Why did my fish die?????

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TheBigB

TheBigB

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Nov 1, 2011
503
3
33
North Texas
Just alittle background: Ive been keeping fish for over 10 years and before that helped my mom with her tank when I lived at home. So I have some expierence.

I am having a birthday party tomorrow and am having a bunch of peope come to the house. I decide to give my 120 gallon show tank a good cleaning. I did everything as I normally would. Scrapped the glass, drained the tank about 60-65%, cleaned all the filters pads. Then added prime and filled the tank back up from the tap making sure the temp was the same.

This tank has close to $600 worth of fish in it. My most recent addtion was $200 worth of exotic barbs (mascara barbs and they are beautiful). This morning when I wake up the tank looks alittle cloudy so I turn on the light and can only see 3 out of 9 barbs. As I start looking closer I start seeing them belly up behind my 3d background. I only was about to find 4 of them, so there is still one in there somwhere. The wierd thing is the rest of my fish (JD, GT, and even Clown loaches) seem fine.

I did get some quick parameters off the tap water: 0-5 Nitrate, 0 Nitrite, 1 Ammonia. The ammonia does seems alittle higher than normal...

I didnt do anything differnet than I've been doing once a week for at least 6 months on this tank, so what happend?
 
Whats Sump said:
I did get some quick parameters off the tap water: 0-5 Nitrate, 0 Nitrite, 1 Ammonia. The ammonia does seems alittle higher than normal...
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Ammonia is likely the cause, should be 0. So if you have changed 60% of the water which had 0 ammonia with water which had 1 ammonia that means the tank is at 0.6. Which for a start isn't great. This would then cause a rocket in nitrite.

The spike in ammonia and then nitrite likely killed off the barbs, were/are they a sensitive species? Cichlids are one of the most hardy species of fish, so they were likely affected but not killed by this.
 
Doing a minor water change wouldnt damage the bacteria enough to be harmful. On a few occasions I've done 100% water changes, but removed the rocks/plants/driftwood/filters and kept them moist, and put them back in after the water change (most of the bacteria stays on structure like that) and I never had a harmful ammonia spike.
 
I just checked the parameters of the tank, and there was definatly a nitrite spike. I cant believe I made such a rookie mistake....and today started off so good until I found this...ugggghhh. Anyways, I also retested the tap, and it is still showing between .5 and 1 ammonia. I seeded the filters with media taken from other tanks so hopefully this will help. I did a 20% waterchange this morning and Im going to another one later tonight and maybe one more in the morning.....If I loose my clown loaches too, it will be bad....that was already $150 worth a fish....lol and I was having a great morning until i see this...now my whole day is shot.
 
Whats Sump said:
I just checked the parameters of the tank, and there was definatly a nitrite spike. I also retested the tap, and it is still showing between .5 and 1 ammonia. I seeded the filters with media taken from other tanks so hopefully this will help. I did a 20% waterchange this morning and Im going to another one later tonight and maybe one more in the morning.....If I loose my clown loaches too, it will be bad....that was already $150 worth a fish....lol and I was having a great morning until i see this...now my whole day is shot.
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DO NOT do water changes.
Adding more ammonia is worse than having high nitrates (once converted from ammonia and nitrite). Just leave off water changes until your water settles - or start letting water settles in buckets now ready for the changes.
 
GrantA94 said:
DO NOT do water changes.
Adding more ammonia is worse than having high nitrates (once converted from ammonia and nitrite). Just leave off water changes until your water settles - or start letting water settles in buckets now ready for the changes.
Click to expand...

+1

Also, you could add ammonia remover into the resting water before you add it to the tank


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your tap is always going to show some ammonia from the chloramines in your water. what was the ph before and after your water change?
 
CichlidJoe said:
+1

Also, you could add ammonia remover into the resting water before you add it to the tank


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
Click to expand...

Another +1. you need to cycle the tank and the only way to do that is to let the bacteria grow. My only concern is how adding ammonia remover to a tank that needs to be cycled may delay the cycling process, but may be beneficial in this case since the ammonia is most likely what killed the fish. Better to do that and keep the fish healthy than sacrafice the fish for bacteria sake
 
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