What have I done??

[aknif]

I'll try to make this as short as possible:

I had a 5.5 gallon tank, up and running for over 6 years with no problems. 2 weeks ago, I upgraded the 5.5g to a 10g. All I had to buy was the tank, a glass lid and 5 lbs more gravel. I scooped my fish out and put them in a cup. At the time it was my betta, one female guppy, one neon and one dwarf frog. (had them all for at least 2 years) I rinse the new tank well with warm water. Transfer over the UGF, penguin mini, old gravel (did NOT rinse the gravel), decor and most of the tank water from the 5.5 to the 10g. I rinsed the new gravel well and stirred it in to mix it with the old gravel. Add dechlor and filled the rest up with tap water (same temp), and poured the fish back in. I observe for 2 days, everyone seems happy.

Then I decide to get my lonely neon some friends. I go to petsmart and purchase 4 neons and 2 kuhli loaches. Come home, acclimate them well, and release them. One neon dies within the hour. I figured he got injured in the netting process or something. Anyway, in the following 2 days, my betta gets progressively more pale and is just laying on the gravel. The next morning he is dead. Then a neon dies, then another neon dies. Yesterday, there's a neon swimming in swirls and obviously having trouble, this morning he is dead. My female guppy is also swimming very strangely, gasping and swimming erratically at the surface like she's trying to swim out of the tank entirely. I am afraid she's going to die soon too. Now, all that's left is one neon, the 2 loaches and the frog. (and the distressed guppy)

What is going on? I have tested my water 3 times over these days, it's always 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 5 ppm nitrates. I started doing daily 30% water changes when the betta died, but they keep dropping like flies! It's very distressing to me. I've never experienced anything like this.

There is no sign of an obvious illness. No ich, no dropsy, no popeye, no bloating... nothing. The day before, they're fine, then they're swimming all screwy, then they're dead. It all happens very fast! In the case of the one neon, he was fine in the morning, 2 hours later he's swimming in loops and twists, and an hour after that he's dead.

So I have two questions:
1) Do you know what's caused this mass extinction?
2) How can I "cure" the tank? I will eventually want to add more fish back in, but not until I can be sure whatever is causing this is gone.

I'm very sorry for the long post, but i'm so confused and wanted to give all info I could. Any help would be greatly appreciated. It's been a terribly rough week for me.

 

[snakeskinner]

that is interesting. Did you treat the water just like you had when doing waterchanges? possibly some type of chlorine poisoning. Another thought would be lack of oxygen? you should have plenty of surface aggitation with the penguin though so it doesn't sound like that to me either. A major suspicion would be the additional fish. Since you had a neon die so fast, I wonder what it had. I have no room to talk not following my own advice but this is why you quarentine new fish. like I said, I'm guilty myself. I tried a quarentine/hospital tank for a couple months but I seemed to stress the fish more trying to move them to the hospital tank or moving from one tank to another during quarentine and soon thereafter it gained permenant residents and has been a regular tank ever since. neon's seem to be a big source of problems in my experience. I always bring out the ich or just have mysterious deaths when adding neon tetras. Are you positive your test kits are working? Might be worth taking a water sample to your LFS and getting their take on the water because ammonia/nitrite/nitrate poisoning would definitely be a culprit with a new tank. Usually keeping the stuff from the old tank like you did will prevent a spike but sometimes it doesn't seem to help and still goes into a cycle, especially with a much larger area like you experienced. Hope you figure something out, Kyle

 

[cdawson]

First, the worst thing you did was buy fish that are overall usually bad stock from a place with a centralized filtration system and didn't quarantine them.

Fish from place like that are generally of bad health and not good stock to begin with. Most likely you got some bad stock that brought in disease and infection.

Using the old gravel and not having rinsed it or vacuumed it at all over 2 years probably allowed a nitrogenous gas pocket to build up. When you pulled all that gravel up and added it to the new tank the nitrates were released. Did the gravel smell bad at all when you took it out? Did you dechlorinate?

It definately sounds like a large spike in either ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. Check your test kits they may be expired. They usually only last about a year or they expire.

 

[aknif]

Huh?? I did weekly water changes with gravel vac'ing in that tank... Where did I say I didn't ever clean the gravel in two years?? I said I owned those 4 fish for over two years and had owned the tank for over 6 years. I did not rinse the old gravel because I didn't want to disturb the bacteria on it, and as I gravel vac weekly, it was not excessivly dirty anyway. And yes, I did dechlorinate with Novaqua (the brand i've used for years)

My test kit is a new Aquarium Pharmacuticals Freshwater Master kit (liquid chemicals with glass vials, not the test strip kind) that I only bought about 3 months ago when setting up and cycling my 125g. I have no reason to doubt it's providing accurate results.

While I realize that PetsMart isn't generally the best place to buy fish, I have bought from them before and had success. It does seem to me that these neons must have brought in some kind of disease, my questions were what kind of disease could kill so quickly and how can I be sure it's gone before adding anyone else to the tank?

 

[aknif]

Also, I did not change the filter material in the penguin at the time of the switch.... I simply took the filter off the old tank and put it on the new one. And it has a bio wheel, so I should have had ample biological filtration still working for me to prevent a cycle. But that is why I still tested my water 3 times. Just in case the moving and stirring of the old gravel with the new gravel messed some thing up, but I don't feel that it would have. Maybe if I had poured all the new gravel on top of the old gravel, I MIGHT have seen a teeny tiny cycle, but with stirring the two gravels together, rinsing the new, but NOT rinsing the old, I feel I should have been ok.

 

[oztun]

I can't really see what could of happened except two possibilities.

1. The neons introduced something into the tank.

or

2. The temperature of the water when you moved the fish was way different. It takes a long time for 10 gallons to change temp and being in colorado it probably comes out of the tap cold. Did you check it?

Also have the LFS check your water. I had a customer buy a new test kit the other day and nitrates came up dark red. They kept doing 50% changes everyday and still red. Finally they brought me a sample and (with my tester) it was bright yellow. This proves brand new test kits can be bad.

 

[aknif]

I will take my water in to be tested by the lfs, just because now i'm curious, but I'm sure the test kit works as I got various readings with it in the last few months while cycling my 125g, and I haven't had any other experience like this in that tank.

I didn't fill the tank with cold tap water. I filled it with water that was the same temp as the tank water. The tank actually sits on my kitchen counter, so I can stand there with my one hand in the tank and the other in the faucet water to match up the temps perfectly. Then I use an old pitcher (used exclusively for tank purposes) to pour into the tank. The whole transfer process took me less than 1/2 hour, so I don't think there could have been a noticeable change in the old tank water temp.

Any suggestions on how to remove this "whatever it is" from the tank? Keep up daily water changes for a while? Or just wait a few weeks to see if the last neon and frog and loaches make it??

 

[knowy]

hey that Is bad new, i am sorry for your loss,. we all go through it,
kinda sound like a simple answer to me " but im just gussing" when you put the fish in your tank you floated the bag, right, sure we all do to get the heat adjusted, did you and this is huge > put any of the bag water in your tank ? if so wal-la' you can get disese from fish but you can crash a tank overnight if you dump the bag of fish and water in your tank.. ALWAYS float the bag, take the bag to the sink or over a bucket and strain the fish into a net and add to the tank, Never add any LFS tank water to your tank at any time.
if you took all these precautions,, again i am sorry for your loss and only trying to help you figure out this problem. i hope you will post your findings.
kepp ur head up "it all happends to the best of us: dont change the water for it might need to build, stay cycled so you can add copper safe and slowly add more fish..
knowy

 

[aknif]

Yes, I said I well acclimated the new fish when I brought them home. I floated the bags for approx 30-40 mins, adding a bit of my tank water to the bag every 10 minutes. Then I strain the fish into a net and put them in my tank, so no LFS water gets into my tank (other than the water thats on the fish at the time, of course!)

An extra step i've also always done is to rinse the outside of the LFS bag before allowing it to float in my tank. It may seem silly, but my LFS always doublebags the fish, and when I get home, I remove the outer bag, and while the inner bag is still closed, rinse the outside of the bag briefly in tank temp tap water before putting it in my tank. I figure, any little bit helps in preventing LFS water from getting in my tank.

 

[nvan2]

I guess if you cant find out what really happened, letting the tank sit for a while with no fish would mroe than likley kill anything in there, assuming its some sort of internal parasite or something... very wierd though