New fish died in 2 hours

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bbortko

bbortko

Polypterus
MFK Member
Mar 3, 2010
3,167
222
96
Northwest, Indiana
On Friday during water changes and knowing that I was picking up fish Sunday morning at a fish swap meet I filled me quarantine tank, added safe, and turned on the filter. Sunday I picked up 5 fish, 3 different species from 3 different vendors. Got home started to float the bags and added some biomax from my sump. This is my basic routine that I've used several time over the years. After the floating and adding water to the bag every 10-15[4x4 total] I Netted the fish, released them, and tossed out the bag water. I then took a shower and afterwards checked on the fish and everything was fine so I watched some TV and took a nap. Upon waking I checked on the fish and all of them were dead.

Today I drained the tank, rinsed everything very throughly with hot water and discarded the filter media. I then refilled the tank and I'm running the filter with only carbon, on Wednesday I'm replacing the carbon with new carbon.

Any theories as to what may have happened or anything else I could do before trying the tank again?
 
fwprawn said:
Did you test the water before putting the new fish in? Was the new tank heated?
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Tank was heated to 80 degrees, didn't test the water since there wasn't anything tho test for at that point. Unused water and bio from my sump. The fish were 2 2" sword tails, a 1" hoplarchus psittacus, and 2 1.5" bristle nose plecos and the tank is a 20g with an ac50 which had 2x the bio that comes with it.
Dan714 said:
were there other fish already in the tank that are still alive?
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Tank was empty.
 
So, you don't know if the pH, etc, was similar to what they were being kept in previously? 80 degrees is also pretty high, especially if they were being kept cooler before.
 
fwprawn said:
So, you don't know if the pH, etc, was similar to what they were being kept in previously? 80 degrees is also pretty high, especially if they were being kept cooler before.
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Nope, never had issues before so I didn't think about the pH and figured after being acclimated for an hour the temp should be fine. Being that they are all local breeders I would assume that at least one of the 3 species was kept in normal tap water. I'm kinda wondering if something got on one of the bags.
 
Ammonia spike or some kind of shock?
 
krichardson said:
Ammonia spike or some kind of shock?
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Stuck my hand in the tank so it wasn't stray voltage. I was too annoyed to test afterwards, is even possible for such small fish with established media to create enough ammonia that quickly to kill them? The last time I used fish to cycle was 14 years ago but I remember it taking a day or two before the ammonia even registered.
 
I was referring to a shock of experiencing different water chemistries and the ammonia is a longshot but I can't think of anything else....
 
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