Such a frustrating morning... I'm very discouraged.

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K

ktluvsfish

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 21, 2008
422
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Southern CA
I woke up this morning and went to feed my fish and do my morning ritual of checking my tanks and making sure that everything is okay. I skipped this ritual yesterday because I left to go out of town at 4:30 am.

I was happy to see that all of my fish looked fine, until I got to my planted 60 gallon cube tank. I dropped some food in the tank and waited for the fish to come out to eat. I noticed that they tank didn't look as busy as usual, and figured that something was wrong. I saw a dead cory in the corner which really bummed me out, but I scooped him out and decided to check the tank out more thoroughly. When I started pulling up driftwood and moving plants, I found a total of 12 DEAD FISH!!!

4 Cories
3 BN Plecos
1 Tetra
1 Angelfish
3 Apistos
ALL DEAD!!!

I have no idea what happened. The other fish look perfectly healthy. The tank has been up and running for three months. I checked the water parameters, and there was a small ammonia reading (probably from all of the dead fish decomposing in the tank), but other than that totally normal (Nitrites: 0, Nitrates: 10). I did a small 20% water change, and added some more prime to the tank. I am so upset and discouraged. This tank has been a challenge to stock and aquascape from the beginning due to its odd shape, and I have had a lot of frustrations with it. I was however beginning to enjoy it much more lately as the fish grew out a bit, and the plants started growing in. I am going to do another reading tomorrow morning and see how the water is.

I am so upset that this happened. I am wondering if I accidently had something on my hand before I put it in the tank such as soap or lotion. I pride myself of keeping healthy fish, and I just have no idea why there are so many deaths so suddenly. Everything was fine on Saturday morning. Ugh. I kind of want to empty the tank and start over, but I'm not really inspired to do anything with it right now, not to mention that I don't have the money to spend on it either. Some days this hobby is no fun :(
 
ugh that sucks, sorry for your loss and i know how discouraging it can be when it seems everything is going wrong all at once, the only thing i can think of that went wrong is maybe your heater malfunctioned and made the water too warm too quickly shocking the fish into death... but yeah sometimes these things just happen and there isnt really anything you could have done (usually stuff like this never fails to happen when you leave for a trip :() GOOD LUCK and i hope you find the inspiration to restock it soon and get it back to how you wanted it :)
 
u said u added prime? i dont know, but ive heard on here people say that they thought prime was a culprit in similar cases where they couldnt figure out what killed their fish. again, im not completely sure on the details but i remember it coming up so maybe u can search the site and see what u can find
 
Happens to all of us at one time or another. Sorry for your losses.
 
Thanks so much everyone.

peathenster;4163471; said:
Very sorry to hear that Kt. I wonder what could have happened....sounds like water problem....pH looks ok?
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Thanks. I have no idea what happened. The pH is the same as its always been... 7.6. Its just so frustrating to now know the cause.

marauders30;4163273; said:
u said u added prime? i dont know, but ive heard on here people say that they thought prime was a culprit in similar cases where they couldnt figure out what killed their fish. again, im not completely sure on the details but i remember it coming up so maybe u can search the site and see what u can find
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Hmmm... I have never heard of Prime killing fish before. I'm sure it could if you overdosed. It has been about a week since my last water change though (besides the one I did this morning).

Sarah88;4163250; said:
ugh that sucks, sorry for your loss and i know how discouraging it can be when it seems everything is going wrong all at once, the only thing i can think of that went wrong is maybe your heater malfunctioned and made the water too warm too quickly shocking the fish into death... but yeah sometimes these things just happen and there isnt really anything you could have done (usually stuff like this never fails to happen when you leave for a trip :() GOOD LUCK and i hope you find the inspiration to restock it soon and get it back to how you wanted it :)
Click to expand...

Thanks so much. I thought about my heater (that has happened before where a heater failed, and the tank dropped to low while I was on vacation), but the temp is still at a steady 78 degrees.
 
Well I just got home and found 2 more dead cories and another dead angelfish. All were alert and eating fine this morning. Looks like I'm going to have an empty tank pretty soon :( I have no idea what the heck is going on.
 
possible gas buildup in the gravel or dead leaves and/or buildup of detritus in the gravel? i suggest these only because I had something very similar happen to me in a planted tank not long ago. Everything looked fine in the tank but then over the course of 2 or 3 days I lost approx 10 clown loaches ranging in size from 1.5-5". To this day the only thing I can possibly think of was buildup of something in the gravel. I now have quite a few MTS snails in the tank that burrow through the gravel eating leftover foods and stirring the gravel around. I don't know if that's actually what caused the problem but *knock on wood* I haven't had any problems in the tank since.
 
do you run co2 on this tank? Also, the harder the water, the more toxic ammonia is. If you are having detectable ammonia readings I would do a water change.
 
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