Okay, things have been fine up until now, but now I'm getting worried. I received some fish from Angels plus a week ago (5 angels, and 6 guppies). Fish were perfect. Gave them a couple days to themselves and then started adding fish (I cycled my tank using ammonia, I'm sure some of you have read about it here, but my filters would remove 20ppm of ammonia in less than 6 hours) so my filtration is fully developed. Everything has appeared normal the whole time, none of the fish have showed signs of stress, no gulping at the surface, they've been eager to eat. So I didn't think much about it when I had a neon tetra turn up dead one morning. Water quality was perfect, 0ppm ammonia, and nitrite, and about 10 ppm nitrate. So I attributited it to the fish, thought it was probably poor quality. Same thing has happened to 2 more tetras, which I all got from the same place, so I still thought it was the fish... None of the other fish in the tank have showed any problems what so ever... Now one of my angels has died. Nothing appeared out of the normal until last night, and even then it wasn't anything major. This particular angel wasn't swimming with the others like it had been, it was by itself towards the bottom. Then today it didn't come up to eat. It still appeared fine, it wasn't sideways in the water or gulping at the surface or anything. And then this evening I found it dead on the bottom. I immediately tested the water again and it is still 0ppm Ammonia, and nitrite, and the nitrate has gone up some (to ~20ppm). I was under the impression that nitrate levels below 40ppm will safe. Also if it was the nitrate, wouldn't the fish be showing signs of stress? Any insight here would be great, getting very concerned.
Sean
Sean