Well, my husband decided to finally set up our fish tank. He ran off to the store and came back with all the stuff for our 55 tank, as well as three swordtails and a pleco.
One of the swordtails died the first night (we didn't do any pre-cycling at all.) But the other two and the pleco were doing great for about a week. We got really excited and started adding fish. I'm guessing we jumped the gun a little bit ... I'm going to do all the reading I can on fish-cycling, but for now, I'm really worried and wanted to get an opinion right away about what is going on.
We then added 9 zeba danios, and two rainbow sharks. Everyone was still doing great.
Went back to the store a few days later and got two blue Gouramis, and 12 tiger barbs. That's when the trouble started. (This was two days ago.)
First of all, we never floated any of the fish, because my husband insisted they would be fine. I was leery, but somewhat convinced, because the others had done so well. Well, the first night, one of the gouramis started laying on the bottom of the tank. He was still alive, but obviously not healthy.
That gourami swims around every once in awhile as if nothing is wrong, and always swims to the top to eat, but then inevitably winds up back on the bottom of the tank somewhere, usually on his side, looking very dead but still breathing. This is still going on.
THEN - I noticed yesterday that our male swordtail was acting, and looking very strange. He had little air bubbles all over his body, and was spending almost all his time at the top of the water, seemed like he was trying to get air. He was wagging (wagging?) his fins very rapidly, and even when he swam it looked very ... vigorous. I'd not seen him act like this before, and it worried me.
Just a few hours ago, I found him dead. One other note, that might be important, is when we added the gouramis and the tiger barbs - I noticed that both the swordtails, but the male in particular, got extremely passive and started hiding. But we had checked all the compatibility, and they were supposed to be okay...
And the other thing I've noticed is the tiger barbs have started getting really aggresive at times, attacking the blue gourami (the one that is thriving) and also were chasing our surviving female swordtail around and nipping at her too.
Ah, and the last thing i noticed, was that the two blue gouramis were seeming to nip at each other in circles. didn't look like it was very friendly, so I excluded the idea that they were mating ... could we have possibly gotten 2 males, and would they be fighting each other?
The store told us all the fish we got were "fairly peaceful." I'm just really confused, between all the possibilities that could be going on, and we are such newbies, we don't know if its disease, if we just shocked them by not floating them, if we didn't cycle the tank right, if its compatibility, or ratio of barbs to the others, or a combination of all of those!
Help??
One of the swordtails died the first night (we didn't do any pre-cycling at all.) But the other two and the pleco were doing great for about a week. We got really excited and started adding fish. I'm guessing we jumped the gun a little bit ... I'm going to do all the reading I can on fish-cycling, but for now, I'm really worried and wanted to get an opinion right away about what is going on.
We then added 9 zeba danios, and two rainbow sharks. Everyone was still doing great.
Went back to the store a few days later and got two blue Gouramis, and 12 tiger barbs. That's when the trouble started. (This was two days ago.)
First of all, we never floated any of the fish, because my husband insisted they would be fine. I was leery, but somewhat convinced, because the others had done so well. Well, the first night, one of the gouramis started laying on the bottom of the tank. He was still alive, but obviously not healthy.
That gourami swims around every once in awhile as if nothing is wrong, and always swims to the top to eat, but then inevitably winds up back on the bottom of the tank somewhere, usually on his side, looking very dead but still breathing. This is still going on.
THEN - I noticed yesterday that our male swordtail was acting, and looking very strange. He had little air bubbles all over his body, and was spending almost all his time at the top of the water, seemed like he was trying to get air. He was wagging (wagging?) his fins very rapidly, and even when he swam it looked very ... vigorous. I'd not seen him act like this before, and it worried me.
Just a few hours ago, I found him dead. One other note, that might be important, is when we added the gouramis and the tiger barbs - I noticed that both the swordtails, but the male in particular, got extremely passive and started hiding. But we had checked all the compatibility, and they were supposed to be okay...
And the other thing I've noticed is the tiger barbs have started getting really aggresive at times, attacking the blue gourami (the one that is thriving) and also were chasing our surviving female swordtail around and nipping at her too.
Ah, and the last thing i noticed, was that the two blue gouramis were seeming to nip at each other in circles. didn't look like it was very friendly, so I excluded the idea that they were mating ... could we have possibly gotten 2 males, and would they be fighting each other?
The store told us all the fish we got were "fairly peaceful." I'm just really confused, between all the possibilities that could be going on, and we are such newbies, we don't know if its disease, if we just shocked them by not floating them, if we didn't cycle the tank right, if its compatibility, or ratio of barbs to the others, or a combination of all of those!
Help??