Lost 3 Neons on 3 Nights!! Help!!!

MyShrimpDied

MyShrimpDied

Freddie Freeloader
Jun 2, 2004
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I am very frustrated by this. In the past three nights three of my neon tetras have died. All of them were fine during the day, but after i turn off the light and go to sleep, the next morning, they are missing, and later turn up dead. I tested my water and everything is normal except, ive got about 1ppm of nitrite.

Could the nitrite be what is slowly killing them off, could it be that along with the fact that they are NOT hardy fish. Im very confused, i really liked those fish. In the day they would act completely normal, nothing weird at all. This sucks.

~ MyShrimpDied
 
Nitrite is very toxic to fish and could be what's killing them. You need to do water changes and keep it below 0.5 at the very max. (Lower would be much better.) Are you cycling the tank?

Melissa
 
No, i recently had a nitrite (added too many fish) spike and all of them survived that, but ive been doing water changes A LOT. My nitrite was at around 10 ppm about 2 weeks ago, but i started doing %25 water changes every day and it went down pretty quickly.

I would just find it odd that they survived the spike and can't survive a much smaller amount of it.

EDIT: I forgot to add, I added a large piece of driftwood a few days ago, the driftwood had been soaked for about a week, then boiled for 24 minuts, and soaked for another day. Could that be it?

Thanks,

~ MyShrimpDied
 
Nitrite, or nitrate? A nitrite spike up to 10 ppm is deadly--the fish would not have survived without heroic efforts. Even so, that exposure could easily weaken their immune system to the point where they are now dying from secondary bacterial infections.
 
I would guess that the nitrite (assuming you didn't mean nitrate) spike did the damage and they are just dropping of now from it. Nitrite affects the gills of the fish and eventually they won't be able to deal with the effects of it. Plus neons aren't super hardy.

Keep doing water changes and get the nitrites to less than 0.25 ppm. Anymore than that and the damage will continue. If you can't get it down then also try adding a tsp of NaCl per gallon of water. This will combat the nitrite in the fish's gills.
 
Thanks guys fro all the responses. the tank has been estabilished for about a month. And the pleco is about 2.5 inches long. The nitrite damage does make sense, plus, i recently removed half of my old substrate and replaced it with sand so im sure that i took away lots of the beneficial bacteria(idiot me).

I did another water change today and what is that chemical that i should add? NaCl? what is that? do i need to buy it at a LFS. thanks for the help.

~ MyShrimpDied
 
Sorry, NaCl is just good old salt. Table salt will do so there is no reason to go out and buy any. 1 tsp per gallon (predissolved in some tank water) should be fine to help combat the nitrite. Make sure it is NaCl and not fake salt (the potassium stuff).
 
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