New Cichlids Dying

K

Kristi McGee

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Aug 28, 2016
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I have an established 46 gallon tank with 3 Peacock Cichlids and 1 Yellow Lab. I have a pile of rocks and bunch of fake plants, so the fish have lots of places to hide. My water tests good, with a PH of 8.0 and Nitrates around 10ppm. No ammonia or nitrites. GH and KH were 5 and 6 last time I checked. I run an Eheim 2217 canister filter.

Here's my quandary:

I have made multiple attempts to add new Peacocks and Yellow Labs from my local fish store, only to have all the new ones die off within a couple days at the most. Their water has a PH of 7.8 and higher nitrates than mine.

I turn off the lights, rearrange the tank, and take about 3-4 hours to slowly acclimate the new fish to the aquarium water. I notice that the fish activity increases, but it doesn't seem like enough aggression to kill the new fish within a few hours or couple days. This has happened 3 times now.

Am I doing something wrong? Or am I getting really stressed and unhealthy fish? Or are my fish *******s that don't want anyone else living in there?

The aquarium looks a little empty with only the 4 fish, but I am wondering if I should just leave them be and hope they grow fast to fill it up. I feel bad bringing fish home to what seems to be certain death.

Any advice/related experience would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kristi
 
I think it is the 3-4 hour acclimation that is killing the fishes. I would float the bag for about 20+ mins then net the fish out and into the tank.
 
The guy at the fish store told me I wasn't giving them long enough to acclimate after the first time. (They died when I put them in 30 minutes, too.) But thanks for the response.
 
Sorry for your troubles and losses.

Rift lake cichlids can be jerks but I don't think that is the problem here. When they die do they have any damage that looks like aggression? It sounds like you are addressing aggression well, besides the tank being a little small for rifties IMO but it can work.

Acclimation is highly debated. Some find less deaths when they don't acclimate at all and just plop them right in. Theory still scares me but I'm starting to use it. Drip acclimation supposedly takes like days to be effective because it takes days for fish to fully adjust to new water parameters. This is all just talk I've heard so far so....

You know the pH and nitrates from their source what about kh and gh? TDS would be an even better judge really but I assume you don't have a meter, your LFS might test it for you though. Anyways I think your hardness is quite low for rift lake cichlids. It's harder for fish to adjust to lower hardness than to higher hardness (or TDS) and these guys are used to it being quite high. I'd aim to get that gh and kh up to about 10.

Did your existing fish and the fish that are dying on you come from the same place? If so, it is unlikely to be the source but certainly you could be getting sick/stressed fish. Do you know how long those fish were in the store before you bought them? I like to wait a week or two after they arrive at the store to buy any, to weed out at "bad" fish.
 
I don't think it is aggression because the fish look fine, not beat up.

Yes, the ones in my tank did come from the same store. But only 4 of the 25 or so I have purchased have survived. They are not the original occupants, but they are from the second wave of fish I bought. They have been in there for just under a year.

The ones I just purchased were there for at least a week. I visited the week before and saw them and then asked when their last shipment was. It was the previous week.

I do not have a meter. I haven't tested the gh and kh for a couple months. I will test again and see if the numbers are still around that. I also didn't test the fish store water hardness. Perhaps that is the problem. It seems that is the last thing left to check.

Thanks for the feedback. Am feeling at a loss and running out of ideas. I am going to test the hardness now.
 
I just did the test and realized from my notes it was a lot longer than 2 months since I tested. Anyhow, now GH is 12 and KH is 6. I am going to do a little research on raising the KH.

Thanks, again.
 
That's a big difference in hardness. What changed over the past 2 months? Are you adding any buffers?

Baking soda can be used to increase kh.
 
It was actually March when I tested the hardness, and I added aragonite to the substrate after the test to bring up the hardness and never bothered to test again. (I am diligent about the other tests.) So, that's the cause for the difference.

I don't add anything to the water. If I put in baking soda, won't it increase the ph too much? I am at 8.0 already.
 
I see, makes perfect sense about the hardness.

They like it up to 8.6 so I wouldn't worry about that. Baking soda affects KH much more than pH so making a big difference in kh would only make a minor difference in pH anyways. Usually I would say if your tank is staying at a constant within the levels you have that it better to not try to change anything but since you are having issues maybe the increase in KH could help.

21 out of 25 purchased fish dying certainly screams that something is wrong. Tell us more about the dead fish, symptoms before dying, how they look etc. Have any pictures of the tank, living fish, sick or dead fish? What are you feeding them? Do you quarantine new fish? Do you have any other place you could get fish from?
 
Do I just put baking soda in the new water when I do a water change? Or do I put it right in the tank?

The sick fish seem slow--lethargic. Then, they start swim/floating upside down and sideways and going with the flow of the not so strong current. Then, they get caught (purposefully anchor themselves?) under a rock or plant and lie there gasping for oxygen. That is when I ask my husband to decapitate them as the quickest euthanasia. I know from about half hour after I put them in which ones are going to die. They just don't seem right.

I don't quarantine new fish.

I feed them Omega One Cichlid Pellets (what the fish store recommended) and supplement with freeze dried worms and brine shrimp. The ones that survived are healthy and strong and have no issues. I just can't get new fish to survive in there. That's what makes me suspect the health of the fish I am buying. Or maybe mine have adapted to some toxin over time and the new fish just can't take it. Right now, one has survived from my Thursday purchase of 3. He looks pretty good thus far.

I live in the middle of nowhere, so the next closest store is about 45 minutes away. I have been thinking I should give it a go, but it is a long ride for them.

As I was looking at pictures, I realized that probably 5 of the fish were victims of a maingano (I didn't know the difference at the time and nobody warned me.). I took him back to the store to terrorize someone else's tank. Still, I have a HIGH mortality rate.

I bought my tank used. Could it be somehow contaminated by cleaners leaching out? Seems like a stretch, but I am grasping at straws. I will snap some pictures of the tank. I don't have any of the sick fish.

Thanks, again for your help and interest.
 
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