Guppy problem 4 out of 12 dead

How did you jump start the tank? What are your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings?

That tank is pretty full with just the guppys alone. To be quite honest, I would remove the syno (upside down cat). They get to about 4-5" and need more space. Also guppys are livebearers which means no eggs. She could have been pregnant, which isnt uncommon in LFS tanks, or possibly bloated for another reason.

I wouldn't count on the betta dieing before a guppy. It's impossible to tell either way.

How are you treating for ich, btw?

Which product did you use? Did you monitor the nitrogen (ammonia, etc.) levels?

Chances are your tank isn't cycled. I would read this thread.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84598

I would also encourage your roommate to get a liquid test kit. Much more reliable than strips IMO.

When we say that strips are not reliable we mean test strips in general not just one brand.

Test strips are very inaccurate.

I too would advise a liquid test kit.

Alright, so I'm not a fish person. My roommate is and she's the one with the tank. But I've taken an interest and have been helping out. From what I understand you tossed some ammonia in the tank and then several days later added a ridiculous amount of fish to a fairly small tank.

Adding ammonia = fishless cycle. Now a fishless cycle takes a couple of weeks to a month for a good colony of ammonia and nitrate eating bacteria to build up enough to deal with the ammonia caused by fish pooing in your tank, and then you can add some fish. Becuase ammonia is poisonous and in high enough levels will kill your fish. Jump starting involves adding filter media from an established tank which already has a good colony of bacteria growing on it.
It sounds like what you did is tossed in ammonia, and then added over a dozen fish to your tank who then began busily adding ammonia.

New tank syndrome, from what I understand comes from not cycling your tank, so your fish breathe in their own waste and damages some of them enough to kill them untill enough bacteria is built up. New tank syndrome does not have to happen.

As for your stocking levels, I personally like the 1 inch of fish per gallon rule as a good starting point, most fish produce a certain amount of waste and that seems to keep them healthy stocking like that. For larger bodied fish I just give them extra gallons to account for extra waste. For a 5 gallon or less people will only keep 1 betta, so we can say the betta spews enough waste to account for a couple of gallons, possibly even up to half of your tanks capacity. 12 guppies is more inches of fish than gallons in your tank, and I'm sure that peopel have had guppies multiply far above that stocking level, but those tanks had established media with busily multiplying bacteria keeping up with the slow addition of fish. Adding the upsidown catfish to that is just way overstocking no matter how you look at it.

Adding all of those fish at once to a tank with little to no bacterial colonies pretty much just invovles your fish spending all day spewing out ammonia like a firehose and poisoning themselves.

Cryolath said:

I personally like the 1 inch of fish per gallon rule as a good starting point, most fish produce a certain amount of waste and that seems to keep them healthy stocking like that.

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The inch per gallon "rule" Is not accurate. It fails to take into account so many things such as swimming space needed and virtually all individual needs. Also different types of fish can produce many different levels of waste.

Other than that, you summed it up well Cryolath!

I'm Cooch's roommate and what i did to jump start the tank was i took the bare tank and added ammonia to it to a concentration of 5ppm then ran it for 3 days and monitored the level daily. On the third day i added extra bio media to his HOB his filter that i had came from one of my tanks that has beer running for about 5 months now to really add a colony of bacteria to it. I left that for 3 more days adding ammonia to the tank to maintain it at 3ppm then removed then new media and monitored it again for 3 more days. Once the tank was able to clean out the ammonia in less than 24 hours i decided it was time for fish. Once the fish were added I checked the levels twice a day and the only spike that occurred where in Nitrates and nitrites which I was expecting so I preformed small water changed to bring them back in check. i know where the ick came from and what caused it and it is being treated with a product called Quick Cure which I have seen used before with good results. I have monitored the tank (except for yesterday and today for i was out of town) and the levels have stayed in check, (at least they have stayed in check with what i measure my tanks at using the same tests with out any problems at all). what i can't figure it what is causing the guppies to die off but nothing else. the Ick has been brought under control and was never allowed to get horribly bad anyhow due to immediate diagnosis and treatment.