DID I MURDER MY FISH????

[ladyqpid]

I hope you can help me so that if i did wrong i dont do it again! i purchased a small tank to use to breed my bettas but decided against it when irealised how much work was involved in the actual growing out of the fish so i then decided i would use it as a growth tank for my guppy's. Smart move i thought. I had just lost a batch of fry when the cage they were in dropped off the sied of the tank and they ended up as fishy dinner so my thought was that i would set up the little tank, put the mommy's in a large cage with the vents at the bottom, the mommy's would have the babies, they would drop through the vents into the new awaiting LARGE area for them to swim around in for ages till it was time to move them on. Great in theory! Well i looked around into my tank and noticed that i had a couple of guppy females who were huge, both looked like they had swollowed a brick and so i thought...oh dear, emergency... if i dont do something quick i will loose this lot too. So i did the following. i syphoned off water from the tank that the guppy's were in, i took a couple of plants from the tank they were in, i set up the little tank, heater.....right temp, filter... small corner foam unit. Now to my thinking the fish were just moving from a big tank to a small tank with the same water, so, they should be fine? In went the fish. the breeder cage is one of those large ones, it actually gives them a lot of room to swim around. i could have divided it off but i decided against it so they would have more room. They were ok... they swam around a lot, they looked just fine. Day one... no fry, Day two... no fry...i woke up day three and the tank was teeming and one very exhausted mommy was just sitting on the bottom, but, she eventually got up and got swimming around. i had intended to scoop her out, but i decided i didn't want to stress the other mom at that time because she was doing the 'im gonna be a mommy soon' jerk. A couple of hours, more babies... tonnes of the things, i couldn't count them. i immediately went into nurse mode. fed the babies a little egg yolk, then four hours later a little liquidfry... which i had used before and found very effective until i get my BBS up and running. One more feed before bedtime and off i went, into the land of dreams, happy that my babies had such a lovely big tank to spend there first few months in. Oh, i didn't forget to feed the moms either. All looked amazingly happy, and from what i could count there were about 60-80 fry in the tank. i woke up the next morning, dived out to look at my babies.... A MORTUARY. Everything was dead!!! Mothers, babies.... the lot!!! WHAT DID I DO WRONG? Please help me so I don't do it again.

[Bumblebee]

the first thing I would say seeing as fish were ok one minute dead the next would be lack of oxygen. Possibly all the fry and their mothers just used up all the air in the water.

soloution: add airater and take out mothers right away

No2. the second possibility is the amount of food you were adding. if it is truly a 'small tank' then any uneaten liquifry may have caused a bacterial bloom, this in turn could have either used up the oxygen in the tank or possibly even poisoned them.

soloution: add gravel from cycled tank, feed less, syphon uneaten food and small 10% daily waterchanges.

Sorry about your loss, hope you have better luck next time.

I have had similar unexplained deaths though, even when using cycled material from another tank for the setup. small tanks seem to be more unstable in general and because of their size, contitions can get bad before you have time to notice.

[ladyqpid]

Thanks for your advice Bumblebee, however, I had an airater in the tank from the corner filter that was working fine. As for the food, i really doubt that it was too much because i only used a couple of drops each feed. And surely if it was the oxygen lack i would have noticed symptoms? not just alive and thriving before bed and dead in the morning??? I am thinking i may set up the tank again and start from scratch. How long do you think i should cycle it before trying again?

[ladyqpid]

Oh and the tank is not that small, it is a 25 litre tank.

[Bumblebee]

should have been ok then. was there any possibility of deodorant, air freshener or any other contamination?

even heat problems in the weather we have been having latley?

sounds odd, as you say the fish should have showed symptoms with either poisoning or lack of oxygen, like hanging at the surface.

[sassybees]

Ladypid.... Sorry about your loss. its sad when that happens. I dont know where you are in OZ but Im wondering if this has and bearing on the loss of fish lately, not only yours
I read the post that Bumblebee posted about the local water..... excuse my language but its bloody disgraceful that the council does not know whats in the water. Also one of the LFS here (and its not the only one with fish just up and dying) has had dreadful fatalities to a point where 40 odd tanks are empty....and they cannot get on top of the problem. They say its unexplainable...... after reading the council water post Im wondering if that is the cause. Did you do a water change or any great amount of "new: water before you put mum into the smaller tank?

[Bumblebee]

similar thing happening around here, there are two LPS that loose hundreds of fish to 'unexplained deaths' there is also a third that never seems to have dead fish in their tanks. These are the guys that told me about the high chlorine weeks ago and to add double dechlorinator if you could smell it. One thing I forgot to add in the other post was that water suppliers will almost always add high levels of chlorine in hot weather as this is the time when dangerous microbes are at high numbers, so higher amounts of chlorine are needed to kill them off.

It is terrible when you think you are doing the right thing but end up killing your fish by accident.

one of my 'terrible mistakes' was a few years ago when a part fell off the back of one of my filters and I ended up with bits of molly fry all over the tank

[sassybees]

Is there a chlorine or choramine/ammonia test kit? I havent seen one but there again I havent really been on a search for one. Seems it would be alot safer if we could fully test the water before we add it to the tanks both for fishkeepers and LFS.
Its hard to have to reply on our "Nose" to smell the extra chrorine. I for one dont have a great sense of smell. Anyway I hope Ladypid finds her problem, lets just hope its the water and nothing more sinister

[Bumblebee]

You can get them from any pool supply shop for around $40 (possibly cheaper on the mainland). I havnt seen any in the lps though. I think you can also get cheap PH, and other water testing kits in the 'pool' section of shops like k-mart, I have even seen them carry $2.50 aquarium ph and other test kits. pity some of their stuff like thermomaters are so dodgy. whatever you do dont get the $2 glass aquarium thermomiters. they are about 4c out and break easily. the stuff inside smells like petrol so its emergency e-vac time if one breaks in the tank.
/ramble

[dillen]

It’s never good getting unexpanded deaths. Especially when it appears you have done everything right.
Chlorine poisoning wouldn’t be an problem as the water was taken from the main tank, and it normally strikes down your fish very fast, normally within a half hour of the water change.
I’m not a fan of “liquid” foods for livebearers as the fry are large enough to take fine powdered foods and even crushed flake. Liquids are very concentrated and its easy to send a tank off very quickly, I don’t believe this happened in your case though.

I’m with Bubblebee , It sounds like a toxic problem. Fish may not show any signs of it, they just die. You were in bed so you may have misses any signs anyway. Deodorant and such can poison your fish.

Do you smoke? People who smoke can have these things happen as nicotine is very toxic to fish. They have a smoke then put their hands into a small tank and there isn’t enough water volume to dilute the nicotine from your fingers down below lethal levels. I do know of some heavy smokers that have stopped smoking in their fish rooms and their fish have stopped getting outbreaks of diseases. I’m not smoker bashing but it is something to keep in mind if you do.

D

[ladyqpid]

Bumblebee, i still didn't come up with a reason for my fish dying, no to the poisoning thing, no to the water change, so, like others i have no idea.... however.. i noticed that the thermometer i had put in the tank had broken at the end. the red liquid hadn't seeped out i don't think (it was still reading the same temp) but the little balls of lead??? in the bottom had all fallen out into the tank, do you think that could have contributed to the problem??? lead poisoning??? but surely poisoning of any kind would take some time? Anyways, all the rest of the fish in the other tanks are perfectly healthy so i don't know... i may put the small tank together and start from scratch and leave the water to age for a while before popping a couple of near ready females in and seeing what happens this time. i just hate the thought i may have the same thing happen again.

[ladyqpid]

oh and i'm not a smoker

[Cyberguppy]

hope you have more luck next time. Its terrible but these things do sometimes happen. The thermometer may have killed them depending what substances were on the lead or in the tube. because they were sealed they may not have been 'clean' of manufacturing chemicles. It only takes about .001 ppm of something very toxic to wipe out a tank.

[sammigold]

You can normally buy an ammonia test kit at your lfs about $20 approx I think.... dont quote me on it!! - not to sure about a chlorine one though......

Bad luck about your fishies, I would not say it was murder.... sammigold coroner says: Death by misadventure.... I would say you did all that you could under the circumstances and I believe that the broken thermometer/lead poisoning theory sounds the most viable... Now that you have had a toxin like lead in the tank I would clean it thoroughly and then start again just as you did before but without broken thermometer if you do it like you did before you shouldnt need to cycle it but maybe put a couple of gups in for a couple of weeks just to make sure before loading it with fry.... but my personal opinion is that fry would nt release that much waste in a short time to create any ammonia probs or cycling issues...(someone correct me if they think I am wrong)

[Cyberguppy]

I find fry are often very hardy. I have tested and found spikes at around .35 and the fry are swimming around happily with no deaths or apparent ill-effects. most adults would be going belly up at that level. Ammonia death that quickly sounds doubtful.

I think the cheapest chlorine test are available from the pool section of department stores like k-mart, big W and other similar shops.

the only other thing I would suggest is the bacterial poisoning. If the tank was new, even if it was cycled , uneaten food can make bacteria reproduce incredibly rapidly. these may have either release a toxin or simply used up all the oxygen and killed the fish. unlikley though. this is more likley if you have an unseen dead fish in your tank.