Help!!! What did I do?

[ksoper]

:help: Hi - I'm new here and I need help fast. A friend of mine gave me her 55 gallon freshwater aquarium the end of Aug. When she brought it over, she had emptied 90% of the water out and left the fish in to move it. We set it up and she told me to just refill it with tap water. We did so, and only had a couple of casualties. There are four big sucker fish, each are over 12", a couple of water frogs, a couple of orgamies (sp?), neons, black tail platys and about 200 guppies.

Well - everything's been fine, she told me to change about half the water once a month or every two months. I changed it around the middle of October with no problems. Then, I did the same thing again yesterday and I have lost 204 fish so far!!:cry: As of right now the four sucker fish, two frogs and about 15 guppies have survived. We lost everything else - I've just been crying my eyes out while pulling out all the little guys that didn't make it.

Now the water's murky and smells just awful - can't even get within 2 two feet of the tank without smelling it.

What did I do wrong? I didn't do anything different than before.

Can somebody help me?!! Please?!

~Kimberly

 

[stezatois]

hi, 1st of all that was a lot of creatures in that tank... most of us here do a weekly water change, 25-50% on average. Also just tap water can be harmful to fish and you need to use a dechlorinator, Prime is a good one. The sucker fish are most likely plecs at that size tho i cant say for sure without seeing them and they produce a heavy bio-load. Hence monthly - bi-monthly wc just really is not enough. Why not pop into the chatroom and get some extra advice real time.

 

[rich311k]

I would imagine that the smell is ammonia. With the load of fish in that tank the nitrates had to be through the roof. The water change radically altered the chemistry of the water there by killing the fish. The dieing fish rotting makes the ammonia go up as well, killing more fish. Why it never happened before I can not say.

I honestly would get a test kit and check the water parameters, do several smaller water changes to stabilize things. Then take stock of what is left and decide where to go from there. The big plecos need to be rehomed to a bigger tank,

 

[avionics30]

Wow! That is a lot of fish! Weekly changes are definately in order for a 55 gallon tank and probably 50%. What is your filtration? Have you tested your tap? You shouldn't have any odor with clean water. Try and step up your water changes with conditioned tap. Use prime like Stezatois and I do. It's a good product.

 

[ksoper]

here is one "before"

and a couple of "afters"

sorry my kids are in the before - only pic i could find quickly

 

[stezatois]

Part of the problem guys is unfortunately bad advice and a new filter. Have spoken to her in te chat room, shes gonna get a test kit and some declor, so that we can assist better once we know whats going on in the tank for sure. My thoughts of the loss of fish is that the tank is now also starting over from scratch on a cycle. Hopefully we will be able to help her not lose the rest.

 

[BigNorsk]

Wow, there's a lot of things to talk about. Don't get to hard on yourself, these things actually aren't self evident, keeping fish is just a skill you learn.

First let's start with water. The water from a tap typically in the US has either chlorine or chloramine in it, that is unless you are on your own well and you don't use chlorine yourself.

First thing is you should know which. To learn that, you call your water department and ask.

Now if you have only chlorine, you can do one of two things. Either you add water conditioner or you let it sit a day preferably while you aerate it and the chlorine gasses off, just like it does in the pool area at a hotel where the chorine will burn your eyes because so much is coming off the water.

If it's chloramine, you really need to use a water conditioner. Chloramine is chlorine bonded to ammonia. So you want to use a conditioner that says it's for chloramine or else what happens is you break the chorine and deactivate that, but you are literally then adding ammonia to your tank, not good.

Many people don't bother to learn what they have they just get a water conditioner that works for both and go from there.

Now the next thing is stocking rates. The general rule of thumb is one inch of fish for every gallon of water. That's a real safe low load on a tank. You can, and many people do go beyond that, it's just more dangerous and you need to do some things.

For instance plants will tend to help that so most people who have more load will have plants to help with the nutrients and such.

The other thing that really helps and most people do it even if they aren't overloaded is weekly smaller water changes, from 10 to 20%. The big thing to do during the change is to vacuum the gravel to get the waste from the tank.

The big cleaning is like a once a year thing and during that you get right down to really get things cleaned.

You kind of did an in between thing. See there is huge amounts of waste from that many fish in your gravel and you stirred it up and it suddenly started to break down and it's giving you a flush of ammonia so fast the bacteria that convert it to nitrite and the nitrite to nitrate haven't had a chance to build up and catch up, they will but most of your fish will die.

So change your practices to more smaller changes with gravel vacuuming.

It's always good to get a test kit and test your water to find out what's going on. Fish aren't very tolerant of either ammonia or nitrite, those should always read zero on a cycled tank, except if you are adding water that has chloramine, you might get an ammonia reading for a day or so even with conditioner.

But anyway, one to follow over time is the nitrate, its not a big problem unless it gets out of hand. Fish vary in their tolerance. On guppies getting over 100 on nitrate is very serious but they will start to have problems before that, it's really nice to keep that nitrate at 20 or so, if it's climbing above that, increase the water changes a bit. Higher levels and it's hard to tell exactly where because there is no magic line, start to stress the fish and you will get some fin rot and such and if you just keep your water good, it's pretty seldom you will see it.

At this point, I think you want to take water from the tank and set up a temporary aquariaum, probably a plastic tote box or something like that in size. Add a air stone or two and put the fish in it. If you have something that detoxifies all the forms of nitrogen, like Amquel plus, or I believe Prime works too, and that will detoxify the ammonia or nitrite for now. By the way you can tell which is causing the problems from the symptoms. Nitrite causes the fish to suffocate so they go to the most aerated water right by the filter or they come to the top and gulp air, if you see that, it's nitrite.

Then you need to do a good cleaning, to get all that accumulated waste. Then you refill with new conditioned water. If you don't change your filter, you should be fine then, you don't change or clean the bacteria in the filter so it's already going and it doesn't take time to reestablish the bacteria.

Check the water each week before the partial change for a month and if no problems so up you are good. If the ammonia starts to climb, you can use the Amquel plus to detoxify and give the bacteria time to catch up.

Don't get sloppy and figure you can just start buying Amquel plus by the gallon and you never have to do anything, anytime you add food to the system, an equivalent amount of nitrogen has to come out at some point in the future. Could be as plants that grow and eventually you trim, could be in the change water, or, could be in dead fish, but what goes in must come out. Some people even get really technical and set up an anaerobic area in the bottom of the tank and get the bacteria to convert the nitrate to nitrogen gas and so they never get a nitrate buildup, but that's really beyond in complexity and such a beginner.

Anyway, that's generally what I would recommend. I'm sure there's going to be some questions or something that isn't clear that I've said.

Marv

 

[stezatois]

Yes as liz and i thought, they are plecos. They are some big fish for a 55 too, You may need t get rid of a couple of those guys. Or a bigger tank.

 

[Cory Keeper]

First thing is you should know which. To learn that, you call your water department and ask.

Good idea, I did that with mine, they use chlorimine, They also add insane levels of it, ammonia reads like 1ppm from the tap

If it's chloramine, you really need to use a water conditioner. Chloramine is chlorine bonded to ammonia. So you want to use a conditioner that says it's for chloramine or else what happens is you break the chorine and deactivate that, but you are literally then adding ammonia to your tank, not good.

Actually, most will turn the ammonia to ammonium (NH4) which is non toxic, Prime for example. Do be forewarned that NH4 will still show up as ammonia with the tests.

Just get a bottle of prime and no worries.

Now the next thing is stocking rates. The general rule of thumb is one inch of fish for every gallon of water. That's a real safe low load on a tank. You can, and many people do go beyond that, it's just more dangerous and you need to do some things.

BAD rule, very bad rule. I also say that if you were to break that rule its more dangerous. That said, you had far too many fish to begin with, compounded by the lack of water changes.

For instance plants will tend to help that so most people who have more load will have plants to help with the nutrients and such.

Plants still won't help with TDS (Total Dissolved Solids)

The other thing that really helps and most people do it even if they aren't overloaded is weekly smaller water changes, from 10 to 20%. The big thing to do during the change is to vacuum the gravel to get the waste from the tank.

10% weekly water changes are kind of low, unless you have a lightly stocked tank, 20% would be far better, 30% would be awesome, keeps the tank mates very very healthy.

The big cleaning is like a once a year thing and during that you get right down to really get things cleaned.

Bad idea, you should never have to tear down your tank to clean it. In fact I have never done that to any of my tanks unless there was a major problem, such as an illness that wiped out the entire population (single betta).


Here is my susgestion, start doing weekly 30%-50% water changes untill you get rid of all those fish, plecos included. 4 adult common plecos create a huge mess and are far too big your your tank. If you like your plecos, then look at getting like a 300g+ tank. Also look at getting rid of either all the guppies, or do something with all the babies. Never should your tank have 200 fish, 200 shrimp is Ok, 200 fish is not.

That smell is probably ammonia, and for the short term, do like 20% water changes daily untill levels start coming back down. once you have everything stabalized, start doing weekly water changes.

 

[ksoper]

I live in a podunk little town and evidently aquariums are not a big business around here. I went to get the test kit and the dechlorinator (sp?) at our local walmart. They don't have any test kits at all - not even a space for them on the shelf. They don't have the Prime brand dechlo. Only had TetraAqua AquaSafe. So I went ahead and got that.

I won't have a chance to make it to another town to a "real" store until the weekend. So I have accepted the fact that I may just have to start over from scratch. But I am consoling myself in the knowledge that this time i'll start out right and will have learned from my mistake and from you guys.

I have been looking at pictures posted here, and I am inspired. Since the tank was given to me by a friend, I just used what she gave me and left it like that. Now since I'm going to have to start fresh, I can set it up the way my kids and I want it. So instead of continuing to grieve and feel guilt over the deaths of all those little guys, I am looking to the future to do it right and make it better!

Thank you so much to everyone who responded. I appreciate your help. I'll be around and after the weekend as soon as I can get a test kit, I'll be back with some numbers.

Thanks again!