ammonia spike is we can totally miss it. The nitrifying bacterial colony can double it's size every 7 hours if it needs to in order to accommodate an increase in ammonia. So that's 3 times in a 24 hour period. If we add a huge bio load all at once (such as all your new fish yesterday) the ammonia spikes in the tank until the colony can replicate itself to process all that ammonia. While the bacteria is replicating, the ammonia is damaging the fish, then we come along the next day and test for ammonia, and it's 0 and we scratch our heads thinking there's no ammonia.....there was ammonia, we just missed it. The bacteria grew and processed the ammonia...3 times in 24 hours...but the ammonia had already done it's damage since it's highly toxic to fish.

Edited March 8, 2021 by Wes L.

[Romans116]

Sorry, I worded it wrong. I have had the tank set up and cycling for a month and a half. I just retested nitrates and I can’t tell if it’s 0 or a bit higher, (I’m using some test strips and the color is almost exactly the same). I believe my tank was well cycled though, I set it up a month and a half ago with all my plants, decor, and filter and put some fish food in it every other day. From what I read I thought that was the best way to do it. I tested the water and saw ammonia spike and didn’t test for a while because I knew I wasn’t planning on adding fish for a while but tested about 2 weeks ago and ammonia and nitrites were zero and nitrates were the same as currently.

I will definitely ask my LFS next time I go, I’ve never really thought of that. 
 

A total of 5 tetras have now died 😞 

[gardenman]

If the ammonia truly tests at zero then ammonia didn't kill the fish. Newly bought fish often tend to die simply due to the stress they've been under getting to your home. Fish bought in a LFS (local fish store) often originated overseas, either wild caught or bred in captivity. They were then bagged in large quantities and shipped to an importer.  There they would have been poured from the bags into holding tanks. They aren't always handled perfectly at this stage as all the importer cares about is keeping them alive long enough to sell them. Any dead fish would have been removed, but significant losses can occur at that stage of the process. Ten to twenty percent dead at that stage of the process is not unusual. The importer then sells them to a wholesaler. They're bagged once again and shipped off to the wholesaler who then dumps then into holding tanks. The wholesaler typically doesn't do much for the fish other than remove the dead. The big wholesalers then typically sell the fish either to a company like Petsmart or to regional middlemen who then sell the fish to local fish stores. Those sold to chains like Petsmart go to their main locations to then be distributed to local stores. A fish you find in your local store may have been caught, transported, dumped in different water, five, six, seven times or more in the time from when they were caught until they reached your local store. At each stage, they were viewed as stock and the only goal of those holding them was to keep them alive long enough to sell them.

Most of the fish you find in stores have been through heck and back and are lucky to be alive. But stress can kill and those fish have seen a lot of stress. Many have gone days or even a week or longer with little or no food. (Well fed fish tend to pollute the shipping water with their waste so those shipping fish will often deprive them of food for days before shipping them.) They'll have been caught and moved an insane number of times. They'll have experienced vastly different water on multiple occasions. To say they're a bit stressed would be an understatement. You as an aquarist think you must have done something wrong when newly bought fish die on you, but in many cases you didn't.  

I really love the idea of a regional fish farm where every fish sold through the place was raised in that one location and treated like a valued pet the whole time and not a stock item. The startup costs for such an operation would be enormous, but such a system would be better for the fish and ultimately the aquarium keepers.

[Romans116]

Wow, I knew they were transported but never thought of it that way. Also, that would be pretty cool if they were breed locally. I’d love to start breeding fish one day to sell but that is far far in the future 😂  

[Kirsten]

Yeah, small tetras can be especially fragile, not as a result of genetics, but because they're bred and sold in such large numbers, they can often be crowded, stressed and underfed all along the chain before it reaches your home. So that final stress of being chased with a net, bagged and plopped again can sometimes just do them in, not to mention any diseases they may have picked up in the store. I just lost a couple of neons the same way. Lesson learned for me is always get a few extra if you can and keep the stress super super low when bringing home tetras.

It would be awesome to have locally bred tetras, but they're usually so cheap and plentiful from large farms that I doubt a hobby breeder could compete, unless they were special varieties or the breeder was really great at marketing the health and vigor of their fish.

Edited March 8, 2021 by Kirsten

[gardenman]

In my vision it's not so much a hobby breeder but a professional indoor fish farm in an old department store/large supermarket, maybe even an abandoned mall. Rows of tanks with vats/stock tanks under them for grow outs. Culturing much of the live food for the fish in the facility. Literally hundreds of thousands of gallons of water under cultivation. It would be the ultimate aquarium hobbyist store. Plants grown and raised in the facility. The fish all spawned and raised in the facility. The startup costs would be enormous and the risk of being taxed out of business would be high, but I think it's doable in the right setting. As the hobby stands now everyone makes a profit along the way. The guy catching or breeding the fish for the wholesalers makes money. The wholesalers make money. The importers make money, the middle men make money. The LFS makes money.  In theory you could cut everyone else out of the picture and sell better fish, at a better price, that would be healthier, happier, and less stressed. You'd have to be up and running for six months to a year before you could really have fish to sell, so you'd be starting out way in the hole financially. If the facility worked well, you'd have more fish than you could sell locally, but you could open satellite stores that you could supply from the main facility. 

I think it's doable, but you'd need a pile of cash upfront. Once started though, the cash flow coming in could be pretty good. If you just matched the prices of local retailers but offered better quality fish, you'd likely become the preferred retailer in your area. Since you were the only one making a profit from the fish/plants you'd cut out the middlemen. There are people selling plants like duckweed for $6.99 a cup. In a setup like I envision it's essentially cost-free to grow plants like duckweed. You'd want the facility in a moderate weather location so you don't have to spend too much heating or cooling it. Everyone in the hobby now makes money before things get to the local fish store, so why not bypass all of them and take all of the profits for yourself?

In my youth (the 1960s and 70s) we had a very small little shop run by a nice couple called the Evans out of their enclosed back porch. They raised their own fish and plants in tanks in their basement. Their fish were always fat, happy, and healthy. They cultured much of the food they fed them and made a decent income from the hobby. I think that could be expanded on a commercial scale.  It would be a big gamble with a lot of cash going out upfront though. You'd want your own well (probably two) so you didn't have to pay for the water. You'd want good quality water. (Some wells are not so good.) You'd want something to do with the used tank water. (A commercial greenhouse next door would make some sense.) You'd need the right staff. (Arguably the hardest part.) It would take a significant investment of time, money and energy, but over the long term, it could work out very well. 

[Romans116]

Thank you for all the information! Thank you everyone who gave me some information and their thoughts. I have learned a lot just from peoples responses and know what to do in the future. 

[starsman20]

The other thing to consider that in a 10 gallon tank that is quite a few fish to add at once.