A terrible story - help, please.

Hi! Welcome to Aquaria Central. I sympathize with your situation, and I think it's great that you're trying to give your fish a good home. Lots of people, including myself, have had similar experiences at pet stores. But you've found the right resource here online to help you and your fish get through the initial cycle. And I just wanted to say that I agree with wataugachicken -- it's worth it to channel your anger productively by informing the original pet store about the inappropriateness of their practices. I've become a bit of a thorn in the side of the lfs that initially sent me in so many wrong directions, but I feel better knowing that someone is informing the employees about the basic humane treatment of their fish.
 
You sound like you have really gotten attached to these guys - even picking up on each personality. They may have come through crappy misinformation, but I hope you continue to enjoy them!

Oh, and WELCOME!
 
First and cheapest solution is to return the koi to the original store, buy a heater, plants, some driftwood and rocks and add some tropical fish to it. :grinyes: Second solution, build a pond, and put the koi in there. Koi need about 300 gallons of pond space for the first one and then 150 gallons for each additional koi.

Good luck and welcome to AC! :welcome:
 
I want to start with WELCOME TO AC!!!!!!!!

So sorry to hear how you were so misinformed, unfortunately that is not uncommon. Many, many of us have been there (myself included)...and is the reason I am at AC today. Found the site, because of a story similar to yours (misinformation).

I know nothing about Koi, so I am not going to really give any suggestions as to what you should do, but want to say kudos to you for your efforts, and good luck with what ever you decide to do!
 
Finding a good permanent home for your Koi is a good idea. They will need a pond eventually, and being as messy as they are, it will save alot of effort on your part. It sucks that you had to get into the hobby this way, but now that you have a tank set up, you may as well use it!
 
im not sure you should be using sea salt for the treatment, ive heard youre supposed to use aquarium salt, not sea salt... but im not positive.
i had almost the same exact problem when i started out, 1 4"koi and 2 comets in a 20 gallon, not cycled, some getting sick.

i kept up with the water changes to keep ammo down and used stress coat to condition the water and help with their slime coats until i figured out what i should do with them. i wanted to keep them so bad lol.
i ended up bringing them back to the LFS because i wouldn't have adequate room for a Koi. they really are great fish though.

the problem with these fish in a 29 for now (along with the fact that the tank isnt cycled and besides the fact that they can get to be 2 ft) is that the ammonia would still probably be too high. these fish are messy, and ammonia adds up pretty quick. youd need a LOT of filter media to establish a big bacterial colony to handle the ammonia. even after that though, nitrates would be high.
honestly, if i were you, id bring them back and plan out your pond and research in the meantime.. bringing them back would be the right thing to do unless you could get them a bigger home, and youd feel much better without worrying all the time.
if you didnt want to bring them back, you need a bigger tank asap. you could probably get a big big big tupperware container and house them in there with good filters and a heater or 2 until next year when you set up the pond. the only problem with these containers is that they bow under the water pressure and would prob. give in sooner than later.

if you found a deeper kids pool, you could probably use that until you got your pond set up.
to cycle the tank, all you need is a good amount of established filter media. ask at the LFS you got your fish at, or better yet.. ask a friend who has an established disease free aquarium if you have one. it will be an almost instant cycle if you get a good amount.

if you decide to bring the koi back, you could get some small community fish to take their place. there are a lot that would be really happy in a 29g for life. youd still need to cycle the tank, but you could ask for some cycled filter media when you pick up the fish(if you didnt want to do a fishless cycle)
there are some cold water fish that are small, but youd have a lot more options with tropical fish if you got a heater.

like someone suggested, a good test kit is in order.. ammonia, nitrite, nitrate.
API test kits are my favorite and work pretty well.. they come with a tube.


good luck, and welcome to AC. hope i helped.
 
Welcome to AC. I'm really glad that you tried to research and do the things you did.
Here are some tips :):
-Easydoesit suggested a good solution: Buy a kiddie pool! You can get one at target for several hundred gallons for $20-$40. We got our 60 gallon rubbermaid, btw, for $15.
-Also agree with Overfilter, overfilter, overfilter. Goldfish and Koi are messy. Canister filters are recommended.
-You mentioned cycling-do you fully understand it? Even if you do, the page on cycling here is very good and explains the danger of ammonia and nitrite.
-Water changes won't stress a fish unless the chemistry and temperature of the water is far from the tank water. Some people end up carrying out 80% water changes a day to keep the cycle from hurting the fish. Prime dechlorinator will detoxify ammonia and nitrite as well as remove heavy metals and chloramine. It will help keep everyone less stressed out! It also will not hurt the cycling process, which is a myth you may hear.
-Liquid test kits are the only ones worth getting
-If you were sold a "common" pleco, post on here for an ID ASAP; some can grow to a foot or two
-Biospira is the only cycling product known to work, and even then it is touch and go, since it must always be refrigerated.


-Welcome to AC! I hope you enjoy your time here.

So many addicted hobbiests start out this way. There is so much enjoyment that can be derived from this hobby!
 
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You would think LFS's would be monitored by some group. If they were, I bet they would think twice before putting a sale before the lives of animals. I began the hobby with a friend giving me a 29g tank, I found out later why he was so willing to get rid of it. It turned out he knew nothing about fish tanks either. I went right out and bought what the LFS said I needed and about 8 fish (1st mistake, trusted a chain store). After I began losing fish I found this forum and another one. I began to learn why I was losing fish and what cycling was. Through my research I learned about Kordon AmQuel Plus and Kordon NovAqua Plus Water Conditioner and gave it a try. This stuff really works and saved the fish I had left. Now it's 4 months later my tank is clear and cycled (Took about 3 months to cycle) and I am starting to add fish two at a time. When I set up my ten gallon I bought the same filter I had for my 29 gallon and put the old bio-wheel in the new tank and two weeks later my 10 gallon cycled. Hope some of this helps and good luck with the fish. I was stressed out when I was losing mine, but now that I know how to keep them alive, it's beginning to be fun for me and the whole family.
 
queuetue said:
This is a long and terrible story. If you're not into sad tales of deceit, stupidity and fish torture, please hit the back button.

I'm an organic gardener, and part of that is keeping water in a pair of open 20 gallon barrels. It lets tap water dechlorinate over time, and keeps the water warm in the sun for watering my plants. A neighbor voiced a concern that I was providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes, so I went looking for a natural solution to prevent that.

I popped into the local fish store, and explained my problem to the nice lady tending the tanks. her suggestion (which I had no reason to doubt at the time) was a handful of wonderful koi - they were even on sale! (Remember that warning above? You can still bail now before it gets scary.)

They sold me 6 3" koi (my wife always wanted some, and the lady told me they'd even eat out of my hand) and a pair of 40 gallon powerhead filters. I brought them home, ran the filters for a few hours to clean out the first tank, while the bag of fish floated and reached the right temp. Then I released them into their new 'pond'. They actually seemed to enjoy it. They swam around in circles, and were willing to eat a tiny bit of red spirulina pellets within the hour. Success!

I went upstairs to hop onto google and research my new friends and learn about their needs, but other duties called and I had to leave it till the morning.

Very early the next morning, I started to read about koi and started to feel a little bit of shock. Pet store lady (and the more knowledgeable manager who picked out the pumps after hearing my needs a second time) forgot to mention they could live 20 to 30 years, and grow to 2 to 3 feet each. Did not mention that they needed much more and much warmer water than I'd put them into, didn't mention chlorine, nitrogen, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates - or, perhaps most importantly, that they had a tendency to jump out when unhappy with conditions.

At sunup, with dread, I headed out to the garden, and found three on the ground - two stiff and dead, and a third gasping. I scooped out water washed him, and inspected him - he seemed to be breathing, and didn't have any obvious cuts or scratches, and I returned him to the entirely inadequate bin.

Caveat Emptor entered my mind at this point.

I covered the poor guys to prevent any more jumps, and waited for my wife to wake up, at which time we had a serious discussion about how we were going to deal with this terrible mistake we had made. Obviously, what we had going on wasn't going to work. We had to dispose of them humanely, find a home for them, or try our best to take care of them properly.

We did more reading, and decided to try and save them. We went to a different store ( the first one has lost our business for good) and explained our situation. Not a lot of sympathy, but they were more than happy to sell us a 29 gallon tank with an over-the-side filter, hood and heater, with some water conditioner, gravel a few rocks and a tiny pleco (to help with algae - necessary, they told me) and a few cheap live plants. (I'm not sure what this fish store was thinking either, unless they also just wanted to sell as much as they could.)

We went home, set up the tank, got the water to the same temperature as the water the fish were in, conditioned it and transferred the remaining 4.

For the first few days, things seemed great. I had a lot of concerns that I wasn't cycling this tank properly, that there would be serious ammonia problems while the bacteria established itself, and those concerns were found to be true. About a week in, the perky fish started to get lethargic and the water started to get pretty smelly. I pulled the plants and started doing a 10% water change every morning, and while it started getting worse slower, it certainly wan't getting any better. After 5 days of 10% changes, I got very concerned and did a 60% water change, and set up that powerhead filter the first store sold me. The water improved considerably, and 3 of my 4 perked right up. Fish #4 ("bruce") didn't seem as happy as the rest. Within 4 hours, he was glued to the bottom of the tank, seeming to strain at breathing. Within 8 hours, we were pretty worried - he looked like there was a coating of grey over him, milky eyes, and he wasn't moving at all, except for very fast and seemingly shallow breathing.

Back to the store, where I bought the test kit and gravel siphon they should have had me get the first time, and a discussion with the staff. They suggested Brucie was stressed from the large water change, and suggested I pick up a small container of ammo lock, just in case.

I got home, bruce was looking worse, and I ran all of the tests I had. Nitrite 0/Nitrate 0/Ammonia 3-4 ppm/PH 8.0 Obviously, I had an ammonia problem (and this was after a 60% water change - I don't even want to think about what these guys were in before.) I cleaned the gravel (Wow, was it dirty - I pulled 5 gallons of dirty muck and then stopped, because I don't want to cycle any more water today.) and added the ammo-lock. i also added 6 tablespoons of pure sea salt, prediluted in tank water and raised the tank temperature to 78 degrees, according to several sites describing that as a good way to reduce the risk of disease for stressed koi.

And that's where I am now. An uncycled tank, an uncontrolled ammonia spike, three limping fish and one that looks about down for the count, and a tiny pleco that hasn't shown one bit of distress since this whole tragedy started, just munching away at whatever he finds in the tank, and staying out of his big buddy's way.

Sorry to write an epic here - especially with my first post, but I wanted to get as much information in as possible. I need to go through a crash course on freshwater tank crisis management, and if any pros out there can give me good advice on what else to do, I'd like to hear it. Including saying goodbye, if this is hopeless.

Once this crisis is over, we intend to start plans on larger tanks for a year, and then moving up plans on that pond we always wanted to build to next summer, instead of "sometime."
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not sure on how cold it gets over there but im from oz south Australia i have had many different fish and some very large fresh water species such as barra;catfish;and other fish in a 1000ltr tank most of my friends thought they would set up a tank and have the same the one thing they all did wrong was over feed them they think fish need a massive amount of food i always only give them a little bit in the morning thats it they may seem hungry when you walk up to the tank but when you walk away the do what comes natural scavenge around the bottom plus some fish flakes can cause cloudy water try if you want feed them live food they love it like meal worms or even a couple of garden worms i find there colors come out it gets them very excited and as it goes for water changes do not over do it me personally clean gravel change half your tanks water only feed a bit once a day some people only feed theres every second day run some charcoal through a filter helps remove the smell and take out toxins and some good filters you will see a big improvement just dont kill them with kindness we all make that mistake and i think you will do ok shops only want to profit they dont really care i have never used chemicals in over 40 years of having tanks hope this helps remember KIS keep it simple
 
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