Sad Morning

T

TCM

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Apr 27, 2006
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Our poor Betta fish was floating this morning :( I am not sure where we went wrong. On 4/14 we filled the 10 gallon hex tank and added Biospira. The store we bought biospira at told us to wait two weeks to add the Betta. We were at a different fish store on 4/15 just to look. The woman who was working asked if we wanted to buy one and we said we had to wait. She said that if we put in the Bio we had to get a fish within 24 hours or the Bio would be wasted, so we got the Betta. He was doing fine. On Tuesday 4/25 I did a ten percent water change and ten a few hours later we got the water tested.The guy at the fish store said it was fine and we bought three dwarf frogs. This morning the poor Betta was dead. I have been reading all the info I can find this morning and I am guessing we had an ammonia spike. What do we do now to protect the frogs? I am planning on buying my own water testing kit today.

Thanks.

Tiffany
 
The first thing is as you found out, you can't trust an LFS right off the bat because of this conflicting info from the two stores. When you bought the bio-spira, you should have also bought the test kit so you could see for yourself how your water was progressing. I'm not really versed in Bio-spira, I went with fishless cycling which I am assuming takes a bit longer than the Bio. A lot of people rave about the stuff and I assume it's a great product however, it is limited and it wasn't available when I needed it. As you've learned with the LFS, don't give them too much of your dependency as a lot of times, they can lead you on a wrong path as you have discovered, so with the new ownership of fish, this site can help find you a LFS that can be beneficial to you and those that are out for your money. Onto your problem, you can't really do anything until you figure out what exactly went wrong. Your first step is absolutely right, get the test kit. Find out exactly what your parameters are and work from there. Your adding the biospira might have done some good after all, but you can't know until you test the water for yourself. You'll need to read the cycling sticky and proceed along there. The LFS may have told you your water was fine by indicating there was no ammonia at the time as you just dd a water change but did he also check for nitrites and nitrates. If he had, he surely could have recognized whether your tank was fully cycled. Your tank would need to keep the same parameters daily, thus being stabilized. Now, for the frogs, I would do another water change, perhaps a 50%, depending on the water conditions and don't forget to use a conditioner/chlorine remover and follow the cycle sticky as mentioned and go from there as well. Note that you will need to perform weekly water changes as opposed to hourly changes once your tank gets stabilized. Your biggest thing is get that kit and work from there.
 
DD is correct, as usual.

The Bio Spira package has directions on it and apparently the first store you went to didn't bother to read them. Yes, you add the Bio Spira and fish all at the same time.

I'm not sure how big your tank is? Mostly likely your tank was cycled by the time you added the frogs, however three frogs all at once -- that soon after the cycle may had ended and depending on the size of the tank -- could have caused the tank to recycle again.

It's also possible that the betta's passing may have nothing to do with the cycle process.

All of those are just guess, however. As DD said we'd need to know what the water readings in the tank are -- ammonia, nitrites, nitrates -- before we can really get an idea of what is going on.

Roan
 
My experience with the bio-spira was that it didn't totally eliminate the cycling process but that it did definately speed it up to 24 to 48 hours to get the Ammonia, Nitrite & Nitrate levels to adjust to proper levels. The ammonia was fine however I had slight nitrite & nitrate spikes for a day or so after.
 
I got the water test kit. I took a sample of the water from the tank to Petsmart and using dipsticks they got 0 on ammonia and dangerous levels of nitrite and nitrate. We came home and did a fifty percent water change and added seachem prime. After that we tested at .25 ammonia or maybe slightly less the color was in between. 20 for nitrate and .50 for nitrite. I will check it every day and do water changes as needed in hopes of keeping the frogs alive. Obviously we won't get any more fish until we get things fixed up. Thanks for your help and input.

Tiffany
 
I forgot to say that I know from reaing the stickies that the dipsticks aren't that accurate but I figured that since the betta died and they dais dangerous I would just do the water change and then test. I did spend a lot of time this morning reading the stickies.
 
Well, as far as the dipsticks go, at least you have something to go on instead of going the blind route. Kudo's for you for reading through the stickies this morning, looks like you are in great shape and on the correct path to fixing the root of the problem.
 
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