I GIVE UP!

Strawberri001

I'm No Angel
Oct 24, 2009
30
0
0
35
Missouri
Every fish that I have bought for my 5g tank has died, or gotten sick in a very short period of time..

My water is good, I feed them, I clean the tank once a week..

I don't know what my problem is..

I seem to be only to keep alive snails and bettas... :(

I give up..
 
Is your tank cycled? What are your readings for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate? How do you acclimate your fish? What fish other than bettas have you tried?
 
I have cycled it, they start out very healthy.. and then one day they just up and die.. I'm not sure what the actual numbers are cause the test strip I have is by color.. and I have tried recently, paradise fish and guppies... I may be cycling my tank wrong. Or even acclimating them wrong.
 
the problem is that a 5 gallon tank is pretty small for any group of fish. That said, even if it is cycled, there is very little margin for something to go wrong. If you have an ammonia spike, it is going to be lethal because of the amount of room in the tank...
 
I guess I will keep snails in it, cause they are thriving in it.....
 
also, what do you mean when you "clean" the tank once a week?? i would reccomend getting a liquid test kit, the strips are just not accurate at all.
 
Since it's so small instead of cleaning it every two weeks..... I clean it once a week.. o.O
 
By clean, do you mean do a water change? Around 50% needs to be changed every week.
 
The reason we are asking how you clean the tank is because if you are scrubbing everything in the tank weekly and emptying out the water, changing the filter pads, etc, you are killing your bacteria and causing your tank to begin another cycle.
 
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