New tank owner has questions

Asuka

Asuka

AC Members
Jan 21, 2005
8
0
0
Canada
Hi,
I just recently set up my aquarium after moving and i'd like to
have a nice community tank. Right now i have mollies, zebra danios,
guppies, an elephant nose, and a snow king plecko. I also had 5 neons
but they seem to be disappearing. I'm down to two and i've only
recovered one dead body so far. So basically i have two questions:
1) What could be killing my neons? (i suspect the somewhat aggressive danios)
2) What's a good number of neons to have for protection?
Thanks.
 
First off how big is your tank? Do you have any test kits for ammonia, NitrItes and NitrAtes. Right now your fish is producing ammonia from the fish food and wastes that they produce. Ammonia will kill your fish. Right now you have 2 choices. Either return the fish and do a fishless cycle or prepare yourself for a lot of water changes until your tank has cycled. There is a sticky at the top of the newbie section about cycling a tank. Go there and read them. Neons are not hardy fish and is not good for cycling a tank. What you need to do right now is do at least a 50% water change. Then read the sticky about cycling a tank then decide which route you want to go. You will need a test kit, Aquarium Pharmaceutical makes a master test kit that will have all of the test that you will need right now.
 
Thanks for your answer.. :) i followed your advice and i did all tests, amonia, nitrites, nitrates and everthing seems fine. It's a 55g tank and has being running without fish for awhile and its not a new tank either.

I still have 2 neons and today i found one of my mollies dead and my plants are turning brown. Seeing that i haven't much experience i keep trying to find answers.
 
Any evidence of how they might have died? Do they appear to have nicked/missing fins? Are the eyes missing, like they have been eaten? Is it ich? stuff like that, or are they just turning up dead? I don't know much about live plants (I just use plastic) but mabey you could try in the live plant section to see if the plats health is what is affecting your fish.
 
they just turning up dead.. i mean i found the bodies of one mollie and 1 neon.. 2 other neons simply disapeared.
 
seems not agressive..

it seems not agressive at all but you may be right seeing that its carnivourous fish..
im thinking of increasing the number of neons (i heard something about it) im not sure if this will work though
 
What do you mean by NH3, NO2, NO3 are all "fine"? Are they 0? or greater than 0? For me, "fine" means NH3 and NO2 are 0ppm and NO3 is less than 20ppm.

Neons are very fragile and I don't recommend adding any more until we've solved the problem of why they're dying, otherwise you're just feeding more fish into the killing machine. I've done that, it's very frustrating and expensive.

If your tank has beed running for a while without fish in it, then it is no longer cycled.
 
Check your pH too, and make sure that you acclimate your neons SLOWLY, icluding adding a little bit of water at a time to your bag AFTER the temps have equalized. It takes me about 1/2 hour to acclimate my neons when transferrring them from quarantine to my main tank. They are finicky and sensitive, icluding to many anti-ich mdeicines. I have 9 in my 90 gallon, but it took me 3 groups of 6 at a time to get 9 survivors. They just "turn up dead" sometimes.
 
Neons

Hi!

I lost one of my neons when I first started my tank, but the other five have survived. To be honest, sometimes I think I have lost more, and I search the tank for ages trying to find them. Three are swimming, two have gone, then BINGO! later on, all five are swimming. They like to hide, and scare you! Maybe they are trapped under a rock?

I lost a red-eye tetra yesterday, first loss in ages (apart from removing 2 black tetras, that were sold to me with cotton mouth, which wasn't visible until 2 days after purchase) and the red-eye had a slit down its left side, but had been swimming round perfectly fine...just suddenly spiralled to the bottom and landed in a plant! Very strange! It was pregnant, so that was sad.

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My tanks contain

4 orange swordtails, 1 male, 3 females
4 Mollies, two black, 2 black and white, 1 male, 3 females
2 pregnant red and black Platy's, busy reproducing since we bought them...got 13 (9 re-homed!)from the first lot, have 5 new fry from last week
3 red-eye tetras
3 black tetras
5 neon tetras

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7 guppies..banished from main tank as they are bullies!

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3 goldfish
1 fancy black goldfish, that likes to play dead all the time, but infact is just a fraudster!
1 pleco
 
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