1st fish death, 1st water change, please help!

Did you cycle (check the sticky's) your tank first or just add fish. If you just added fish then you are now doing a fish cycle and you will need to do a lot of water changes untill your bacteria load is large enough to handle the fish load.

The product cycle is questionable as to how well it works. Your nitrites are a little high and they can be lowered by water changes. Ultimatly you want ammonia and nitrites to be 0 ppm and nitrates >20 ppm. I am not good with the ph so I am sure somebody else will help on that. With the numbers you are posting it sounds like your tank still needs to cycle and that will now be done with the fish. Monitor your numbers and do frequent water changes to keep your numbers down.

Yeah, you're still cycling. I don't know about all gouramis but I do have honey gouramis and they aren't described as being super hardy. That's why I waited for the completion of the fishy cycle that I started using 6 zebra danios and 6 corydoras catfish. I then added the gouramis and watched the water levels closely for a few days and did like a 25% water change when ammonia got to .25ppm. After that, the bacteria in the tank took care of the rest and I now get 0 ammonia pretty much all the time.

You might want to try adding a product called biospira to your tank. Make sure that it's cold when you get it and ask the guy you're getting it from if it was kept cold consistantly. It is live bacteria. I'm not sure how well it works. I had no real results with it when I tried a fishless cycle with ammonia. The manufacturers say you need fish in order for it to work. My assumption was that the bacteria consume ammonia and fish produce ammonia so.........why would you need fish? Who knows? Some people have also reported success with it when used in conjunction with a bio-wheel hang on tank filter. What kind of filter do you have? Anyway, you might want to give that a shot. You could also add some gravel from an established tank to get things going.

You might also want to try adding some plants. See the aquatic plants forums for some stickies on light requirements and fertilizers, etc. They'll even be able to recommend some plants that will be okay in whatever lighting situation you have. Plants are great because they consume ammonia and nitrates. If all goes well and your plants are doing okay they'll be able to help control any ammonia and nitrate spikes you may have.

Your pH also seems ok. What's your hardness? This will give an idication of how stable your pH will be. It will also tell you about your CO2 levels and whether or not you have enough dissolved O2 in the water. You can increase that by creating more surface movement in your tank. You can use air stones for this or keep your water level just low enough for the outflow to really splash back into the tank.

Good luck.

sbundy said:

when do i know when my cycle has completed itself?

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Your cycle will be complete when your ammonia and nitrites are at 0 and you are showing nitrates. Now when ever you add fish you will have a mini cycle, what I mean by this is there will be enough bacteria to handle the fish load and every new fish will add extra ammonia to the tank and the bacteria will need to grow to compensate for the extra fish. If you add fish slowly it is almost not seen.

Your ammonia and nitrite readings will both be at 0 ppm and you nitrates will rise. You get rid of the nitrates with water changes.

ph is fine, but ammonia and nitrites are toxic to fish and most likely the cause of the deaths. You want to keep those at or very close to 0. As someone said, water changes are all you can really do to keep them down. If you don't have a nitrate kit pick one up ASAP and don't add anymore fish in the meantime